Family Story
Floaters & Sinkers
Knaidlach are one of the traditional foods that my mother made. Most people associate matzah balls and chicken soup, but my mother often served knaidlach plain as a side dish, and I frequently do the same, serving knaidlach with chicken or turkey. Of course every time I do make them it rekindles the age-old fight between those who desire “floaters” and those who prefer “sinkers”.
Once when I was visiting my parents in New Brunswick, I went with my mother when she dropped something off at a friend’s house. The Itzchaki’s were Israelis on a one year sabbatical at Rutgers. It was a Friday afternoon and Mrs. Itzchaki was making matzah balls and complaining about them. She said matzah balls are so bland and plain. Besides adding onions, what else can you do to make them more interesting?
A light bulb went off! It had never occurred to me to add onions or anything else to the standard recipe. I experimented with minced onions but discovered that sautéing the onions in the melted margarine added the best flavor. I would not recognize Mrs. Itzchaki if I ran into her, but she is responsible for one of my favorite innovations.
Of course, the added flavor of onions (I tried garlic, too, but shockingly it did not make knaidlach better) makes knaidlach a more interesting side dish. I usually make stuffing and knaidlach with turkey dinner. When Kasey was in Belgium for the year, she and her friends decided to make a Thanksgiving dinner for their host families. She e-mailed me and asked for my “traditional Thanksgivings recipes: knaidlach and carrot koogle, however you spell it.”
Source: Glenda Claremon
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 1/3 cup margarine or schmaltz, if available
- ½ cup water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon chicken soup concentrate
- 1 cup (or more) matzah meal
- Optional: diced or dried onions, Progresso Italian bread crumbs
Instructions
Beat eggs in a medium bowl. In a glass measuring cup, melt margarine in the microwave, adding minced or dried onions for 30 seconds at the end. Allow to cool slightly, then whisk fat into eggs, followed by water, salt, and chicken soup concentrate. Mix in matzah meal, adding extra matzah meal or bread crumbs until batter is desired consistency (should be firm, neither runny nor too stiff). Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
Bring a large pan of water to a full boil. Drop balls of batter into the water, dampening your hands so the batter does not stick. Boil for 20 minutes. Serve in chicken soup or as a side dish.
Glenda’s
Secrets of Success
This is where the Secrets of Success go. Section can alternatively be named “Comments” and can swap out “Glenda’s” with another name in the title.
- Traditionally, knaidlach are cooked in chicken soup, but since they absorb a lot of liquid when cooking, you need to use a lot of soup. I boil them in water, but use chicken soup concentrate in the batter to give the knaidlach a bit of chicken flavor.
- I like to use a least a tablespoon or so of rendered chicken fat (schmaltz) saved from making gribnitz for flavor and softer texture. I usually double the recipe and use a single stick of margarine instead of the full 2/3 cup.
- In general, the knaidlach will be lighter if you use one cup of matzah meal as directed and cook the knaidlach a little longer. For real “”sinkers”” double the amount of matzah meal and cook for a shorter period. You can also experiment with substitutes for the matzah meal such as bread crumbs or corn flake crumbs.
- Dad’s Super-Sinker method: Use oil instead of melted margarine, change the oil and water to ½ cup each, and put in lots and lots of matzah meal. Roll the dough into tiny, pellet-sized balls so they plump to about golf ball size once cooked – very labor intensive because you have to roll out about three times as many balls, but they come out super dense and bite-sized.
“Worries go down better with soup.”
Jewish proverb
Cooking with the Claremons 
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