Käsespätzle — Swabian Cheese Noodles

Name: Käsespätzle — Swabian Cheese Noodles
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: German (Swabian)
Ingredients: 400 g Plain flour; 4 Eggs; 150 ml Water or sparkling water; 1 tsp Salt; 250 g Grated mountain cheese (Emmental, Bergkäse or Gruyère); 2 large Onions, thinly sliced; 40 g Butter; Nutmeg and black pepper; Chives, snipped, to finish

Soft, hand-scraped egg noodles layered hot with mountain cheese until it turns to strings, then crowned with a heap of deep-brown fried onions. The Alps' answer to macaroni cheese.

Quelle

Rezept von Swabian kitchens · 🏺 Traditionell · Cooking of Swabia in the southwest — the flour-and-egg noodle heartland (Spätzle, Maultaschen)

Swabian/Alpine · traditional noodle dish — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article describes Käsespätzle as spätzle egg noodles glazed in alternate layers with grated cheese such as Emmental or Bergkäse and finally topped with fried onions, a dish of Swabia, Baden and the Allgäu extending into Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Quantities and method here are this book's own.

Hintergrund auf Wikipedia ↗

Zubereitung im Video · 3 Videos

dirndl kitchen Tirol The German Pretzel

⏱ 50 Min.🍽 4 Portionen🔥 620 kcal🇩🇪 Deutschland

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Zubereitung

Start the onions first: melt the butter in a pan and cook the sliced onions over medium-low heat, stirring often, for 20–25 minutes until deep golden-brown and sweet. Set aside.
💡 Low and slow is the only way to sweet brown onions. Rushing on high heat gives you bitter black flecks instead.
Make the batter: beat the flour, eggs, salt, a little nutmeg and enough water into a thick, elastic batter. Beat it hard for a minute until it blisters, then let it rest 10 minutes.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a gentle boil. Press the batter through a Spätzle press or a colander with wide holes straight into the water, working in batches.
💡 No press? Spread batter on a small wet board and scrape thin strips off the edge into the water with a knife — the original hand method.
The noodles are done about 30 seconds after they bob to the surface. Lift them out with a slotted spoon into a bowl and repeat until all the batter is used.
In a warm serving dish or the empty pot, layer hot Spätzle with grated cheese and a little pepper, ending with cheese. Cover for a minute so the cheese melts into strings, then toss gently.
Top with the deep-brown fried onions and a scatter of chives, and serve at once with a sharp green salad to cut the richness.

💡 Tipps

Layering hot noodles with cheese and letting the residual heat melt it gives cleaner strings than stirring cheese into a pan, which can go greasy and split.
Käsespätzle is an Alpine dish shared across Swabia, Baden, the Allgäu and into Austria and Switzerland. Plain buttered Spätzle, without the cheese, is the everyday side served with Rouladen and Sauerbraten.