Above: Spaetzle sauteed with roasted garlic and wilted spinach

I love to have a good German night with bier and part of that is because its pretty easy cookin. Spaetzle is the easiest kind of pasta I’ve ever made: mix a batter, push it through a colander into boiling water, cool it and you have pasta! The best part is not needing to rest pasta dough and cut or run through pasta maker.

I’ve done a few things with my little spaetzles, simple is better though. Rather than using sauces, this pasta does good with oils and sauteed vegetable. In the dish I cooked in the photo, when cooking the garlic in oil, the oil took on the flavor on the garlic and it coated the pasta evenly. A little bit of garlic in every bite : )

Other yum variations:

:saute small dice onion/carrot/bacon then toss in the spaetlze.

: spaetlze and cheese (mac and cheese)

:brown the spaetzle in butter and add fresh chopped herbs

:toasted walnuts and parmesan

The recipe is great for last minute dishes because the ingredients are usually already in your kitchen. The recipe below will make two large or three small portions.

1 C flour

1/4 C milk

2 eggs

pinch of salt

So you just beat the eggs with a fork until there are no more “strings” and add in your milk. Beat that together for a few seconds to just to make sure the egg whites have broken up enough. Mix the salt and flour together in a bowl and add in your milk/egg mixture and stir until blended. Depending on how the flour is feeling today you may need to add a bit more milk.

Next get some boiling salted water and push your mixture with a spoon through a colander like the one pictured above. Ideally its thick enough that it wont strain through the holes but thin enough you can push it through without too much resistance. If one of the above problems exist just add more flour or more liquid.

Once the little nuggets float to the top remove them and chill them in ice water immediately until they are cool to the touch. Don’t want them to overcook!

From here you can toss them directly into a saute pan or freeze them in baggies for later use 🙂