Learn how to make a Spätzle/Spaetzle Recipe! Visit foodwishes.blog... for the ingredients, more information, and many, many more video recipes. I hope you enjoy this fast and easy Spätzle/Spaetzle recipe!
I dated a German girl for 8 years and she used to make this from the recipe her Grandma gave her and my GF's Mum used to make for me when I visited Germany - that was 10 years ago and I'd forgotten how much I liked it until I made it to this recipe after seeing it on Food Wishes and it's pretty much spot on. Chef John #Legend
As someone who comes from the region where Spätzle were invented, I gotta say you nailed this recipe. Except for the cayenne, but hey. You are the Jesse Pinkman of the cooking world, so that's your signature ingredient. A tip, Spätzle is amazing with copious amounts of cheese (Kässpätzle - basically made like Mac n Cheese) and caramellized onions.
I think I just felt my taste buds twitch. In a fantastic way, of course. This with cheese and onions? Yes, please! Maybe even with a cheddar and beer sauce! I think that would not only compliment the onions, but taste absolutely divine!
German here. Small things i learned from my mother: There are 3 types of spätzle that im aware of. 1. Small ones like yours called knepfle or knöpfle done with a Spätzlehobel 2. Long, thin and irregular done with a special board (Spätzlebrett) on which you cut the dough directly into the water 3. Long and thicker ones that are pressed with something kinda like a potato press (might actually work :D) called a Spätzleschwob The consistency of dough you need depends on the method of making the Spätzle. In my opinion the thicker the dough the better but with a very thick dough you can only use method number 2 which is def. the most time consuming. method number 3 is a great compromise. When it comes to dishes: As a side dish as is. pour some sauce or gravy on those bad boys and enjoy. prefered method would be number 2 as a side dish with browned butter like in the video (little tip even more butter and some breadcrumbs make them very nutty and delicious).This works well for ones you froze. Pref. method nr. 3 Käsespätzle (cheese-spätzle) a dish on its own. molten cheese (has to be good cheese), spätzle, crispy onions do i have to say more? any method you want. And here are some tips for your spätzle-making journey : Use a slightly courser grind of flour if possible (the dough is thicker without beeing even stickier than it already is) there is special Spätzle-flour but i think thats hard to find outside of germany You dont need yogurt or creme fraiche they just need some water (some people dont even use water and just use flour, eggs and salt) Never do small batches of dough. way too much work... especially bc they freeze very well. But do do small batches in the water itself or they'll stick together A rolling boil could destroy them so just stir/swirl the water before dropping them in They are done when they float to the top Have a second pot with cold water next to your boiling pot to transfer them to, the cold water stops the cooking and they loose the starch-coating and wont clump afterwards. thats very important if you want to freeze them.
@@fritzboxtdeinemutter194 thats not gonna be horrible. They wont be as firm.. but hey we arent italien we wont throw a fit if someone slightly changes german recipes
@@fritzboxtdeinemutter194 honestly theres probably a neighbor of hers with a way worse spätzle recipe than chef johns... I live in munich now and what they sell as Käsespätzle over here is a crime and way worse than some creme fresh in the dough
@@BischKing sell? And you buy something so easy to make? My 1st batch was a basic fresh pasta forced through a cheap plastic colander. BTW, it was commented on favorably by the sous chef of a 3 star restaurant. So, next time you are at the store, see if they have flour, salt, and eggs. And a cheap plastic colander. You're welcome. Bon Appetit Y'all.
As someone who comes from the region where Spätzle were invented and I made them a lot: Spätlze are made just by 1 egg per 100gramm flour. and a little water. That's it! Put them in saltet water to boil until they float on the top. then they're done. Small ones like you made are called "Knöpfle" means little buttons. longer ones are spätzle. which ones you make depends on the amount of water you put in. the more liquid the batter, the longer they get. greetings from a swabian
" Spätlze are made just by 1 egg per 100gramm flour. and a little water." No. there is not "the" spätzle recipe. basically every grandma has her own. Some use 1egg per 100gramm flour, some use 1 egg per 50 gramm flour. Some use all full egg, some add extra egg yolk. It's like with any kind of pasta. flour + liquid, and spätzle are just nudels with an amound of extra liquid.
I made this for dinner tonigjt and my wife loved it. Too bad I'm sleeping on the couch tonight because I did his intonation all evening and my wife can't stand my voice.
My mother-in-law who was from Switzerland taught me how to make Spaetzle. I love allowing it to cool a bit on a sheet pan and then into the frying pan with some butter. So yummy. She added a bit of cream of wheat and Freshly ground nutmeg in her recipe. The kids always liked theirs with cheese. Precious memories. I treasure her pan to this day. God rest her soul
Its the best version of Mac&Cheese out there. The stuff that makes it so amazing is the alpine mountain cheeses from Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Unbeatable and no one can recreate it accuratly outside of the Alpine region :)
@@timmteller871 I was born and raised in Germany.....Tonight I am actually making Kässpätzle and Bratwurst for dinner. I found this because I was curious if there are Americans attempting to make Kässpätzle and found this. I love Chef John and food wishes. Meine Mama and me always watched him together. He has a great voice to listen to. But boy I MISS REAL GERMAN Kässpätzle ....cheeses in American stores can be very lackluster of choices.
Same. I come from Oberschwaben, very close to the Alps. We actually have a traditional (Käs) spätzle rezept in our family :) I watch Chef John because hes a good cook :D
@@kirbyculp3449 why havent they done a collaboration? Is it because they cant decide on a nutmeg centric dish vs a cayenne flavored meal and cant compromise? I need to seem them work together on a recipe
Nice. In Hungary we have a very similar one. We call it "nokedli". It has loads of ways to make it but the method is the same. We serve it with stews or eggs. It's the fastest side dish ever. Love it.
My trick is I put the batter in a ziplock bag and cut a corner bottom end off slightly. Then use it as a pastry bag and squirt it in to the boiling water. A lot easier!
Major Havok my mom used to mix them on plate then let it slide off the plate and shave it off into the boiling water with a knife. She learned from her aunt who came from Stuttgart.
This winter I did make this recipe with the cider braised pork shoulder. It was a great pairing. I was surprised at how much I liked the spaetzle. I think it’d make a wonderful chicken and dumplings also.
Julie Dennitts-See, and I thought I was the only one. Sounds like he’s gasping for air by the end of each sentence. Not sure if that’s called inflection, but it’s certainly odd.
You are continuously in mid sentence tone with commas, rarely hitting the lower tones heard to notify the end of the sentence. My heart is elevated the whole time and you won't stop squeezing it with your vice grip. I'm going to die.
I made this last night for my fiancé and his brothers and they loved it and were very impressed. They're German and we were in Germany last Oktoberfest and they said it was the real deal :) I was very proud. Thanks chef!
@Chef John / Food Wishes I'm German and these are actually "Knöpfle" which translates to "small buttons", they originally come from Schwaben, one of the seven Parts of Bavaria (I'm living there). It's called buttons because one end turns blunt when the dough-drop hits the surface of the water, while the other end remains pointy. For real Spätzle you need a narrow and wet board where you spread on a thin layer of dough. Then you need some sort of spatula shaped like a butter-knive or a dough-card to scrape of small shavings of that dough right into the boiling water. ....there you are, otherwise you are always doing a great job and sorry for my broken english :)
Yes käsespätzle ! This is my favorite dish, ever since I was a young child. The memories this brings back of going on holidays to Germany, Austria and Swiss. They make this dish in different countries and regions, not just Germany. None of them add cayenne, their loss. Just when I thought I couldn't love this channel more. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Thank you so much, Chef John!
Ah Chef, we love you! Yes, your pronunciation made me hide under the table. But your execution was actually pretty damn near perfect. Your sense of humour and the fact you don't take yourself too serious makes each video you make an absolute joy to watch. I am so happy to have found this channel.
"I would make these even if they were hard and complicated"....I have made these every holiday but did not do the butter step. I can hardly wait to do so....I cannot tell you how much I love your channel...the expert advice, the happy chef, the lighthearted humor, the excellent tutorials...thank you soooo much.
A great recipe for a great dish! I've been making these since I was first introduced to them in high school (ahem…45 years ago) at a dinner put on by my German language teacher/class. There are spätzle presses you can buy-get an all metal one if you do-which work more or less wonderfully for making the right size/shape of noodle, but of course the old school version has you plop several spoonfuls down on a small, wetted wooden cutting board and scrape-say with the edge end of a large spatula-little 'rolls' of batter directly into the boiling water. Another 'you surely already have this implement in your kitchen' which works well is a standard box grater…holding the grater by its handle sideways, and with the largest holes facing DOWN toward the water, you put several spoonfuls of batter inside the grater (over the boiling water) and then scrape the batter into the water using a spatula inserted into the grater through its bottom 'end.' The results are teardrop shapes very comparable to Chef John's flat grater results. Some tips from experience: 1. Spätzle are one recipe where not a tiny but even a GENEROUS grating of fresh nutmeg added to the batter is a wonderful addition. 2. If your spätzle tend to come out a little too dense/heavy, then add (something like) 1/8th Teaspoon of baking powder to the batter to make them slightly lighter. It doesn't take much. 3. Fresh out of the boiling water, spätzle are a bit larger (due to being water-logged) than they will end up being once drained. So some shrinkage is normal. 4. When in doubt, mix the batter EXTRA WELL and, if possible, at least 15-20 minutes before the dumplings are cooked. Extra mixing and/or waiting time allows the gluten to develop better. 5. The tinier the spätzle are, the better. All of us will manage to drop a honking, too-big glob of batter into the water from time to time, and to my taste the gi-normous dumplings which result don't taste quite as good as the littler ones do. So get/keep 'em all as small as possible. 6. The cooking water doesn't have to be at a rolling boil, and a near-boil is actually fine. If you like to cook these dumplings at a rolling boil and have a lot to make, keep a glass of cold water handy to replenish the pot water from time to time and to moderate the heavy boil at times when the pot is full of dumplings and is more likely to boil over (because a layer of floating dumplings helps retain the heat in the pot). 7. AIM your dumplings into the pot as well as you can. Any batter that drips onto the side of the pan (either inside or outside) or which falls onto the burner below is of course a lost cause. 8. Some recognition, acquired over time by experience, of what is a proper batter consistency is really necessary because the size of eggs can vary and will affect how moist the batter ends up being (i.e., two medium eggs will make a less moist batter than will two jumbo eggs). If in doubt about egg-to-flour ratio due to the varying size of eggs, I would recommend erring on the side of using an additional egg. 9. Black or white pepper, in addition to a modest amount of salt, is a nice addition to the batter as well. Spätzle cooked in salted cooking water are better than if cooked in plain water, but be careful to not overdo it when you salt the water. 10. Spätzle are a nice substitute for potatoes or pasta, and they go well with almost any roast meat/gravy meal. I've even made my own homemade ground turkey breakfast sausage and eaten that over spätzle. (Brown the broken-up sausage in butter and/or oil, add a couple Tablespoons of flour to make a roux, add milk to make a sawmill-style gravy, perhaps add a dollop of sour cream, then season with salt, pepper, and thyme and serve over the dumplings.)
I live in Stuttgart which is the Spätzle capital of Germany. Your recipe is great and while the idea of using a cheese grater is ingenious, the resulting noodles are more like what we call Knöple (which means little buttons) since they are rather on the dumplings side. They are still authentic and very good. Spätzle are usually thinner and traditionally they're made with a special wooden board and a flat knife by spreading the dough on the board and then scraping the dough into boiling water with the knife. If you're interested in how they're made, search for Making of Spätzle here in RU-vid. It's a short video of an older woman showing someone how it's done.
I do live in Tangstedt, near to Pinneberg. Not really southern, lol! Wanna second you: a great recipe. Very well explained! And about the others: you'll always find one who says: "Well: that's not the way we do it at home." Poor creatures. I thank you for your comment and insight. Why are we here and watch this? To learn from each other ! (John Quilter, aka Foodbusker) gave me credits for this statement. And he's a pro chef.
@@peterdoe2617 yep, that's because we really don't do it like that in southern Germany. Nothing wrong with comments like that, constructive criticism is part of life.
Best use of späztle I remember was in Austria. It was pan friend in brown butter, just like with Chef John, and then served underneath a hugely robust venison stew. It was just heavenly. Not so much into venison anymore, but with a beef stew, or even something wildly different like split-pea soup, they are so delicious.
When my life looks dark and I don't see any reason in doing anything or achieving anything in life, I go on youtube and watch this man's videos. Chef John, you're what gets me up in the morning. You're the voice of God (or some other higher power). I'm sure of it
He mentioned it in older videos; it's not about tasting the cayenne, but the very slight amount of spice opens your taste buds so you taste the other flavours a bit better .
Hi, i am from germany and i like your videos a lot. Your Spätzle how you made it, is called "Knöpfle" means little buttons. Standard Spätzle are longer in shape.
Those are nice looking Spätzle/Knöpfle you made! A original swabian spätzledough uses even simpler ingredients, just flour, eggs, water and salt. The dough is normally firmer so you can prepare it the traditional way by scraping it from the board (but only swabian grandmas have perfected this technique). I would love to see you take on more german food!
I had a family member that recently passed that was an absolute expert at making spatzle. Most delicious noodles ever. With a little bit of salt, they’re seriously so addicting.
This is about the fifth version of Spaetzle I've watched and love to watch all the tools used to form them. My Mom used to roll bits between her hands to get the noodle shape, then I've watched it with the wooden paddle and knife, two different gadgets that were bought, and now this upside-down grater. This seems like the simplest version and I have one of those graters already. I use this recipe and had formed them with a knife and thin cutting board (replacing Cayenne with freshly ground white pepper and omitting the sour cream/yoghurt addition too). Most recipes use water instead of milk. I will make these when I need some quick comfort food soup in a big mug. I usually make a few crepes, roll them up, and slice one across the roll to form thin noodles. I cheat and use some Oxo beef flavoring powder in a mug of boiling water and then add some crepe or spaetzle noodles. Thanks for sharing your technique.
Actually in Germany, we almost never eat these without some kind of sauce. Most of the time some standard meat sauce, but almost never dry. :) Nice video!
I love the variety you give us!! I had this in Germany a long time ago, and this brings memories back and a new recipe to discover! Thank you chef, keep it up!
Oh, yeah! Winter is coming! We LOVE spaetzle. I usually make a big batch and serve it with rouladen or kassler rippchen. Schnitzel is also good! Gotta find my spaetzle presse now and do a grocery shop! Great idea, Chef John! ❤️
Oh, no. You don't need a presse. I happen to have one and it's easier with a presse, but you can just do it the way Chef John did. You can also press the dough through the bottom of a colander or other item that has smallish holes.
It's also possible to use one of those steaming pots with holes in the bottom. Really anything with holes works lol. A presse is the easiest and most efficient way but it's also something you can only use for one task, which is why almost nobody owns one of them.
Hey, Chef John, my Food Wish is Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup. There used to be an Asian restaurant where I live that had it and it's one of my all-time favorite dishes. Sadly it closed down and was replaced with an Indian restaurant. I like Indian food but there was already a number of Indian restaurants in my town. I've never been able to find Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup since.
My father would put two to eight eggs, the more eggs the more yellow your Spätzle gets. And of course he used much more flour in order to make a large batch in order to make lunch the next day, which consisted of Spätzle, onions, eggs, and chopped bacon. It was so good!
My brother spent a month in Germany in high school, his host family taught him to make spaetzle, he layered the dumplings with cheddar cheese and black pepper, so rich but so good!! Thank you for this quick recipe, Ive been craving spaetzle for years!!💕
I love it when my mom cooks up some homemade Spätzle, especially when she "roasts" them in the pan for a bit so that theyre nice and tender / soft but with a thin and crunchy outer layer
Spatzle pronunciation: Sh-petz-le "Sh" - like a librarian, but not as long (sh, not shhhhhhhh!) "Petz" - like more than one animal companion. "Le" - as you would say "Let it be" but without the T (and the "it be" )
Chef John never disappoints me - As a German i must say, you did very, very well and made this dish quite accurate (apart of the Cayenne - But hey.. You would`nt be Chef John without that signature). I love to eat Spätzle with Mushroom Ragout or a good beef stew. We get them as good instant products here, but now i`m gonna make them just like you did!
hmm, I am not an expert and there is a discussion about it in Germany (only outside Swabia I think) too but in my opinion you made "Knöpfle" not Spätzle. Spätzle are cut with a blunt knife or something comparable from a cutting board directly into the water, but very tasty are Spätzle as well as Knöpfle. PS: as a German student of law I think cayenne in Spätzle dough is quite illegal ;-)
I am not German, but I have had "Spätzle" many times here in the States. This is how one would normally get it at a restaurant. But in any case, it shows off the wonderful food of Germany, even if it is Americanized.
Yes. The classic version - typically served in places like mountain huts - uses cheese, onions and chives. I have never seen cayenne, but pepper is used.
@Ratko Cevapic thank you for the lesson in history and tradition you gave me, but please be so kind and just read the wikipedia article about "Spätzle". After this we can continue to discuss. Furthermore I think the is no wrong or right - just a modern and a more traditional way doing it.
My Slovak grandmother taught me how to make haluski, which are very similar. The dough consists of just flour, egg, a little salt, and milk, and is thicker, not liquid. It is put on a wet, hand held cutting board, and sliced off in little bits into the boiling water. It can be served many ways. The simplest is just to fry some bacon, toss the haluski in the fat, and crumble the crisp bacon on it. It is also served with the rich sweet cream gravy in traditional Slovak style chicken paprikash.
Beautiful! It's different from a german spatzle with the milk and creme fraiche but they look great! We can buy 'spaetzle flour' in the supermarket Joe from Germany
Have you made any videos on steel cut oats? I feel like you'd make them decadent and hearty. Now that it's fall I'm craving something warm for breakfast that isn't instant.
I sometimes make a savory oatmeal suitable for lunch or a light supper, with Italian sausage meat and a quick tomato sauce (can of tomatoes, squeeze of tomato paste, sauteed onions, garlic, basil, oregano, just a pinch of cloves, red wine). Cook the oats in chicken stock with a bay leaf or 2 added and maybe some diced sun-dried tomatoes thrown in. Cook the meat, breaking up into small pieces, use the fat to start the sautee for the sauce, then when the oatmeal is done add the meat into it. (Remove the bay leaf, of course.) Serve the oatmeal on the bottom, sauce on top, sprinkle with FRESHLY grated Parmesan (the real stuff), then garnish with sliced cherry tomatoes (that you've cooked until just heated through) and fresh basil leaves.
I make a much simplified savory version with any stock, frozen corn and peas, S&P, then crack an egg and scramble it or leave it cooked whole. Delicious!
Dear Chef...omg..I made this yesterday for the hubby with braised short ribs..it Was OUT OF THIS WORLD!!! And so easy....I used gluten free wheat flour, Greek yougart, goats milk,perfection..however my cheese thing did not work lol so thank goodness for zip lock bags... I mean easy and so good. ...our new favorite...will try and upload a pick to you
I made your Cider Braised Pork on Wednesday, and I'm going home to make this tonight. The pork is the best. I can hardly wait to pair it with this. You make me feel like I can cook!
My Aunt used to make this when I was a child, but she sprinkled cinnamon on it. We usually ate this with pork chops, but occasionally she would make some and add it to her home-made cream of potato soup. I lived with my Aunt and Uncle on their farm and she made everything from scratch. For the longest time I thought you could only get things like flour, salt, sugar and stuff like that from the grocery store. I never set foot inside a grocery store until I was 10 years old. They had 4 children of their own and we could have gone shopping with her, but we had to be on on Sunday *Church* behaviour, or we could stay home and play outside. I always opted to stay home so I could play outside. I'm 60 now and I still make her recipes and I try to get farm grown produce to make them taste like hers.
In Slovakia we make these kind of pasta consists of raw mixed potatoes flour and water if needed and salt. Than we cook it same way. But instead of butter we add some melted bacon cubes and our national cheese called bryndza. In some occasions you can add on top of it sour cream and baked smoked paprika sausage similar to chorizo. We called it halusky (pasta) s bryndzou or bryndzove halusky Edit: Its considered as our national food, also only Slovakian people make bryndza.
I'm a Norwegian cook. In 1978 I learned how to make spätzle in Hotel Engel, Listal , Suisse! Especially now in the fall, the Spätzle is important as an accompaniment to game dishes In Norway this is a unknow dish. Love the Spätzle
Thanks for uploading. I followed your recipe, and they came out great. I never would have thought of the cheese grater to get just the right knotted shape. They reminded me a little bit of the gnochi Italian potato dumplings.
Lol. His constant and consistent inflections were both mesmerizing and annoying at the same time. That said I'm gonna make these this week. I used some dried ones from the market and cooked them in chicken broth and finished with butter and a little black pepper. Can't wait to compare to fresh.... Dang! Hungry again
It has developed over time. Watch his videos from 10 years ago and it isn't there. Or watch his interview video done by the world's most conceited interviewer from a few years ago and it isn't there. Whether it is intentional, or just a subconscious shift over time, it is interesting to watch it develop. Wonder where it will be in another 10 years.
I made it this way and love it!! ❤ my method was cutting bits of batter from a cutting board into the boiling water, as that's what I had on hand (and saw a couple people do). Pasta just became bigger. I swear you can just drizzle the batter in the pot from a spoon and it would still turn out perfect. Thank you!! ❤
John I Made these Saturday and I’m doubling it and making again. So delicious. I sautéed soy chorizo and some peppers then added the spaetzel. Finished it off with a poached egg. Unbelievable good. Thanks for bringing back to mind my ex mil’s recipe. Now I wish I hadn’t tossed out my old spaetzel maker.
Very suprising to see a recipe for Spätzle here. I prefere to make them with 500 g flour, 5 eggs, 150 ml water and about 20 g of salt. Works fine, too. The water should be very salty and boiling with a lot of bubbles and none of them will be sticking to the bottom. They freeze easily thats why I like to make a big batch.
Well, nice recipe but not quite Schwäbische Spätzle. They only include flour, eggs and sparkling water, no salt or dairy. Salt is only used in the cooking water. It is about one egg and 1-2 tbs of water for every 3.5 oz of flour. If you make a lot of it add an egg for every four eggs. Beat it with a wooden spoon until thick bubbles form and enjoy the upper arm workout while doing it. Let it sit for while and check again for consistency. The water in the video was boiling just right, it should be more of a simmer, not a boil. If you use your grater they are technically called Knöpfle but they taste the same as Spätzle.
My house mate used to make this when I lived in Austria, long time ago now. He didn't use cream fresh and it was really tasty. He would prepare it with fried onions shopped into rings with melted cheese and black pepper. I'm going to make it right now. Thanks for reminding me of it. Great stuff!
My grandpa used to make this and I had no clue. Saw him make it up close once and he did it so fast I didn't get the process or ingredients. Came across this on accident and now I have a new thing to master.
im glad you did this recipe, i tried looking it up once before and the recipe boiled down to "buy a bag of spatzle mix at the store, turn it into dough, use your special spatzle grater, then boil" which is great if you live in Germany but not so useful for the rest of the planet. The video actually had a big fancy thing that looked like a restaurant grade mandolin specifically for spatzle. I actually experimented with the cheese grater method but used the grating side and it shredded little bits of dough isntead of the little chunks you need.
The other guys had it right. "spaetzle" ultimately goes back to PIE *spḗr, meaning sparrow. Spatula goes back to *sph₂-dʰ-, which also spawned "spear".
I don't think so. Originally Spätzle aren't made using a spatula and something with holes, but a wooden plank and a knife. But you need some time to master the skill of cutting Spätzle, sooo ...
Nice to see that people from other countries around the world appreciate these classic German recipes. First of all, I have to commend you because I think yours looked pretty great, but as someone who grew up eating these all the time when I visited my grandparents and occasinally helping my grandma with the cooking I'd say that the batter was still a bit too thin maybe. At least for the real og Swabian technic of placing the batter on a wooden cutting board and then scraping the Spätzle off one by one with a scrapig tool. Which by the way you really should use because if done right, it produces nice, lengthy, evenly thick Spätzle. But of course its a bit more labour-intensive.
Instead of a cheese grater you could have also used a cutting board and a dough scraper to make the Spätzle. This is actually the traditional technique and preferred a lot of grandmas around Germany. In fact they usually frown upon more sophisticated Spätzle making devices.
My Hungarian grandmother made her version (nokedli) of this batter recipe in exactly the same way...same consistency. Instead of using any implement to force batter through, she'd place it on a wooden board, wet a knife, section off a ribbon of batter, and scrape small cuts of the ribbon into the water. It made for larger, fluffier and less stringy 'noodles'...best thing ever under chicken paprikas (or on their own). Nice video!!!
I love that you eyeball things as opposed to giving exact measurements... Shows that cooking is an art!! Plus, your rhymes/puns are funny. Makes it fun and not so intimidating!!!
Traditionally, a special wooden-board (one that has a thinning edge) and a large knife were used to form Spätzle; unfortunately, only a few people still master this technique. Anyone who's interested in seeing how Spätzle were made "back in the day," here's a link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--Y6Ga9hMm4Y.html Just FYI. : )
I'm not sure I'd agree with you that they are "better." Just different. And traditionally, Spätzle are longer. Plus, the Spätzle that Chef John is getting out of the grater are not in any way "uniform;" nor are they supposed to be.
Thank you shotJohnny, that old lady really nailed the traditional method of making Spätzle. I haven't seen them done this way since my Grandpa passed away, and that was 30 years ago.
My German grandma used to make Spatzle by holding the bowl with the mix, over the boiling water, slowly tipping the bowl up as if the mix was going to drop into the water, but 'slice' the mix with a knife. Really really fast. So fast it was a blur! I can taste it now 40 years later. Wish i had the recipe for the sauce she made but sadly it was all in her head and she never wrote any of her recipes.
Yes, chef, this is definitely a food wish of mine. My only question now is, do you have a good recipe for sauerbraten? My grandmother used to love it, and since she's passed, I'd love to make myself some to feel closer to her.
Solstice Hannan Hi there! I'm not Chef John unfortunately, but I _am_ German with a grandma who makes a _killer_ Sauerbraten. You need: - about 1kg of beef top side - 2 onions - 1 leek - parsely - 1 carrot - 1 chunk of root celery - 5 Juniperberries - 15 black pepper corns - 5 allspice corns - 2 cloves - 1 bayleaf - 250 ml red wine or white wine vinegar - 375 ml water or red wine (please use something drinkable) - vegetable oil - freshly ground pepper - salt - a tiny bit of sugar - optional mustard - and if you can buy it somewhere close to you: 50g of Pumpernickel. It's a really dark, heavy rye bread, google it so you know what to look for. If you can't buy Pumpernickel try it with Ginger Snaps. Sauerbraten can work with a lot of stuff, I'm sure it works with Ginger snaps too. Alright, now how to prepare it: 1. Dry your meat with some paper towel. 2. Now we're gonna marinate our meat. Peel the onions and cut them into slices. Now peel your carrot and your celery root and cut them into small pieces. The next thing is mixing your onions, cut leeks, carrots, celery root, parsley, juniper berries, pepper corns, the cloves, the allspice, the bayleaves, your vinegar and your water/wine in a big bowl. Cover your bowl with a lid or plastic wrap and let it rest in your fridge for 2 days while turning it over occasionaly. 3. Take the meat out of the marinade and pat it dry with some paper towel. Now strain your marinade and reserve 350-450ml of liquid and the vegetables. Set the marinade and the vegetables aside. 4. Heat some vegetable oil in a large pot. At this point you can apply some mustard to your meat, but it's optional, not even my grandma does it everytime (although I really like it). Brown your meat on all sides and salt and pepper it. Now add your strained vegetables and roast them with your meat for a few minutes. Also add some of your reserved marinade. Cover with a lid and let it stew/braise (sorry i don't know which word to use) for 30 minutes on medium high heat with the lid on. Turn it over from time to time and replace evaporating liquid with your marinade. 5. Finely shred your Pumpernickel/Ginger Snaps/whatever you have as a substitute and add it to your meat. Let it braise/stew for another one and a half hours as described in point 4 (turning over and replacing liquid). 6. Now you're almost done! Cover your meat and let it rest for 10 minutes. Cut it into slices on a warmed plate. Strain the leftover liquid with the vegetables in your pot once again and reduce it with medium-high heat. Season your sauce with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. If it's too thin, either reduce the sauce more or thicken it with a little bit of starch. Voilà! You're done. Sauerbraten is super good with Spätzle, a more traditional way of serving it is with Klöße :) I hope this helps you a little bit, good luck!
Solstice Hannan 75 W Elm St, Chicago, IL 60610, USA Treasure Island. At least they had canned Pumpernickel 26 years ago. Best "Food Wishes" to Chicago from Germany 🇩🇪!
Solstice Hannan Pumpernickel makes the sauce a little bitter. Gingerbread or Gingersnaps are way better. Put not to many of them in a foodprocessor and cut them as small as breadcrumbs. Add to the sauce. It will thicken the sauce at the same time.
There's a wonderful German butcher/restaurant in Richmond Virginia called Metzger's that makes a mushroom spatzle that's out of this world. They do saute it a bit more aggressively, until a few of the pieces have some browning on them, and mix in some sautéed mushrooms. That, under a piece of slow-cooked meat, or a super-crispy pork schnitzel, is just phenomenal.