Spätzle: A little birdie told me…

A newcomer on our menu this year is Spätzle! This Swabian favourite, is an egg-based pasta of an irregular form with a rough, porous surface. The glutinous dough is put directly into boiling water and the form varies between thin and thick, elongated and short. Spätzle is cooked for the first time during the fabrication. The moist dough is either pressed through a perforated metal plate or it drips through this plate into the boiling water.

It can be a side dish with a sauce or baked with cheese, but we decided to serve ours as a snack – fried with bacon and onions – and you can also add a yummy sprinkle of paprika or chilli.

Spätzle is the Swabian diminutive of Spatz, literally ‘little sparrow’. They say that the small cooked dough clumps resemble these little birds. Spätzle which went wrong, which are very lumpy or stick together are also called “raven”, “little stork”, “eagle” or “nightingale”.

Find your portion of this traditional delight at the Kartoffelpuffer Bude (stand), right next to the Biergarten.