Chef Klaus
Bayerischer Wurstsalat
The Bavarian beer-garden salad that lives by the cut: thin sausage strips, raw onion, vinegar and oil, no cheese, rested long enough to taste like supper.
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Erdäpfelkäs (Kartoffelkäse)
Created by
The Lower Bavarian potato spread with no cheese in it at all: floury potatoes, sour cream, onion, caraway, and enough patience to keep it loose, cool, and clean.
Appetizers & Snacks
German
Budget Friendly
Make Ahead
Picnic
20 min
Active Time
25 min cook•1 hr 15 min total
Yield6 servings
Erdäpfelkäs belongs to Niederbayern, Lower Bavaria, and to the Brotzeit table, the cold bread-and-snack board you put down when nobody needs a show and everyone needs feeding. No cheese is hiding in it. It gets the name because the mashed potato and sour cream spread like a soft fresh cheese, which is a good enough joke for the south.
This is larder cooking. A few stored floury potatoes, an onion, sour cream, caraway, chives if the pot on the windowsill is alive. In Lower Bavaria and the Innviertel across the Austrian line, they say Erdäpfelkäs; elsewhere in Bavaria you hear Kartoffelkäse. Some cooks make it loose with cream, some sharper with quark, some nearly plain with only onion and caraway. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders. The north has its fish and rye; the south has this on rye bread with radishes and a beer beside it.
The whole dish turns on the potato. Boil floury potatoes in their skins, peel them hot, rice them hot, then let the steam leave before the sour cream goes in. Hot potato rices dry and fine; if you mash cold potato it goes lumpy, and if you beat it with dairy while it is steaming, the starch smears and the spread turns gluey. No blender. This is a fork dish, not a construction project.
Salt the onion lightly before it goes in. That pulls off the raw edge and draws out enough juice to season the potato instead of biting through it. Fold, taste, chill a little, and bring it back just cool before serving. Schön ist, was schmeckt.
Erdäpfelkäs is strongest in Lower Bavaria and neighboring Upper Austria, where the word Erdäpfel preserves the older southern name for potatoes. Potatoes became common in German-speaking kitchens only in the eighteenth century, helped by state pressure such as Frederick the Great's Prussian potato orders in the 1750s, though Bavaria and Austria kept their own regional names and preparations. The dish shows the thrift logic of the southern dairy-and-potato table: leftover or stored potatoes were turned into a spread for Brotzeit, not wasted.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
floury potatoes
Quantity
700g
scrubbed, skins on
sour cream
Quantity
150g
quark or full-fat Greek yogurt
Quantity
80g
yellow onion
Quantity
1 small
very finely minced
fine salt
Quantity
1 teaspoon
divided
caraway seeds
Quantity
1 teaspoon
lightly crushed
neutral oil or melted butter
Quantity
1 tablespoon
chives
Quantity
2 tablespoons
snipped, plus more for serving
black pepper
Quantity
to taste
freshly ground
milk or cream (optional)
Quantity
1 to 3 tablespoons
radishes, rye bread, and pickles (optional)
Quantity
to serve
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| floury potatoesscrubbed, skins on | 700g |
| sour cream | 150g |
| quark or full-fat Greek yogurt | 80g |
| yellow onionvery finely minced | 1 small |
| fine saltdivided | 1 teaspoon |
| caraway seedslightly crushed | 1 teaspoon |
| neutral oil or melted butter | 1 tablespoon |
| chivessnipped, plus more for serving | 2 tablespoons |
| black pepperfreshly ground | to taste |
| milk or cream (optional) | 1 to 3 tablespoons |
| radishes, rye bread, and pickles (optional) | to serve |
Equipment Needed
- •Potato ricer or sturdy masher
- •Medium saucepan
- •Wide mixing bowl
- •Fork or rubber spatula
Instructions
- 1
Boil the potatoes
Put the potatoes in cold salted water and bring them up gently, then simmer until a knife slides through the centre, about 20 to 25 minutes. Start them cold so the centres cook before the outsides split and soak up water. Watery potato makes a slack spread.
- 2
Rice them hot
Drain the potatoes, peel them as soon as you can hold them, and press them through a ricer into a wide bowl. Hot potato rices clean and dry; cold potato fights the ricer and leaves lumps. Spread it out and let the steam go for 15 to 20 minutes, because trapped steam turns to water in the bowl.
- 3
Tame the onion
Stir the minced onion with half the salt and leave it 10 minutes while the potato cools. The salt pulls out the sharp raw bite and gives you onion juice that seasons the potato all the way through. Nicht aus dem Glas. Onion powder has no business here.
- 4
Fold the spread
Fold the sour cream, quark, salted onion with its juice, caraway, oil or butter, chives, pepper, and the remaining salt into the cooled potato with a fork or spatula. Fold, don't beat. Beating breaks the starch and makes paste, and paste on bread is nobody's supper.
- 5
Rest and loosen
Cover and chill the spread for at least 30 minutes so the caraway and onion settle into the potato. If it tightens too much, fold in a spoon or two of milk or cream just before serving; potato drinks moisture as it sits, and you correct it at the end, not at the beginning.
- 6
Serve the Brotzeit
Spoon it into a shallow bowl, scatter with chives, and serve cool with rye bread, radishes, pickles, and a knife for spreading. Keep it cold if it travels to a picnic, and don't leave a dairy potato spread sitting in the sun. Weggeworfen wird nichts, but food safety still has a spine.
Chef Tips
- •Use floury potatoes, the kind that fall apart when boiled. Waxy potatoes stay slick and tight, so the spread never becomes soft enough for bread.
- •A potato ricer is the cleanest tool here. A masher works if you are patient, but a blender or food processor turns starch into glue.
- •Add raw onion the day you serve it. Overnight onion grows loud and sulfurous; for make-ahead, mix the potato and dairy first, then fold in onion and chives a few hours before the board goes out.
- •Serve with dark rye, radishes, pickles, and cold lager or a light wheat beer. The sour bread and sharp vegetables keep the potato from tasting flat.
Advance Preparation
- •Boil and rice the potatoes up to 1 day ahead, then cover and refrigerate. Let them sit 20 minutes at room temperature before mixing so the dairy folds in evenly.
- •The finished spread keeps refrigerated for 24 hours. For the best taste, add chives and a final spoon of dairy just before serving, because the potato firms as it rests.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 175g)
Calories
205 calories
Total Fat
10 g
Saturated Fat
5 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
5 g
Cholesterol
25 mg
Sodium
430 mg
Total Carbohydrates
23 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
4 g
Protein
5 g
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