Knoephle Soup

No I'm not a German from Russia, not much German at all when it comes to that ... but boy do I love knoephle soup!

I looked on line for recipes and found a bunch. They're all pretty similar but each has its own take on the basic recipe. People add and change all kinds of things to suit themselves, so feel free to to likewise.

Because my daughter reminded me only just this morning, I figured now would be a fine time to add my own take to the mix.

First of all, the best chicken broth comes from *are you ready for this?* boiling a chicken, preferably pre-plucked and gutted and washed. 

Second of all, nothing can really replace rich thick cream and real butter - nothing. The cream goes in last of all, by the way, after the neffles even.

Third of all, valley reds are better potatoes for this than Idaho baking spuds.

Fourth of all, chopped or coarse grated carrots add a bit of color.

Fifth of all, the 'neffle' (my own term, beg pardon) dough is supposed to be droopy and you better be quick with your kitchen shears when you're snipping those little bits of it into the boiling soup.

Sixth of all, since you have a cooked chicken sitting right there, put some into the soup.

By now you've got the gist of what knoephle soup is all about. It's rich and creamy and filling - and totally delicious.

But here's the method behind the madness:

1/ Boil a chicken 
2/ While the chicken is boiling make your neffle dough out of a beaten egg, a few tablespoons of milk, and flour added until the dough is formed enough to halfway handle. It's going to be sticky as all get-out so flour your hands. Form it into a ball, cover it, and set it aside. How much you want is how much you make; might have to use two eggs and yada yada.
3/ Cube your potatoes to about a half inch. If you leave the skins on they're healthier but then you've got bits of potato skin in your soup because, you know, they don't stay on the potatoes when you cook them.
4/ Chop or coarse grate a couple three carrots if you want them in there for color or nutritional value.
5/ When your chicken is done boiling, use a strainer and put the broth into your soup kettle. You can add canned broth (Not Water) if you want, depending on how much water you used for boiling the chicken and how much steamed away in the process. Cover the chicken in an appropriate bowl and set it aside.
6/ Into the broth put the potatoes (and carrots if you used them) and cook them until they're done (when you can easily poke a fork into the potatoes).
7/ By now your chicken ought to be cool enough to get the meat off the bones, so do that and cut the chicken into small pieces (whatever size you like). Put however much chicken you want into the broth and do what you want with the skin and bones.
8/ Your neffle dough has been patiently waiting its turn for all this time so roll it out into a snake, hold it up pretty high over the boiling soup kettle, and start snipping like crazy because if you don't that whole snake is going to droop right down into the soup and you'll be screwed. The thing here is to snip as fast as you can so the neffles start cooking at as close to the same time as possible. They'll first sink and disappear into the broth and stuff but they'll pop back up pretty quick and get in the way of the ones you're snipping, so HURRY!
9/ You can turn the heat down a notch or two right about now so you don't burn your soup, and give it a stir once in a while to keep the neffles circulating. You'll have to test them now and again. They're done when they're all floating around in there and are little funny looking dumplings of various shapes (but should be all about the same size if you've done your snipping right - about a half inch up to an inch or so - you are not going to be able to get them uniform so don't worry about it). When they're dumplings, they're done.
10/ Take the kettle off of the heat now and stir in as much butter as you think appropriate - about a stick for a normal batch, more if you're making more.
11/ You'll notice that the only milk called for so far has been the few tablespoons that go into the neffle dough. That's because we aren't using milk but thick rich cream, the thicker the better. And now, just before you're going to serve it up, you add about half as much cream as you have soup broth (or more if you want it creamier), give it a good stir, ladle it into bowls, sprinkle parsley for decoration, and serve it up. It will be thick and creamy, not thin and watery the way some are, with hopefully lots of potatoes and neffles - YUM!
NOTE: you may have noticed that I didn't include any salt or pepper - that's because different people like different amounts and some can't have any salt at all - so make sure there are salt and pepper shakers within everyone's reach so they can use what they want.
ALSO NOTE: if you're one that has to have specific amounts of ingredients, this recipe is obviously not for you.
ONE MORE NOTE: you can cut your prep time down significantly if you've done some pressure canning ahead of time and have your broth and your chicken (sans skin and bones and cut into bite-sized pieces) already canned. A couple quarts of broth and a pint of chicken ought to do you for a normal sized batch.