Other Ways to Prepare Lefse
Many Americans of Norwegian descent make lefse with potatoes these days. However, in Norway, before the introduction of potatoes, many families used flour. Often, lefse is made with potatoes, flour, butter, and milk. There are many ways to make lefse and the following are each a different way to prepare the dish.
Eastern Norway
Tynnlefse
The first example I found was tynnlefse; a flour-based lefse that is most similar to what I grew up with. This tynnlefse is topped with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. Although, the lefse I am used to also uses potatoes for the base.
Mosbromlefse
The recipe for this results in a thin lefse made from a mixture of cheese, flour, sugar, and milk.
Central Norway
Tjukklefse or Tykklefse
This variation is made with eggs, sugar, syrup, salt, baking powder, vanilla sugar, kulturmelk (soured milk), and flour.
Western Norway
Hardanger lefse
The lefse with the name hardanger lefse can be made two different ways. One is with Kefir (fermented milk) milk, margarine, sugar, plain flour, salt; and the other is made with kefir (fermented milk) milk, butter, sugar, egg, baking soda, plain flour, and rye flour.
Nordlandlefse
This lefse is chunky and made with butter, syrup, sugar, eggs, and flour. This chunky lefse was given as a treat to Lofoten fishermen who came to Western Norway to trade fish.
Anislefse
This lefse is made with butter, milk, eggs salt, anis seeds, plain flour, butter, icing sugar, sour cream, and vanilla sugar. The thin lefse comes out stained due to the large amounts of aniseed deposited into the mixture.
Northern Norway
Krinalefse
This lefse is close to the lefse I grew up enjoying (without the presence of potatoes). It is made out of plain flour, milk, brown sugar, margarine, and salt.
As I researched all of these different ways to make lefse, I grew curious about how different they would all taste. Would the addition of ingredients change the taste in a noticeable or subtle way? There are so many different ways to make lefse, it becomes overwhelming looking at all of them. No two are exactly the same.