Grain Free Spätzle

We love homemade pasta here, but speaking as the cook, it can be a bit labor intensive by the time the dough is mixed, kneaded, rolled out, cut or shaped, etc. Sometimes you want the taste and texture of handmade noodles without all the work, which is one reason I like to make Spätzle. Another reason to make it? It uses whole eggs, so no egg whites sitting around in your refrigerator while you try to decide what to make with them.

For those who have never attempted homemade pasta before, Spätzle is a great entry-level recipe. The version I usually like to use, from The Pasta Bible, has 4 ingredients - flour, eggs, salt, & water. Everything is just blended until you have a paste with the consistency of natural peanut butter. You can’t get much simpler.

When we first starting looking at lifestyle changes to help my husband manage his health issues, eliminating grains had to be considered. Of course, when you start removing something from your diet, you realize how much you’re giving up. Especially, when you let go of grains. They make up a frighteningly large part of the SAD. (Standard American Diet.) I’ve been using the internet for a long time to find all kinds of things, so alternative recipes are no exception. That includes pasta. Thanks to the site Paleo Cupboard, I found a recipe that helped me rethink my favorite spätzle recipe.

Though not strictly true for all gluten-free and paleo recipes, some of them I’ve tried recently tend to have a rather long list of ingredients. I didn’t want to make Spätzle complicated. Doing so would have ruined why I like to make it in the first place. As long as you don’t have issues with eggs, the good news for pasta is that you only need to change the flour. Spätzle is a dumpling type noodle, so it’s easy to experiment with. If the paste is too thick, you can add water 1 tbsp. at a time until you have the right consistency. Too thin? Add small amounts of flour and starch.

This is the formula that worked for me.

1 ½ c. Almond Flour

1 c. Arrowroot Starch

1 c. Tapioca Starch

1-2 tsp. Salt

5 large eggs

1 tbsp. Water

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl before adding the eggs and water. After adding the wet ingredients, stir just enough to get most of the lumps out. Use a spoon to drizzle the batter into boiling water that has a bit of cooking oil added to it. (Oil isn’t used to cook commercial pasta, but you will need it for this recipe because of the starches.) Stir the pot to make sure no noodles stick to the bottom. When the noodles float to the top, remove them with a spider or fine mesh strainer. They cook quickly, so you’ll find yourself making a few batches at a time. Once you have your noodles, they can be sautéed in butter and herbs, added to green beans (see my post for Green Beans and Spätzle), or perhaps made into macaroni & cheese. They will also work in soups. Instead of cooking in boiling water, add the paste to the broth when the soup is almost finished cooking. You won’t want mushy noodles in your soup.

The Project Queen

 Grain-free Spätzle makes great Tuna-Noodle Casserole.

I used a full recipe to make a 9" x 13" pan.

To keep the dish grain free the crumb topping was made with almond flour.