Alsace & the North · Side
Spaetzle à l'Alsacienne
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle.
Ingredients
- 300 g plain flour
- 3 eggs
- 100 ml whole milk
- 6 g fine salt
- Grated nutmeg
- 60 g butter
- 1 onion, sliced thin
- Coarse salt for the water
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Beat flour, eggs, milk, salt and nutmeg hard with a wooden spoon until the batter blisters and falls from the spoon in a sheet rather than in drops, then rest it 20 minutes. 20 min
- Bring a wide pan of well salted water to a shiver, not a rolling boil, and hold it there.
- Press the batter through a spaetzle plate or a wide holed colander straight onto the water, in batches, so the surface is never crowded.
- Lift them out 30 seconds after they float and drain hard; they should be firm at the edge and still tender at the core.
- Fry the onion in the butter until deep brown at the frill, add the spaetzle and toss over high heat until they take a lace of gold on one side.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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