How to Make Spätzle: A Schwabian Food Special

Our faculty here is awesome. Have I mentioned that? Since we have such a small class here in Reutlingen this year, our Art History professor invited us to his house for class one day. Furthermore, since his home is in Tübingen, and we missed our usual lunch break, Herr Springer also made us lunch.

 

It was delightful, and really delicious. (Who knew that a simple cucumber salad could be so good? It’s just cucumbers, cream, and vinegar, but it’s so refreshing.) And as an added bonus, we learned how to make Spätzle, traditional Schwabian (regional) egg noodles. The dough is fairly simple: eggs, flour, water. But, unlike regular egg noodles, the ratio of eggs to flour in Spätzle is really high. This makes the dough really, really sticky. It takes a special press to push it through the noodle maker, and even with the special tool, it’s a ton of effort. The dough is so sticky that instead of scraping the last bits of dough out of the mixing bowl, the dough peels off the side. Before being cooked, the dough is the consistency of epoxy or high grade industrial grout.

 

The noodles are pushed through the dough maker (there might be an official name for this, but I don’t know) and into an already boiling pot of water. They sink to the bottom, but when they finish cooking, they float, right up to the top. The cooked noodles are fished off with a strainer ladle and put into a glass pan.

 

Here’s the funny thing about Spätzle: it’s really like the Schwabian version of really good homemade mac and cheese. Once in the glass pan, the noodles are covered with grated cheese. Herr Springer also added bits of fried onion and ham. Then the Spätzle is baked for about a half hour, long enough that the cheese melts and the ham bits get crunchy. Then you eat it, in gratefulness to whomever came up with the brilliant idea to melt cheese on noodles.

 

Spätzle is a Schwabian specialty, and restaurants all over Baden-Würtemberg and the other southern German state, Bavaria serve it. Still, the best Spätzle is homemade Spätzle.