Dutch Noodle Soup

Pat and I are traveling on vacation this week so I haven’t had many chances to cook—but I have had plenty of chances to eat some good food. Lots of Polish and German influenced food like sour kraut, sausages, perogies, chipped ham—things that you can’t get in Georgia—at least not in the quality that they have here in Pennsylvania.

Pat’s daughter, Kris, cooked this old Kovach family recipe called Dutch Noodle Soup for us the evening we arrived. It was excellent.

Here is what you will need:

3 lb beef roast
1 large onion, diced
4 or 5 carrots, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
salt to taste
fresh ground black pepper
paprika
basil
oregano
1 bay leaf
2 large cans pureed tomatoes

For the “Noodles”:

5 to 7 cups flour
6 eggs
¾ cup warm water

For the “Noodle filling”:

2 lbs sausage
1 small onion, diced fine
1 egg

First you need to cook your roast. Place it in a 6 quart boiler and add enough water to cover the roast about half way. Add your onion, carrots, celery, parsley, salt (watch the quantity), a couple twists of fresh black pepper, and the rest of your spices.

Kick on the heat to medium high and bring everything to a low boil, then back the heat off to a simmer and add your tomatoes. Now cover the pot and let the roast slow cook for a couple of hours. After two hours, check the roast and keep cooking until it is tender and falls apart easily.

Turn off the heat, remove your roast to a plate, and let everything cool down a little while you make your noodle filling and dough.

For the filling, combine the sausage, onion, and egg in a large mixing bowl and stir it all up well to combine.

In another mixing bowl, start out with five cups of flour, reserving two cups to add if you need it for consistency. Make a hole in the middle of your pile of flour, add your eggs, and start mixing. When everything is combined well, start drizzling in your warm water. Did I say keep mixing? You want the dough to be slightly sticky so go easy on the water. If you get things too thin, just add a little more flour to thicken things up.

Now lightly flour your working surface and place 1/6th of the dough in the middle and roll it out evenly until it is a very thin circle—1/8” thick or so.

Place 1/6th of your sausage filling in the middle of the dough circle and spread it out so that it nearly covers the entire area of the dough. Now roll up your noodle dough around the sausage to form a long tube and slice the tube into ¾” pieces.

Meanwhile, back with the roast, after it has cooled off, pick through the meat and remove any pieces of fat or bone that you don’t want to eat. Tear the meat up into chunks not larger than 1” or so.

Now put the meat and your noodles back in the pot with the liquid you cooked the roast in and add an additional 2 or 3 quarts of water to the pot. Turn the heat back on and bring it back to a low simmer and cook for an additional hour to hour and one half, longer if you have the time.

When you run out of patience, turn off the heat, dip some soup out into bowls, grab a soup spoon, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet