Passover: Matzoh Balls

Matzoh balls are great, but they can get kind of heavy and dense in the middle. That’s what happened last year when I used the recipe in How to Cook Everything. Yes, Bittman says that for lighter balls you can separate the whites, beat them, and add them separately. But that seems like a lot of work. I decided to try Deb from Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for matzoh balls. I think it’s a family recipe, as it’s not attributed anywhere else, and Deb mentions her mother and mother-in-law’s balls in the post. In this recipe, they turned out nice and light but didn’t include the egg white step. The trick is seltzer in place of stock or water, which really did the trick. These matzoh balls were light and fluffy–I couldn’t believe I had made them. It was like my grandmother took control of my body, and when I came to, I was eating the matzoh balls she’d made.

It’s all pretty simple. Mix together matzoh meal, egg, seltzer, schmaltz (chicken grease)*, salt and pepper and let it sit in the fridge for 30 minutes or a few hours–some recipes say overnight, but I didn’t leave them that long and they were great. The batter looks pretty bad after mixing, and it will taste way too salty. But after cooking (lightly boiling for 30-40 minutes in salty water), they were perfectly seasoned. I served them in some chicken stock I had in the freezer, along with cut up carrots and dill.

Matzoh Ball Soup recipe [smitten kitchen]

*this is no time for your grapeseed oil, people.