So let’s get the obvious questions out of the way first.
Answer: About ten different ways, and we’re going to use as many of them as possible in this post, because they’re all correct.
Answer: When it doesn’t end in an “e”, SHPAYT-zl’. When it ends in an “i”: More or less like SHPAYT-zlee.
Answer: Good question. No one’s really sure. The word may be related to an old central-European dialect word for sparrow, with the diminutive suffix “-li” tacked on, the idea being that spaetzli looked like cute little sparrows somehow. (But then that suffix gets tacked onto practically everything in some regions. We’re looking at you, Switzerland.)
Answer: Another good question, as it’s hard to find the right word to most accurately translate their German-dialect name into English. “Dumpling” isn’t quite right, though spatzli do sometimes wind up in soups and stews. But in terms of how they’re made and what they’re made of, spaetzli are more like fresh pasta than anything else. In fact, you’ll find various recipe sources that translate spätzle as “noodles.”
But this works only for certain kinds of spaetzli. as there’s a lot of variation in spaetzle shapes. (And methods of making them, but we’ll get to that momentarily.)
Answer: Absolutely. These are really good once you get the hang of them.
Spaetzli are simple at heart. They’re made of a batter of flour, eggs and water or milk — sometimes other ingredients get in there as well, mostly seasonings — dropped into boiling water until they’re cooked: about three minutes, if it even takes that long. They bob up to the top of the water when they’re done. Then they’re scooped out and drained, and either tossed with butter and served as a side dish, or treated in other interesting and yummy ways. The shape and size and consistency of the spätzle depend on how thick the batter is and what tool or method you use to shape them when they go into the boiling water. Some of the methods are very old fashioned: some are relatively modern. But regardless, when well made, spätzli are one of the best side dishes in all of Central European cooking, and worth the effort to make — right up there with the other great fresh pastas of the Continent. And in German, Swiss and Austrian cooking, they are also the foundation on which numerous other great dishes are built.
The tool this article’s recipe is designed for is called a spaetzlehöbel. (Yes, there are eight other ways to spell this word too. Let’s not get started with those right now.) The spaetzlehöbel is like a very wide-holed grater with a little sliding hopper on top. You fill the hopper with batter and slide it back and forth over the holes, and the batter drips down through the holes into the boiling water. On a good höbel, the holes have little prongs jutting into the underside that help the batter drip properly into the boiling water beneath.
This tool calls for a moderately thick batter, which the movement of the hopper (with its shaped flanges) presses down into the boiling water.
…Anyway. Most of us who’re making spaetzli only infrequently or casually are likely to fall back on simpler means, like putting the batter through a wide-holed colander or strainer, or pushing it through a potato ricer. (If you’re using a ricer, please see our ricer-specific batter recipe.) Since different types of equipment call for different consistencies of batter, it’s smart to start out with a batter thicker than you need, test it, and then thin it out little by little with water until it’s behaving properly.
You should also know right off the bat that there is no perfect shape for spaetzli. Sometimes you get long noodly shapes: sometimes you get little teardrops or short straightish lengths. It doesn’t matter. It all depends on the thickness of the batter and the depth of the pot, the length of the spaetzli when you drop them in the water, the height you dropped them from… Don’t obsess because they didn’t come out like some picture you saw. The people responsible for those pictures probably had to try ten or twenty times to get them to look like that.
Meanwhile, please see the “recipe” tab above for ingredients and directions.
*This question is assumed to include the questions “What does spätzle mean”, “What does spaetzle mean?”, and “What does spaetzli mean?”. Seriously, we’re just doing this so people can find the recipe more easily when they search for it.
** Or “What are spätzli“, or “What are spaetzle,” or “What are spaetzli“. Or spatzle. Whatever! It’d be great if everybody would settle on a single spelling. World Peace would be nice, too.
They’re also called knöpfli in some places (mostly Switzerland): “little buttons”.
The Swabians in southern Germany claim that only they are truly making spätzli: everybody else is making knöpfli. When DD hears this kind of thing starting up, she has a tendency to start looking for the nearest exit.
Another tool is the spaetzlebrett, a specialized board that you put your spaetzle dough onto and use the board’s tapered far edge to assist you in scraping off bits or noodle-like strips of dough into the boiling water.
There are a lot of variations on this theme out there, some quite prosaic (as below) and some—like ergonomic ones—that either make sense or don’t, depending on how often you make spaezli.
The spaetzlebrett is even more specialized than the spaetzlehöbel, and not that easily found from sellers outside of Europe. (Though you can order them here and there on the Web. We’ll put some links in the sidebar for those who might be interested.)
Finally, a simpler tool generally goes by the name SpaetzleWunder, after its “trope namer.” It goes on the top of your pot, you spoon some batter into it, and then use a scraper to press the batter through the holes. These are all over the place online, in many shapes and sizes. Here’s a YouTube video that shows how they’re used.
(And finally a bit of disclosure: though I have [and use] a spaezlihöbel which is a cherished gift from a UK SF fan, I also have a favorite Fast Spaetzli Machine that I acquired from that well-known Swiss cottage-industry cookbook and gadget firm, Betty Bossi. The thing stands out as one of the relatively few ways to make spaetzli that doesn’t make a mess. There’s a video below.)
This recipe makes two hopperfulls of batter for the average spaetzlehoebel. If you want only one hopperfull, halve the recipe.
Whisk the flour, salt and nutmeg together in a bowl.
In another bowl, beat the eggs and 1/4 cup of the water together well.
Pour eggs and 1/4 cup water into middle of flour mixture and mix together.
Beat with a wooden spoon for at least a minute. During this process, add enough water to make the dough smooth while still very thick. When you pull the spoon up out of the batter, it should be very elastic, but should cling tenaciously to the spoon.
Using a spaetzlehobel or a colander with medium holes, press the noodles through into a large pot full of boiling salted water. Cook the noodles in the water for about three, minutes. or until just a very short time after they rise to the surface.
Using a slotted spoon or skimmer, lift the spaetzle out of the water a spoonful at a time, drain them as well as you can, and put them in a bowl with the butter. Toss them well with the butter so that it melts and coats them.
The spaetzle can be served plain like this with a main dish, or in a soup or stew. You can also brown them in more melted butter over low heat, and serve as a main dish with a green salad.
And a final cautionary note: Keep a close eye on your cooking times, as too long in the boiling water will ruin their tenderness. There are a lot of jokes about this problem on their home turf. One that we heard in Switzerland goes like this:
Man in restaurant to chef — “These spaetzli are terrible!”
Chef: “How dare you! I’ve been making them since before you were born!”
Man: “Yes, but did you have to leave them in the water that long?!”
They”ll be listed here, bear with us
Stuff we’ve seen and found interesting, things we want, things you might want, who knows…?
Other people’s recipes that have worked really well
