Knoepfla Soup
Lynn Stadum
Soup:
One half pound bacon
1 large onion, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
2 tablespoons flour
1 ½ cups chopped carrots
5 potatoes peeled and chopped
10 cups water
1 ½ - 2 teaspoons salt
1 – 1 ½ teaspoons pepper
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 can evaporated milk or 1 cup Half and Half
Dough:
4 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoon salt
¼ t baking powder
1 egg
1 – 1 ¼ cup water
Directions:
Fry the bacon in a large soup kettle.
Remove the bacon pieces to use later. Fry up onions and celery until soft.
Stir in flour to make a roux.
Add 10 cups of water and carrots and potatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer while you prepare the dough.
Mix flour, salt and baking powder. Add egg and 1 cup water.
Knead, adding more water as necessary, until the dough has a satiny feel and is not sticky. (Lynn uses a bread hook on her mixer. She has also mixed and kneaded the dough by hand.)
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, turn over. Let rest in a sealed plastic bag or under a towel for 5 to 10 minutes.
On a floured surface, divide the dough into 8 parts by cutting it with a kitchen shears.
With your hands, roll each section into a snake about ½ inch in diameter. Cut each dough snake into ½” pillows with the shears. Roll lightly in flour to keep them from sticking to each other.
Drop noodles into simmering soup.
Cook until all the noodles have risen to the surface (About 10 to 15 minutes.)
Stir in the bacon and 1 cup of Half and Half.
This soup tastes even better the next day and can be frozen.
Lynn’s Daughter Katie making Knoepfla noodles.
Lynn Stadum grew up eating German food “Really, it’s German American food,” She explained. “Cheap food that you could feed a lot of people and they’d fill up.” She smiled. “The old country Germans don’t recognize these foods. The old recipes were adapted when people came here.” The old country Germans might not recognize the recipes, but Lynn’s extended family certainly does. At a family reunion last summer, the cousins came bearing a big kettle of knoepfla soup.
Knoepfla soup is a standard at Lynn’s home also. Her mother made it when she was a child, and Lynn began cooking it in college when she and her friends had dinner parties. “It became a fun event, where you’d do something different.”
Everybody seems to enjoy her knoepfla. “Once, my girls both had friends over for overnights.” she remembered. “Jeff thought I shouldn’t serve knoepfla, that they wouldn’t like it, that it was too weird, but those girls still talk about that meal.”
Frequently, Lynn works with her daughters, Erin and Katie, to make knoepfla. “I mix the dough and the girls roll it into ropes and cut it.” Lynn kneaded the dough as she talked. “When it gets a certain satiny feel, not sticky, that’s perfect.” she said. While the dough rested, Lynn began the soup. Then Erin and Katie wandered into the kitchen ready to work. They rolled ½” diameter snakes of dough and cut them into 1/2” pillows with a pair of scissors. Finally, Lynn dropped the noodles into the simmering broth. When the knoepfla floated on the surface, Lynn dished up bowls of soup and put the rest of the pot into the fridge. “It tastes even better the next day,” she said with a grin, “the knoepfla get softer.”