How to make classic, creamy German Knoephla Soup

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Knoepha Soup

Is there anything more cozy to have on a cold day than soup? What about a soup from your childhood that brings back great memories?

Even though I only ever had this soup at school or a restaurant in North Dakota, Knoephla (or Knepfla) soup is one of my favorites from the German culture.

Knoephla is roughly translated into “little buttons” and are, in fact, little dumplings. The knoephla can be used in a number of ways, like a casserole, but the most popular way is in soup.

The soup is a chicken stock based, creamy soup with the dumplings, carrots, onions and potatoes. It is warming and comforting. It also is great to have when you’re sick. If you’re lactose intolerant like me, you can add coconut milk or just take about multple lactaid pills.

Knoephla Soup

Ingredients for soup:

  • Water
  • 3 tblspn. butter
  • 1 4-cup container of chicken broth (low sodium)
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 chicken bouillon cubes
  • 4-5 medium red potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • 2 large carrots, chopped
  • 2 stalks celery, chopped
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, diced
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 cups Milk, half & half, cream or 1 can of coconut milk (your choice)
  • salt and pepper

Ingredients for Knoephla dumplings:

  • 1 and 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/8 tsp. nutmeg
  • Between 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup Milk

Instructions:

Knoephla – In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. In a separate dish, combine the egg with about 1/4 cup milk. Slowly add in the milk and egg mixture to the flour and mix with your hands. Continue to add more milk until it becomes a shaggy dough. Place dough onto a clean working surface sprinkled with flour until the dough comes together. Roll into long, 1-inch thin logs and cut into 1-inch pieces.

Soup – In a large soup pot, melt butter and sauté onion, celery, carrots and potatoes until softened, about 8 minutes. Add in diced garlic, cook for 2 minutes. Add in stock and water to just cover the vegetables and add the bay leaf and two bouillon cubes. Bring to a boil and lower heat to simmer 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, add in the pieces of knoephla and simmer about 10 minutes.

Then, add in the milk/cream/half & half or coconut milk and stir well. Taste and add more salt/pepper if needed. Heat thoroughly, but don’t bring to a boil.

Serve with a side of bread, if you like.

Other posts from Baking Through History:

Baking Through History: Fry Bread Tacos

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Hard shell tacos, soft shell tacos, walking tacos, puffy tacos, birria tacos – there are a multitude of styles of tacos out there.

But, have you heard of fry bread tacos??

I grew up eating these in North Dakota and they’re still a favorite today.

Instead of a standard shell, the meat, cheese and other delicious toppings are piled on a crispy, fried bowl of dough with a soft and fluffy inside. Fry bread is so popular in North Dakota and South Dakota that in 2005 South Dakota lawmakers even declared it to be the state’s official bread, according to travelsouthdakota.com.

The standard is to use regular frozen bread dough, thawed and cut into one inch pieces, but if you’re ambitious, you could make your own dough or even use sourdough starter in your dough. That could be quite tasty.

The recipe is super easy.

Here’s all you need:

  • Cooked ground beef prepared with taco seasoning
  • 1 or 2 loaves of frozen bread dough (each loaf makes about 8 smaller fry breads or 4-6 larger ones)
  • Cooking oil
  • A high sided frying pan
  • Taco toppings (lettuce, salsa, sour cream, cheese, pickled jalapenos, etc.)
  • Refried beans (optional)

Thaw the bread dough. Cut into 1 to 2 inch pieces. Stretch out the dough to make a flatter round disc. Set aside.

In your high sided frying pan, heat about 1 to 2 inches of oil until ready to fry. Fry each piece of the dough until golden brown. The center will still look doughy, but that’s ok as long as it isn’t raw.

Cook up the ground beef as noted on your taco seasoning package.

Scoop ground beef onto fry bread and place your favorite toppings on the beef.

Enjoy!

Other posts from Baking Through History:

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Baking Through History: Great Grandma’s Ginger Cookies

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I think I get my love of baking (and gardening) from my great grandma. She was a great baker and always had something sweet to eat when I visited her home in Herried, South Dakota.

Ginger Cookies from Laura Berreth

My great grandma, Laura Vossler Berreth, lived to be 95 years old. Her family was part of a group called “Germans from Russia” who started arriving in the U.S. in the 1870s.

I remember my great grandma fondly, and I love the recipes she passed down to my grandma and my aunt, who then passed them to me.

According to her obituary, she was born in 1915 on the family homestead near Terry, Montana. When she was quite young her parents moved back to the Vossler homestead, located northeast of Zeeland, North Dakota. They lived in a sod house, which her grandparents built when they homesteaded the land.

She led quite the interesting life painting, working, crafting, growing roses and irises and even moving to Lodi, California for a time before coming back to the North Dakota/South Dakota area.

One note in her obituary that made me smile was this: “She will always be remembered for her kuchen and gingersnap cookies.”

I’ll be making her kuchen (German for cake) in an upcoming video. 

My grandma, Carol, shared this ginger cookie recipe with me recently. She said it was one of her favorites that her mother made – along with Peppernut cookies (a post on that also coming soon.)

The recipe is below – and in the video, I scaled down the recipe by half so I wouldn’t have quite as many cookies to eat.

Ginger Cookies or Ginger Snaps
By Laura Berreth

  • 1 cup (201g) sugar
  • 3/4 cup (143g) shortening
  • 1 egg (50g)
  • 1 cup (280) molasses, I use light
  • 2 tsp. soda
  • 1 tsp. ginger
  • a pinch of salt
  • 3 1/2 cups (420g) flour

Mix everything but the flour with a mixer, then add the flour and mix by hand, as it gets too thick for the mixer to handle.  Lightly form balls the size of a walnut, dip in sugar and put on a cookie sheet. 
Bake at 325 degrees about 13 minutes for a soft cookie like Mom used to make, also how I make them. If you bake them longer they will get hard, more like Ginger Snaps.

After baking these cookies, I’d have to say, they’re quite tasty. They are an acquired taste, however. You either love them or you don’t.
The cookies were soft in the middle and crunch on the sides right after baking. After sitting out, covered, for a few hours, they got more chewy.
If you’re not expecting that, it can be different. However, it is how I remember them when I had them at my grandma’s.

Baking Through History series:

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