Time for Supper

Making noodles is a weekly thing in our home. Most everyone else I know buys theirs ready-made from the store. But not us. Heck, it’s so easy. All you need is some eggs, flour, and salt. Who doesn’t have all that stuff in their kitchen? How many eggs you need depends on how many mouths you plan on feedin’. Tonight it’s just us McDonalds so one egg per person will suffice. I crack six in a medium-sized bowl and whip 'em until golden and frothy. Add in a teaspoon of salt and mix it up really good. Nobody wants a mouthful of salty noodle. Trust me on this one.

Mom never measures out the amount of flour needed. Her momma didn’t either. “It’s a thing you have to feel to get it right,” mom says. Once the batter has a nice, silky consistency, add in half cupfuls until the dough is pulling away from the sides. Dust a good amount of flour out on the table and plop the ball of dough on top. Now it’s time to knead the dough with your hands. Keep adding flour until you’ve got a medium-firm dough. Next comes the tricky part. Keep adding in small handfuls of flour, a little at a time, until you have a dough that’s not sticky anymore. Pinch it and see if it sticks to your fingers. If it does, add a little more flour. When you don’t add enough flour, the dough will stick to the rolling pin when you’re rolling it out. No biggie, you can simply add more flour, make another ball, roll it out, and try again.

But if you get too much flour in the dough you can try your damnedest to roll it out, but it ain’t gonna work. It’ll just shrink back in on itself because the dough has become elastic at this point. The only thing you can do with that dough is pinch off a gob and toss it in the pot. You know, they taste as good but do take quite a bit more time to cook. Some people might throw out that dough and start over. But farmers are clever as heck when it comes to finding uses for stuff other people throw out. Every time Grandma McDonald tries to make noodles, she always puts in too much flour. Always. So, she dubbed them Dough Gobbies. Very similar to dumplins but McDonald style.

For those of us who do get the consistency right, roll out the dough to about ¼” thickness. Keep dusting the table with flour underneath the dough as you go along. Once you’ve got it rolled out, add an insane amount of flour on top. Seriously, put a thick layer on that dough. You will thank me later. Roll the dough up and pull the ends to meet each other. Kinda like a horseshoe. Place a cutting board under the ends so you don’t ruin your mom’s kitchen table. Grab a knife that’s got a flat edge and start cutting. Cut the noodles to whatever size you would like. I like them thin because they cook faster that way. After you cut about four inches off, toss them in all that flour.

Continue cutting and tossing until all the dough is beautifully hand-made noodles. Add them a little at a time into the soup pot, stirring in between each addition. I also put in some of that flour that’s leftover from the cutting and tossing process. I like the chicken noodle soup on the thick side. If you don’t want to use up all that flour in the soup, put it in a quart jar for next time. I test the noodles in about 20 minutes to see if they’re done. Once the perfect consistency, call in the fam cause it’s time for supper.