List of Jewish cuisine dishes facts for kids

A list of dishes found in Jewish cuisine includes many delicious foods that have been enjoyed by Jewish communities for hundreds of years. These dishes come from different parts of the world, showing the rich history and travels of Jewish people.

Traditional Ashkenazi Dishes

Ashkenazi Jews are Jewish people whose families originally came from the Rhineland area in western Germany. Over time, many Ashkenazi Jews moved east to countries like Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary between the 10th and 19th centuries. Because these countries share similar food traditions, it's sometimes hard to know exactly where a dish first came from.

Here are some popular Ashkenazi dishes:

• Babka: This is a sweet bread or cake, often swirled with cinnamon, chopped nuts, or chocolate. It's made with a rich dough similar to challah.
• Bagel: A famous round bread with a hole in the middle. Bagels are first boiled and then baked, giving them a unique chewy texture. They come from Poland.
• Bialy: Similar to a bagel but without the hole. It's a flat, chewy roll often topped with onions and other ingredients before baking. Bialys also originated in Poland.
• Blintz: A thin pancake, much like a crêpe, wrapped around a sweet filling. Common fillings include farmer's cheese, potato, or fruit. Blintzes are often fried in butter and served with sour cream.
• Brisket: This is a slow-cooked meat dish made from the chest part of a cow. It's a tender and flavorful stew, popular in Central and Eastern Europe.
• Bublitchki: Small, hard, sweet breads shaped like mini bagels. They are usually eaten with tea or coffee and are popular in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania.
• Challah: A beautiful braided egg bread, often eaten on the Sabbath and holidays. It originated in Southern Germany.
• Charoset: A sweet mix of apples and nuts, usually served during the Passover holiday. It symbolizes the mortar used by Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt.
• Chicken soup: A comforting and traditional soup, often served for Sabbath dinner. It's usually flavored with parsley or dill and can include kneidlach (matzah balls) or kreplach (dumplings).
• Cholent: A hearty stew of meat, potatoes, beans, and barley. It's cooked slowly for a long time, often overnight, and traditionally eaten on the Sabbath.
• Chopped liver: A spread made from roasted beef or chicken liver, mixed with hard-boiled eggs, onions, and spices. It's often served on crackers or bread.
• Chrain: Pickled horseradish, sometimes mixed with beets, giving it a pink color. It's a spicy condiment from Europe.
• Eyerlekh: These are unlaid eggs found inside chickens that have just been prepared. They are typically cooked in soup.
• Farfel: Small, pellet-shaped egg pasta. A special version made from matzo is called matzo farfel, eaten during Passover.
• Gedempte fleisch: An Ashkenazi pot roast, usually made with beef, vegetables, tomato paste, and spices.
• Gefilte fish: Originally a stuffed fish, but now often refers to poached fish cakes or a fish loaf. It's made from chopped fish, eggs, onions, and matzo meal.
• Goulash: A spicy meat stew that comes from Hungary.
• Gribenes: Crispy chicken or goose skin cracklings, fried with onions. They are a byproduct of making schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat).
• Hamantashen: Triangular pastries filled with poppy seed, prune paste, or fruit jams. They are traditionally eaten during the Purim holiday.
• Helzel: Stuffed poultry neck skin. The stuffing often includes flour, semolina, matzo meal, fried onions, and spices.
• Holishkes: Also known as Huluptzes, these are cabbage rolls. Cabbage leaves are rolled around a mixture of rice and meat, then baked with tomatoes.
• Kasha: Buckwheat groats cooked like rice, often mixed with oil, fried onions, and mushrooms. It's a staple in Russia and Ukraine.
• Kasha varnishkas: A dish combining kasha with noodles, usually farfalle (bow-tie pasta). It's popular in Russia and Ukraine.
• Kichel: A light, airy cookie made with egg and sugar, often cut into diamond shapes. Though sweet, they are sometimes eaten with savory dips.
• Kishke: Beef intestines stuffed with a mixture of matzah meal, spices, and schmaltz, then boiled like a sausage.
• Kneidlach, matzah ball: Dumplings made from matzah meal, eggs, and traditionally schmaltz. They are usually boiled and served in chicken soup. They originated in the Pale of Settlement.
• Knish: A baked or deep-fried turnover filled with mashed potato, ground meat, sauerkraut, onions, kasha, or cheese. They are from the Pale of Settlement.
• Kreplach: Boiled dumplings similar to pierogi, filled with meat or mashed potatoes and served in chicken broth.
• Kremzalech: A potato and shredded chicken patty fried in oil, typically made for Passover. It comes from Holland.
• Kugel: A baked sweet or savory casserole. It can be made from noodles or potatoes, often with vegetables, fruits, or cheese.
• Latkes: Also known as potato pancakes, these are fried potato patties. They are usually eaten during Hanukkah with sour cream or apple sauce.
• Lekach: A honey cake, often spiced with cinnamon and tea.
• Lokshen kugel: A sweet baked noodle dish, often made with egg noodles, curd cheese, raisins, and cinnamon. Other versions are dairy-free and use fruits like apples. It comes from Poland.
• Lox: Thin slices of cured salmon fillet, often served on bagels.
• Macaroons: Sweet cookies made with egg and almond or coconut. They are often made to be Kosher for Passover.
• Mandelbrot (cookie): A hard, baked almond bread, similar to Italian biscotti. It's also called mandel bread and comes from Russia and Ukraine.
• Mandlach: Small, crunchy "soup almonds" or "soup nuts" that are added to soup.
• Matzah brei: A Passover breakfast dish. It's made by soaking broken pieces of matzah in beaten eggs and then frying them.
• Miltz: Spleen, often stuffed with matzah meal, onions, and spices.
• Onion rolls (Pletzlach): Flattened bread rolls topped with poppy seeds, chopped onion, and kosher salt.
• Pastrami: Smoked and spiced deli meat, often used in sandwiches like "pastrami on rye." It originated in Romania.
• Pickled herring (Silodka): Deboned herring fish pickled with onions, sometimes mixed with sour cream. It's popular in Russia and Ukraine.
• Pletzel: An unleavened flatbread with savory toppings like onion.
• P'tcha (Galareta): A jelly made from calves' feet. It comes from Turkey.
• Rugelach: Flaky pastries spread with cinnamon sugar, chocolate chips, or jam, then rolled and baked. They are from Poland.
• Shlishkes: Twisted dumplings made from potato dough, similar to gnocchi, and covered with butter and breadcrumbs. They come from Hungary.
• Schmaltz: Rendered (melted) goose or chicken fat, used for cooking.
• Schnitzel: Pounded cutlets of meat dipped in egg and crumbs or matzo meal, then fried. Traditionally made with veal, it's now often made with chicken breast. It comes from Austria.
• Sorrel soup: Also called shchav or green borscht, this soup is made from broth or water and sorrel leaves. It can also include other greens, eggs, potatoes, or rice.
• Sufganiot: Fried doughnuts, commonly eaten in Israel during Hanukkah.
• Teiglach: Small, sweet, boiled pastries from Lithuania.
• Tzimmes: A sweet stew of carrots and yams, sometimes with raisins or other dried fruits like prunes or apricots. It can be vegetarian or made with beef.
• Vareniki: Dumplings from Ukraine.
• Vorschmack: Also known as gehakte herring or chopped herring, this is a strong-tasting creamy herring spread, often served on crackers or bread. It's popular in Russia and Ukraine.
• Yapchik: A potato-based Ashkenazi Jewish meat dish, similar to both cholent and kugel. It's a comfort food from Hungary and Poland.

Sephardi and Mizrahi Dishes

This section explores the delicious foods from Jewish communities in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Sephardim are Jewish people whose families originally came from the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). After being expelled from these countries, they settled in places like Turkey, Greece, Morocco, and Algeria.

Mizrahim is a term for Jewish communities from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Even though Mizrahi Jews didn't come from Spain or Portugal, they are often grouped with Sephardi Jews to show they are different from Ashkenazi Jews. Like Ashkenazi cuisine, the exact origin of many Sephardi and Mizrahi recipes can be hard to pinpoint.

Here are some popular Sephardi and Mizrahi dishes:

• Adafina: A version of hamin that was popular among Spanish Jews.
• Baba ghanoush: A dip made from broiled eggplant mixed with garlic, lemon, tahini (sesame paste), and spices. In Israel, a version called salat hatzilim (eggplant salad) is sometimes made with mayonnaise instead of tahini. It comes from the Levant region.
• Baklava: A sweet dessert pastry made of many thin layers of filo dough filled with chopped nuts and drizzled with syrup or honey. It's from Turkey.
• Bourekas: Small, flaky pastries filled with cheese, potatoes, mushrooms, or spinach. They are baked or fried and are popular in Turkey, Greece, Algeria, and Tunisia.
• Carciofi alla giudia: A deeply fried artichoke dish from Italy.
• Couscous: Crushed durum wheat semolina, steamed and served with vegetable or meat soup or stew. It's a staple in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
• Falafel: Deep-fried balls made from chickpeas. They are a very popular street food in Egypt, Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon.
• Fazuelos: Pastries made of thin, fried dough from Morocco.
• Gondi: Ground chickpea and chicken balls, seasoned with cardamom. They are cooked and served as a traditional Persian and Caucasian soup. They come from Iran, Azerbaijan, and Dagestan.
• Hamin: A Sephardi or Israeli version of cholent, a slow-cooked stew.
• Hummus: A popular dip made from mashed chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, and paprika. It's a common dish in Egypt, the Levant, and Turkey.
• Israeli salad: A cold dish of finely chopped cucumber and tomato, often served for breakfast. It's popular in the Levant region.
• Jachnun: Thinly rolled dough, brushed with butter or oil, rolled up like strudel, and baked. It's a traditional dish from Yemen.
• Jerusalem mixed grill: A dish from Israel made of chicken hearts, spleens, and liver mixed with bits of lamb. It's cooked on a flat grill and seasoned with onion, garlic, and spices.
• Kubba: Round or oval savory croquettes made of semolina or bulgur (cracked wheat) dough. They are filled with minced onions and spicy minced meat, and can be served raw, fried, or cooked in sauce. They come from Iraq.
• Kubba Bamia: A stew from Iraq made with semolina kubba and okra cooked in tomato sauce.
• Kubba Shwandar: A stew from Iraq made with semolina kubba cooked with beet.
• Kubba Matfuniya: Ball-shaped kubba from Iraq.
• Kubba Hamusta: A stew from Iraq made with semolina kubba cooked in a sour sauce.
• Mafrum: A stuffed vegetable dish from Libya. It's typically made from root vegetables like potatoes, filled with ground meat, then fried and simmered in a tomato sauce.
• Ma'amoul: Date-filled cookies from the Levant region.
• Malawach: A flaky fried bread, similar to puff pastry, made by folding many layers of thin dough with butter. It's cooked in a hot skillet and comes from Yemen.
• Mofletta: A thin crêpe made from water, flour, and oil. It's traditionally eaten during the Mimouna celebration, the day after Passover, usually with honey syrup. It comes from Morocco.
• Oshi sabo/Oshi savo: The hamin (slow-cooked stew) of Bukharan Jews from Uzbekistan.
• Pita: A family of yeast-leavened round flatbreads baked from wheat flour. It's common in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and nearby areas.
• Sabich: A sandwich from Iraq made with spiced eggplant, hard-boiled egg, and pickles.
• Sambusac: Savory fried pastries made from flaky dough, similar to samosas. They are usually filled with chickpea paste or meat and are popular in the Levant, Turkey, and Egypt.
• Shakshuka: Eggs sautéed in a spicy tomato sauce. It's a popular dish from Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia.
• Tabouleh: A cold salad from Lebanon made of bulgur wheat mixed with parsley and other vegetables.
• Tebit: The hamin (slow-cooked stew) of Iraqi Jews.

See also

• Cuisine of the Sephardic Jews
• Israeli cuisine
• Jewish cuisine
• Jewish deli
• Kashrut, Jewish dietary laws
• Kosher foods
• Kosher restaurant
• List of kosher restaurants
• List of foods with religious symbolism