'Herrgottbescheißerle' – Maultaschen, the way I make them

Ingredients for 20 servings:

• 2 packs of dough, pasta dough (Maultaschen dough), rolled out to 1.5 m length, ready bought
• 1 kg minced meat
• 500 g sausage meat
• 400 g spinach, frozen, chopped, no leaf spinach or creamed spinach
• 250 g bacon, streaky, diced
• 2 onions
• 2 bunches of curly parsley
• 2 bunch of spring onions (onion bulbs)
• 10 eggs
• salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp margarine
• possibly protein

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

Swabian, a delight not only during Lent

Thaw the spinach in a sieve. You can also do this in the microwave on the defrost setting, then squeeze out the excess water. First, chop the onions finely and cut the onion tubes into strips. Sauté everything with the diced bacon in 1 tablespoon of margarine, then let cool slightly. Also finely chop the parsley. Place the ground beef, sausage meat, spinach, parsley, and onion-bacon mixture in a very large bowl and add 4 eggs. Season with salt and pepper and mix everything well. I knead it in my food processor because it’s a mushy mixture and goes faster that way. Once everything is well mixed, add one egg at a time. The meat mixture should be very mushy, not at all stiff, because you want everything to be easy to spread. You need that many eggs because you want the meat mixture to bond with the pasta dough. In my experience, about 10 eggs are enough to achieve this. Such a large amount of meat filling is difficult to season, so don’t be too careful with the seasoning, or everything will turn out a bit bland. Now unroll a roll of pasta dough onto the work surface. To ensure that the pasta dough sticks to the meat filling, you can brush it with egg white. Spread the meat filling about 1 to 1.5 cm thick on the pasta dough. It’s best to work with your hands. Now unroll the second roll of pasta dough over the meat filling. Press everything down lightly. Leave a little to create a bond between the meat filling and the pasta dough. Continue in this way until the pasta dough and meat dough are used up. In the meantime, bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Using a knife or pizza cutter (rolling disc), cut the filled dough sheets in half lengthwise, then cut these two strips in half again. You now have four strips. Now these strips are cut into squares 10-12 cm apart. I use my pizza cutter for this, as it makes it easy to roll back and forth so that the dough is evenly divided. Now 6-8 Maultaschen are added to the boiling salted water. They should cook for 8-10 minutes at a gentle simmer. The edges should be open, which is okay; this will turn the cooking water into broth. Remove the finished Maultaschen with a slotted spoon and drain in a sieve. Bring the cooking water back to a boil and add the next portion. Continue in this way until all are ready. Before the next portion is taken out of the water, I place the drained Maultaschen on a plate to cool. The water for the Maultaschen should only be simmering gently, otherwise the dough might come loose. Between portions, you have to top up the cooking water occasionally, but then bring it back to a boil. When everything is ready, you’ll have a cloudy broth. Don’t throw it away, strain it and set aside as broth for the Maultaschen. It also freezes well, or you can use it as broth for potato salad. Once the Maultaschen have cooled, they are vacuum-sealed and frozen in portions. We eat them either in the broth or lightly fried with potato salad. They also taste good and are quick to prepare cut into wide strips and fried, with an egg beaten with milk on top.