Spaetzle

Elizabeth N.

Herder of cats
Joined
Dec 30, 2013
Messages
2,198
Location
New Jersey
Ahhhh, the joys of food lovingly prepared from scratch with simple ingredients and TLC
grin.png
.

Okay, spaetzle are the very devil for anyone prone to death farts from carbs. Don't say I didn't warn you. I suspect they would cause mega dumping in the flour sensitive as well, and that they would sit like nuclear waste in the stomach of a bander or a fresh postop.

All of those caveats out of the way, here's how to make them:

You decide how many of the buggers to make. For four people, you figure a generous pound by weight of flour and five eggs. No clue how that measures in cups, so pull out your Weight Watchers scale and figure it out. It means one egg per 100 grams (3 oz.) of flour.

Plop the flour in a bowl. Add some salt. Do not skimp on the salt. Stir it good. Crack your eggs into a hole in the middle of the flour. Start stirring your eggs, breaking the yolks as you go, incorporating your flour a bit at a time.

Very soon you will see it's time to start adding water. Drizzle it in along the way and keep mixing. Continue this rather labor intensive process (well, unless you have a Kitchen Aid) until you have a batter that slowly glops off a spoon. Think of The Blob. That's about right.

Let your batter rest for half an hour or so. Then give it a stir and see if it's still The Blob. Adjust with a bit more water if needed.

Now comes the technique:

Boil up a nice big pot of water with some salt in it. No oil please.

Take a small cutting board, a spatula and a sharp straight edged knife. I generally use my 4" paring knife that looks like a miniature chef knife. Dip your cutting board in the water--use either the pot or a separate bowl of water. Keep your spatula and knife always wet as well. This is how you keep your batter from sticking to stuff.

Put a glob of batter on the wet board and spread it out with the spatula. Use your knife to cut thinnest possible strips of batter into the boiling water. Do not crowd the buggers in the water or you will have The Blob From Hell. Give them space to cook.

You will see that they cook quickly. They fall to the bottom of the pot and float to the top. When they reach the top, give them a few more seconds and they are done. Take them out and drain them dry on layers of clean CLOTH toweling. Do NOT use paper towels, for they will stick and all your work is for naught. As they get dry you can transfer them to a bowl in which you have placed a significant quanity of melted butter or bacon fat. If you just MUST use vegetable oil for this step, don't tell me about it, for I will cry.

Continue wetting, globbing, spreading, hacking, fishing, drying and transferring until you're done. And while you're bitching about all the work involved, remember that I will be doing this in proportions of ten pounds of flour and four dozen eggs this weekend and don't whine at me
tongue.png
. (Yes, I have help lined up. I anticipate having five or six spaetzle whackers involved.)

Remember all the butter or bacon fat? That's because spaetzle do not get served just boiled. That's gauche. Next step (which can be the next day): Get out big roomy pan/s. Add all the butter and/or bacon fat you can love. Add chopped onion and fry till wilted. Then add the spaetzle and fry away until there are lots of brown parts and everything is nicely greased and heated through.

This is where you'd throw in your precooked chopped bacon bits, right near the end, cuz they'll burn otherwise. When you're moving the spaetzle around in the pan, use pancake flippers and be careful not to break them any more than possible. This is aided by giving them lots of room. Don't overfill your pan. Cook in multiple pans or multiple batches or both, keeping them nice and warm in the oven. Remember all the caveats mentioned above when choosing how much to eat in your pigout!!

P.S. Make it meatless and divine: After all of this, put your spaetzele in a casserole dish, preferably nice and shallow layered. Shred a bunch of Gouda or Edamer cheese over it and run it under the broiler to melt and slightly brown the cheese.Voila! Mac and cheese the way German children adore it MMMMMMMM.
 
Last edited:
I love this stuff. Delicious! I don't make it often because it's too much work. Sometimes I cook them in broth instead of plain water but other than that we do it the same.
 
Yup, cooking in broth is yummy, too. Hmmm, we are sort of snowed in today. Maybe I'll spoil Mr. EN and make some to go along with the hunk-o-beef that's going in the oven in a clay pot.....
 

Latest posts

Back
Top