Pinzgauer Kasnockn

Snapshot

The Pinzgau’s own cheese dumpling dish, made with Pinzgauer Bierkäse and Almkäse from local alpine cattle, and served in the cast-iron pan it was cooked in. More assertive than the city version. Correctly eaten in a mountain hut.

The Story

Pinzgauer Kasnockn shares its technique with Kasnocken but not its cheese, and the cheese is what defines it. Pinzgauer Bierkäse is a washed-rind, semi-hard cheese made from the milk of Pinzgauer cattle, the local breed with the distinctive reddish-brown coat. The rind is treated with beer during maturation, which gives the cheese its characteristic sharpness and a pungent quality that softens when melted but never disappears. Pinzgauer Almkäse is the summer mountain cheese produced when the herds are on the high pastures, richer in fat and flavour than winter milk produces.

The dumplings, Nockerl, are made from the same egg-and-flour batter as the standard version, pressed through a sieve into boiling water and then pan-fried in clarified butter with onions. The cheese goes in last and is folded through the pan until a Printschn crust forms at the bottom. The pan arrives at the table. You eat from it directly, with a green salad alongside.

This is food that started in mountain huts feeding lumberjacks and dairymen and has remained most itself in that setting. The Pinzgau stretches from Zell am See west to Krimml, and nearly every mountain hut and Gasthof in that corridor has it on the menu. The versions in the valley towns are reliable. The versions above 1,500 metres, where the cheese comes from the farm down the slope, are better.

Where to try it

Mountain huts and Gasthöfe across the Pinzgau from Zell am See to Krimml are the natural setting. Any establishment displaying the orange “authentic hut” designation from Salzburger Land can be trusted to use the correct regional cheeses.