Aldi Cheese Spätzle (Deutsche Küche) Review
Sad beige food.
After my positive experience with Aldi’s frozen Mushroom Schupfnudeln, I had high hopes for this similar Cheese Spätzle meal. Both products are from the Deutsche Küche brand, and both are sold during Aldi’s popular German Week event. They both feature a creamy-cheesy sauce base, and both have a type of noodle as the main ingredient.
Unfortunately, I think something went terribly wrong! Aldi’s Cheese Spätzle was a “yuge” let-down. So much so, I could not even finish my small plate, and I did not eat any leftovers. Part of me hopes this is just an unfortunate fluke, and not how the meal typically tastes. But, I don’t really want to buy another one to find out.
I suppose the first sign of trouble was that the meal was extremely freezer burnt. There were huge amounts of ice crystals and slush, and the sauce pellets were crumbling and looked corroded from the freezer damage. This is exactly the opposite of my experience with the Mushroom Schupfnudeln, which was impressively fresh for a frozen meal.
Here’s one of those badly freezer-burnt sauce pellets. You can see the center is buckling outwards and crumbling.
And here’s one of the ice-crusted spätzle noodles. It’s pointy and twisty, like something the Night King would use as as weapon in Game of Thrones.
The second sign of trouble for this meal is perhaps the cooking instructions. I would typically use a pan on the stove, but the preferred cooking method for Aldi’s Cheese Spätzle is microwave. So I used the microwave, but it made me cringe a bit.
I cooked the meal in a microwavable glass bowl for 8 minutes on “High.” I stirred it at 4 minutes, 6 minutes, and 8 minutes, and then I let it sit for 2 minutes before serving. It was bubbling and boiling in the bowl by the 8 minute mark. It’s definitely quick and simple to prepare, although not visually appealing.
Another sign that something might be wrong is how brown my meal looks. It isn’t the cheesy-cream color of the picture on the bag, but rather an old, deep tan/brown. Because I’ve never cooked this meal before, I can’t tell if this is a normal color variation, or if mine went “bad.” In case you’re wondering, the expiration date on my bag is almost 2 years from the date of purchase, so this isn’t anywhere near expiring.
It didn’t taste rancid, exactly. It didn’t taste bitter, or rotten, or anything. It just tasted “not good.” Sort of mildly gross. A bland kind of “not good.”
The bag says there are 5 servings of 1 cup each, but the cooked amount is smaller. I couldn’t eat mine, so this is irrelevant. Because the serving sizes are so small, I think this would work best as a side dish with some meat or other protein.
The cheese sauce is runny, even after sitting for a while. There’s a little bit of stringy mozzerella evidence, but mostly it is a thin, cream-type sauce. It has a distinct sour vinegar bite (from the balsamic vinegar in the sauce), which I would normally relish — I LOVE vinegar and most tangy tastes — but even that wasn’t delicious here.
The flat, square onion pieces are a prominent speed bump in the gustatory misadventure. Onions are one of my favorite things in the world, but even the many little chunks of browned onions in the sauce did not tempt me to continue eating this. They had a strange texture — not crunchy, but not soft, either.
Honestly, my favorite part of this dish is the noodle texture. The noodles are lumpy, bumpy, and firm. Fun to bite. I love the chewy texture. The shapes reminded me a bit of meal worms, however, which got a little weird after a while.
I learned that spätzle (or spaetzle) noodles are made from thin egg dough that is poached in water, like a dumpling.
Nutrition Facts and Price for Aldi Cheese Spätzle
As a side dish, this provides some decent nutrition, particularly 7 grams of protein and 2 grams of fiber, with only 4 grams of fat. It doesn’t have enough protein (or calories, to be honest) to be a proper dinner, however. Despite the whopping 500 mg sodium, I ended up adding extra salt and pepper to mine, because it tasted bland.
The 20 ounce bag cost $4.99. This is made in France.
Ingredients in Deutsche Küche Cheese Spätzle
Here are the ingredients:
- Spätzle pasta (water, durum wheat, semolina, eggs, wheat flour, salt)
- Water
- Onion
- Cream
- Water
- Mozzarella cheese (milk, lactic starters, salt, rennet, anti-caking agent: cellulose)
- Raclette cheese (milk, salt, lactic ferments, rennet, calcium chloride, preservative: natamycin)
- Balsamic vinegar (wine vinegar, grapes must)
- Rice flour
- Sugar
- Salt
- Caramel (color)
- White pepper
- Nutmeg
These are pretty straightforward, natural, and unprocessed ingredients, which I appreciate. I’m tempted to try this again, to see if I just got a bad bag, but I need to wait until the awful memory has faded from my grompy noggin.
At $5 for a 20 ounce bag, this is a great value, especially if you actually manage to get 5 servings out of it. That’s only $1 per serving.
More Reviews of Aldi Products You Might Like (or Hate)
Check out these other reviews of Aldi frozen stuff I’ve recently written:
- Aldi Fruits of the Forest Strudel (Deutsche Küche)
- Aldi Bienenstich Indulgent Cakes (Deutsche Küche)
- Aldi Donauwelle Indulgent Cakes (Deutsche Küche)
- Aldi Mushroom Schupfnudeln (Deutsche Küche)
Author’s note: I have no affiliation with Aldi, and I wasn’t compensated in any way for this review.
