Käsespätzle

Ingredients

• Plain flour400 g
• Eggs4
• Water or milk150 ml
• Emmental or Bergkäse — grated250 g
• Onions — in thin rings3
• Butter60 g
• Nutmeg1 pinch
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Mix the flour, eggs, water, salt and nutmeg and beat the dough with a spoon for a good five minutes, until bubbles rise and it starts to string off the spoon.

   8 min

2. 2

   While the dough rests, fry the onion in butter over medium heat until deep gold. That is twenty minutes, not five — the sugars need the time to caramelise.

   20 min

3. 3

   Press the dough into boiling salted water through a spätzle grater or a wide-holed colander. They float within a minute; lift them out with a slotted spoon.

   10 min

4. 4

   Layer them into a warm dish: spätzle, cheese, spätzle, cheese. The heat of the noodles melts it; no oven is needed.

   3 min

5. 5

   Bury it under the fried onion and serve at once. The classic side is a green salad with a vinegar dressing, and it is a counterweight rather than a garnish.

About the dish

Spätzle are not pasta in the Italian sense: the dough is loose, closer to a thick batter, and it is pushed into boiling water rather than rolled. That is why the shapes are ragged, and the ragged edges are what the cheese catches on.

The dough has to be beaten until it blisters. It is the only physical work in the recipe and it cannot be skipped: an unbeaten dough gives dense rubbery spätzle instead of light ones.

Use a mature, sharp cheese — Emmental, Bergkäse or a mix. A young cheese gives stretch but no flavour, and here the flavour is entirely its job.

Worth knowing

• — The dough should slide slowly off a spoon. Too thick and it will not press through; too loose and it disperses in the water.
• — Cook the spätzle in batches. In a crowded pot they stick together before they even float.
• — Leftover spätzle are fried in butter the next day, and plenty of people think that is the better version.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

720 kcal

Protein

30 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

78 g

More from Germany

• Rinderrouladen — Thin slices of beef rolled around mustard, bacon and gherkin and braised until they give way.
• Sauerbraten — Beef steeped for days in a vinegar marinade and braised in it, with a gravy thickened on gingerbread.
• Swabian potato salad — Potato dressed in warm stock with vinegar and oil. No mayonnaise — southern Germany does not admit it here.