I was hoping someone would do this in honor of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. I have plenty of Jewish friends, and every time a holiday comes around they describe, in intricate detail, the massive dinners and heroic quantities of food that come with it.
Especially that matzah ball soup that always sounds so delicious. Curiously scrumptious balls of… I’m not quite sure what… floating in a soup with other scrumptious things. Every single time.
Since they are professionals at this sort of thing, BuzzFeed sent a team out to try and review a spread of the most common Jewish dishes, strictly for science. Hilarity ensues. The reactions range from confused chewing to instant conversion, with one taster calling a dish “the gateway drug of the Jewish foods.”
The video works for the same reason every “people try food for the first time” clip works: you get to watch honest faces meet unfamiliar textures. But once you stop laughing, it is also a decent introduction to a cuisine that a lot of guys only know from deli counters and holiday invitations. So here is the cheat sheet the video does not give you.
What the holidays actually put on the table
The first thing worth knowing is that different holidays come with different menus, and the food usually means something. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is built around sweetness and good omens for the year ahead.
- Apples dipped in honey. The best known Rosh Hashanah custom, eaten to wish for a sweet new year.
- Round challah. The braided egg bread is baked in a round for the new year to stand for the cycle of the year, sometimes with raisins for extra sweetness.
- Pomegranates. All those seeds stand for abundance and a fruitful year.
- A fish head. Served in some homes as a symbol of the wish to be “the head and not the tail,” to lead rather than follow.
- Carrots and honey cake. Sliced carrots look like coins and stand for prosperity, and honey cake keeps the sweetness theme going through dessert.
If you are invited to a Rosh Hashanah dinner and nobody explains any of this, now you can ask good questions instead of silently wondering why there is a fish head on the table.
About that matzah ball soup
Here is a small correction to my own obsession: matzah ball soup is eaten all year, but it is most closely tied to Passover, not Rosh Hashanah. The mystery ingredient I could never identify turns out to be simple. Matzah balls are dumplings made from matzah meal, beaten eggs, water and a fat such as oil or chicken fat, simmered and served in chicken soup.
They come from the Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe, and they are close cousins of the German dumplings known as Knödel. An early published recipe appeared in a cookbook in 1846.
The part nobody tells outsiders is that there is a genuine family feud built into this dish. Some recipes make light, fluffy matzah balls that float. Others make dense ones that sink. People who grew up on “floaters” and people who grew up on “sinkers” each think the other side is doing it wrong, so choose your words carefully if you are complimenting the cook.
The dish that splits the room
Every tasting video needs a villain, and in Jewish food that role usually goes to gefilte fish. It is made from ground, deboned fish such as carp, whitefish or pike, mixed with eggs, matzah or bread crumbs, onions, carrots and spices, then shaped into balls or patties and simmered in fish stock. It shows up on Shabbat and at holidays, especially Passover.
Even its fans will admit gefilte fish is an acquired taste. The jar version, sitting in its jelly, is what gives it the reputation. A good homemade batch served with sharp horseradish is a different experience, and if a host has made it from scratch, trying it is the polite move.
The easy wins for first timers
If you want to ease into the cuisine rather than jump straight to the fish, start with the foods almost everyone likes on the first bite:
- Challah. Soft, slightly sweet egg bread that also makes the best French toast you will ever eat the morning after.
- Latkes. Crisp fried potato pancakes, most associated with Hanukkah, usually served with applesauce or sour cream.
- Brisket. Slow braised beef that turns up at many holiday dinners and rewards whoever had the patience to cook it all afternoon.
- Kugel. A baked casserole of noodles or potatoes that can be savory or sweet depending on the family.
- Bagels with lox and cream cheese. The deli classic, and the reason Sunday brunch exists in some neighborhoods.
How not to embarrass yourself at your first holiday dinner
The video is funny because the tasters have no idea what they are eating. You do not have to be that guy. A few simple rules go a long way when a friend or a partner’s family invites you in.
- Ask before you start eating. Some holiday meals begin with blessings over wine and bread. Watching what everyone else does for the first minute costs you nothing.
- Check before you bring food. Some households keep kosher, which comes with rules about what can be served and how. Flowers, or a bottle of wine you have cleared with the host first, are the safer gift.
- Try everything once. You do not have to love gefilte fish. You do have to try it. The effort is noticed far more than the reaction.
- Compliment specifically. “The brisket is incredible” beats “everything is great,” and asking for the recipe is the highest compliment there is.
- Pace yourself. My friends were not exaggerating about the quantities. There are usually several courses, and dessert is coming whether you have room or not.
Why these videos keep working
BuzzFeed built an entire format on people tasting unfamiliar food on camera, and it keeps finding an audience for a simple reason. Food is the easiest way into someone else’s traditions. You do not need to learn the history of a holiday to understand the face someone makes when a matzah ball turns out to be better than they expected.
It is also a reminder that “weird food” is only weird until you know the story behind it. The fish head, the round bread and the honey all mean something to the people eating them, the same way your own family’s holiday dishes mean something to you.
So watch the video, laugh at the reactions, and then do the grown up thing: next time a friend mentions a holiday dinner, angle for an invitation. If you want to get better at the cooking side yourself, our piece on cooking one thing extremely well makes the case for picking a single dish and mastering it. Matzah ball soup would not be a bad place to start, as long as you have decided in advance whether you are a floater or a sinker man.
