There are two ways to prepare spätzle. The first is the method handed down to me by my grandparents where the dough is prepared and then cut with a knife and dropped into boiling water. The second uses a spätzle machine, rather than a knife, to cut the dough into the “dumplings”. While the ingredients remain the same, to use the machine, the dough needs to be thinner and thus the amount of milk is doubled. The main differences are in the time to prepare and in the outcome. Preparing the hand-cut spätzle is more time consuming as each one needs to be cut, and quite often they stick to the knife which complicates things (dip the knife in the hot water to clean it off). The spätzle prepared using the hand-cut method tend to be larger and heavier.
Ingredients (hand-cut method):
- 1 cup flour
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Ingredients (machine method):
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Steps (hand-cut method):
- Mix ingredients together in a bowl. I use a Cuisinart food processor with a dough blade
- Roll dough into a ball, then flatten and cut into strips and then cut the strips into small pieces (about 1 cm square)
- Drop spätzle into a pot of simmering water.
- Cook until the float (about 5-8 minutes)
Steps (machine method):
- Mix ingredients together in a bowl with a whisk or wooden spoon.
- Pour dough into the machine
- With the machine placed over the pot of boiling water, drop the spätzle into the pot.
- Cook until the float (about 5-8 minutes)
Leftovers can be fried in butter.
