Swabian Soul Food: Lentils with Spätzle (Vegetarian)

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Lentils with Späetzle is simply the perfect Swabian soul food! Originally created as a poor man’s meal in the Swabian Alb, it is now the Swabian national dish and an indispensable part of many kitchens in south-west Germany. And rightly so, in my opinion!

Lentils with spätzle are nutritious, but not overpowering: the vinegar added at the end gives the lentils a light, pleasant acidity that makes the dish more digestible. Even if the vinegar seems unusual, try it, you’ll be amazed! When I was a student in Baden-Württemberg, lentils with Spätzle was a very popular dish in the canteen - and there was a huge vat of vinegar right next to the food counter, from which everyone would add a little of their own to give it just the right amount of acidity.

In just over half an hour, you can have a great steaming plate in front of you with very little effort. Preparing the fresh spätzle is the most time-consuming step, but you can easily replace it with semi-prepared spätzle from the refrigerator, which you simply heat up with the lentils. (Fun fact: “Spätzle” means “little sparrows”, as the egg noodles can sometimes look a bit like them when shaped by hand - if you have a bit of imagination).

In Baden-Württemberg, lentils are traditionally served with “vienna sausages”, i.e. sausages that have been smoked and cooked for a long time in natural casing. In this recipe, we replace them with a vegetarian version - you can simply use veggie sausages, which are similar to Vienna sausages.

Recipe #

Vegetarian lentils with Spätzle and veggie sausages

40 minutes

2 portions

Ingredients #

• 1 onion
• 100 g carrots
• 50 g celeriac
• 10 g butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 125 g brown lentils or mountain lentils
• 300 ml vegetable stock
• 200-250 g spätzle
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 pinch of pepper
• 3 tablespoons vinegar
• 1-2 vegetarian Vienna sausages per person (or hot dog sausages)

For the spätzle

• 200 g flour
• 2 eggs
• 60 g mineral water
• 1 pinch of salt

Directions #

1. Peel the onion and carrot and dice them with the celeriac.
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. When it is warm, stir in the flour with a whisk until it is lightly browned. Add the chopped vegetables and fry over a medium heat until the onions are soft.
3. Add the lentils and bay leaf, pour in the vegetable stock, season with salt and pepper and simmer on a low heat for about 30 minutes.
4. Prepare the spätzle: Mix the flour, eggs, water and salt into a thick dough, preferably with a spoon. Bring plenty of salted water to the boil in a saucepan. Press the dough through a spätzle press into the boiling salted water in batches. (Alternatively: Spread the dough thinly on a moistened wooden board using a pastry card.) The spätzle are ready when they rise to the surface - often after about 2 minutes. Remove from the water with a slotted spoon and keep warm in a bowl.
5. When the lentils are soft, season with vinegar. Mix the spätzle with the lentils and add the sausages to the pan and heat for about 2 minutes.

Carbon Footprint #

In total, two portions of lentils with spätzle and veggie sausages have an estimated carbon footprint of 1634 g.

This ranks it number 29 out of 53 recipes published on the blog so far in terms of estimated carbon footprint.

The carbon footprint of the recipe is therefore slightly higher than the average of the other recipes here on the blog: At least 50% of the recipes cause less emissions, but it is not yet in the worst third of the recipes. 🤨

When it comes to individual ingredients, the difference between vegetables and dairy products is particularly striking: Onions, carrots and celery have a very good carbon footprint, while sautéing butter and eggs for spätzle have a higher carbon footprint, which is also very high in relation to the weight of these ingredients.

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