Cooking as a practice, not a chore. And the Best Ever Matzo Balls (truly).

Why making things ahead makes me calm + how one extra, toasty step makes for the most delicious matzo balls.

I love Passover, which officially starts tonight at sundown. Which means, for me, that it started yesterday in my kitchen. 

My favorite part of any holiday is the day before it begins when I get a head start on my cooking. When I am alone in my kitchen with the window cracked open and all of the quiet. When I cook as much as I can without any anticipation of serving it. When I get to just cook for the love of cooking and the satisfaction of having done it. 

My favorite Passover foods— slowly cooked brisket that breaks apart with a fork and rich, golden chicken broth with tender matzo balls— are all not only okay to make ahead, they’re better. Making these items ahead also means I go into the holiday feeling prepared, calm, and assured. Which is honestly how I always like to feel in the kitchen, on holidays, sure, but also on all of the days in between holidays. 

Preparing for a holiday meal reminds me that cooking can be a practice, not a chore. You can always cook today so that tomorrow is easier. You can always give yourself the permission to take advantage of the time you have to cook and then enjoy the results of that effort on all the days you don’t have as much time. Each time you cook, you don’t have to make a complete meal. Each time you cook, you don’t have to feel the pressure of other people sitting down to eat what you made.

What I am describing is essentially batch cooking and menu planning, but those terms and practices stress me out (and also tap wayyyyyy too closely into dieting for me, which does not do good things for my mental health…I’ll write about that more one of these days). What doesn’t stress me out is cooking when I have time to cook and feeling so satisfied by having done something tangible.

I teach cooking classes online every Sunday afternoon at 2pm EST, but last night I hosted a special Passover prep class. It was so fun. I got to share my private, day-before-the-day cooking with a group of kind people who are also invested in making cooking joyful, not stressful.

Teaching the class also meant that this morning, I got to wake up to a brisket that had been cooking in a low oven (250ºF to be exact) for 10 hours. I cooked while I slept! I barely needed to slice it, it just about fell to pieces. I also woke up to a pot of chicken broth that I had simmered right until I went to bed, then I turned off the heat, put a cover on the pot, and by this morning it was completely cool and easy to strain. I also woke up to the mixture for the Best Ever Matzo Balls in my refrigerator, ready to shape and boil in water.

I went ahead and cooked my matzo balls this morning so I could have a pre-Seder bowl of matzo ball soup for breakfast because….my kitchen, my rules. 

I cannot make matzo ball soup without thinking of my Aunt Renee, one of my mother’s sisters, who taught me everything I know about how to fill a table with food. How to feel abundance. My mothers’ parents fled Eastern Europe during the pogroms and my mother and my aunts all found different ways of channeling that eternal anxiety. For my Aunt Renee, it was cooking more food than she needed to cook at all times. No matter what happened, if you were near her, you would not be hungry.

My Aunt Renee made the best chicken soup and she made it so often that her apartment always smelled like it. I’m sure there was chicken fat in her curtains. She died when I was in college. I left an obituary for her in the New York Times that said “I’ll take care of the soup.”  

A photo that hangs above my desk. From left to right: my grandmother, my mother, my Aunt Debby, and my Aunt Renee in black. Their hair! The glamour!

My matzo ball recipe is based on hers. But there’s one small change. Instead of just mixing the matzo meal with eggs, a little seltzer, and fat, I take an extra step. First I toast the matzo meal in the fat. These toasted crumbs take on a nutty, rich flavor, just like the difference between a plain piece of white bread and a piece of buttered toast. Then I mix everything together. I season the mix with salt and a little bit of chopped parsley, more for color than anything else. They’re fine without the parsley!

Toasting the matzo meal in fat.

If you make your chicken broth ahead of time and refrigerate it, you can use the schmaltz (the chicken fat) that hardens on top of the broth as the fat in your matzo balls. If you haven’t made the broth ahead or if you want to keep these vegetarian, you can just use olive oil.

What else can I tell you? A few things.

One: let the matzo ball mixture sit in the fridge for at least 45 minutes before you form and cook them (know that the mixture can be refrigerated in a container for up to a few days). This chilling is essential because it allows the matzo meal to absorb the liquid from the eggs and seltzer and get firm and easy to roll. If you try to make matzo balls immediately after making the mix it won’t work. So don’t do that! Wait. It’s worth it.

Two: when you roll the matzo balls, wet your hands with cold water. It will make it easier and the mixture won’t stick to your hands.

Three: It’s important to cook the matzo balls in a separate pot of water instead of directly in the soup so they don’t cloud the broth, which should be, as Aunt Renee would always tell me, “as clear as crystal.” 

Process!

Below, for paid subscribers only, is the recipe for the Best Ever Matzo Balls and the recipe for Golden Chicken Broth. I originally shared these in my book Now & Again, which, just FYI, has a terrific Passover menu and tons of ideas for how you can reinvent the leftovers from the meal.

For all who are celebrating, Chag Sameach. 

For paid subscribers: have a favorite Passover memory or recipe? Have an approach to cooking that keeps you calm? Leave a comment! I LOVE your comments!!