The Best, Easiest Family Recipes For Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur To Fill Your Home With Joy

The Jewish High Holidays are upon us, and boy are we ready for some comfort food, aren’t we?

My mom is an incredible cook. She can and does make anything and everything, and her ability to improvise and create is awe-inspiring — and intimidating.

And because my mom likes to cook alone, cooking always felt like a total mystery to me as a kid. Because my mom’s cooking was always so amazing, I figured it had to be impossible to emulate.

This is true for a lot of her recipes, but thankfully not at all true for her Jewish holiday cooking, some of the best dishes of all! (My mother-in-law is also a wonderful cook, but that’s a post for another day!)

So whether or not you think of yourself as a cook, I invite you to dive in and bring unbelievable joy into your home with the taste, smells, and spirit of the Jewish New Year (and you don’t have to be Jewish for that!)

May it be a sweet and healthy new year!

Pella’s Best and Absurdly Easy Brisket

You are going to be so happy with yourself after you make this brisket––but actually, not nearly as happy as your family and friends who benefit from what they will assume is wizardry, but instead is an embarrassingly easy recipe. It melts in your mouth and connects you to your people all over the world for centuries!

It’s best to make this at least two days ahead, so it can deepen in flavor.

Ingredients:

6 lb brisket, lightly trimmed––it needs some fat on it, or it’ll be tough!
Season with: lots of garlic powder, salt and pepper on all sides

Brisket Marinade:

• 6 bottles chili sauce – our favorite brand is “Homade Chili Sauce” in a short, round bottle. Heinz or other brands of chili sauce might be fine too, but this is the magic one for us. Also, the bottles are great for keeping salad dressing in too! 🙂
• 8 Tbsp of brown sugar
• 2/3 cup of red wine vinegar
• 4 packets of Lipton onion soup mix

2 or 3 potatoes, very thickly sliced — like 3/4″ slices
2 or 3 onions — thickly sliced in rings

1. Pre-heat oven to 325.

2. Season your brisket with garlic powder (I use a lot), salt and pepper.

3. Slice onions and potatoes into thick slices (I do 1” for both and do the onions in rings). Lay them in your giant roasting pan next to your seasoned brisket.

4. Mix all ingredients together from marinade and cover brisket, making sure to coat all over, top and bottom (I use my hands). Make sure potatoes and onions are also immersed in sauce!

5. Cover tightly with heavy foil.

6. Cook covered at 325 for 3-6 hours. Rule of thumb is one hour per pound, but basically you can’t overcook it––when you stick your knife in, it should be very, very soft, like falling apart soft.

7. Refrigerate overnight.

8. In the morning, skim the fat off the top (the fat will congeal into bright orange discs) and slice brisket into thick slices. Coat those slices with sauce, put back in fridge to let everything sink in.

Reheat at 425, uncovered, for about 15 minutes or until it’s heated through.

Serve and overeat!! This recipe makes a lot of sauce which we often eat with potatoes and onions (or basically anything else!) for lunches over the next few days, it’s so good!)

Pella’s Fluffy, Buttery Matzo Balls

The key to your matzo balls coming out fluffy and delicious is to use salted butter, don’t overmix your ingredients, put the raw mixture into the fridge to set, and then cook in a large enough pot so that your matzo balls aren’t crowded!

Ingredients:

4 eggs
4 Tbsp salted butter, melted in microwave
4 Tbsp water/chicken soup
1 Cup Straits Matzo Meal (that’s Mimi’s fave but I’m sure others are fine)
1 heaping teaspoon salt

1. Mix eggs lightly with beater.

2. Add everything else and mix lightly again — don’t overmix or they’ll be dense!

3. Put in fridge for 20-30 mins till it sets.

4. Using a tablespoon or melon baller, and after wetting your hands with water, form balls the size of maybe golf balls — remember these will expand 2-3 times when you cook.

5. Form all balls and put on baking sheet so that you can add to the boiling water all at once for even cooking.

6. Choose the biggest pot you have so that your matzo balls have lots of room to dance around!

7. Heat the water to a simmering, bubbling boil and then put all the balls in at once.

8. Cook about 30-35 minutes. Test to see if they’re ready by cutting in half — it should be white all the way through — if there’s yellow in the middle, it’s not ready! Of course you’ll need to taste to be sure! Store in fridge in a bowl and then, before you serve chicken soup, add to the soup and heat up together. Enjoy!

Pella’s Chicken Soup

I usually make my soup a few days ahead because it improves in flavor. Also, after it is in the fridge overnight, you can skim off the fat. The amount of veggies you add should depend on how much you like veggies in your soup and how big a pot you’re using. You don’t want so many veggies that there’s no room for soup! Chicken soup keeps in the fridge for about a week. I always freeze some for later happiness!

Also, I make this soup all year round because…why wouldn’t you?

Ingredients:

1 cut up whole chicken with back bones (ditch innards)
2 large onions
3-4 carrots, peeled, cut in big chunks
3-4 celery stalks, cut in big chunks
2-3 large parsnips, cut in big chunks
2 large sweet potatoes (this adds a rich sweetness to your broth. I also add a few zucchini in chunks)
2 bunches parsley
2 bunches dill
15 cloves garlic (get the pre-peeled kind, then pound them so they split to release flavor but are easily fished out for those who don’t want chunks of garlic)
1/2 cup Osem powdered chicken bouillon (or more, to taste) Note: this bouillon is key to the best flavor, so try to find this brand! Any store with a decent kosher section will have it, including Safeway and big stores.

1. Get out a giant pot, as big as you have.

2. Rinse and put chicken in, along with all hard veggies (carrots, celery, parsnips, sweet potatoes, parsley, dill)

3. Cover everything with water till the water comes up to a few inches below the top of the pot. Worst thing is not enough broth! You can always cook down if there’s too much liquid.

4. Bring to a boil and then turn town to a fast simmer for 45 or so minutes. Add bouillon and soft veggies (zucchini).

5. After say 1 hour and 15 mins, taste — is it tasty enough? Need more bouillon? If good, done! Chicken should be still firm and intact and veggies still firm. If you like everything really soft, keep cooking!

6. Add matzo balls to soup before reheating and serving, and, if you wish, add fresh parsley and dill!

Pella’s Apple Sauce

My mom’s apple sauce is not your baby-food or breakfast applesauce. This is more like a beautiful compote that thickens once refrigerated and goes with your main dish – great companion to brisket, chicken, everything. It’s a staple holiday dish in our house to accompany almost any main dish, but we cook it year round.

Ingredients:

8 – 10 large fuji apples, peeled and cut in big squares

1 package frozen strawberries

1. Peel and cube apples.

2. Add 1/2 bag of frozen strawberries.

3. Peel and cut your apples into big cubes. Throw them into a pot and add your strawberries. No such thing as too little or too many––it’s whatever you want. Cook on medium for maybe an hour or until tender but not mushy. You want to have something to bite into!

Pella’s Unbelievably Decadent Sweet Kugel

Ingredients:

1/2 lb medium sized egg noodles, cooked ahead
1 lb cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
2 Tbsp butter
8 oz can of pineapple tidbits or chunks, cut up
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tsp salt
1 Tsp vanilla
3/4 lb cream cheese
6 eggs
2 cups whole milk
Jar of apricot preserves

Beat eggs. Then add everything but noodles and beat together. Then stir in noodles and mix gently. Then pour the mixture into a 9×13 glass pyrex or baking pan.

THEN! With a tablespoon, add a big dab of the apricot preserves right into the batter every few inches, so that there are big dots of it across the pan. The idea is, each portion will have a generous dollop of apricot jam.

Cook at 350 for 1 hour or more (sometimes 1 1/2 hours) till it browns on top. When you take it out, it will firm up some, so don’t worry if it looks a little soft.

Serve and amaze! We often find ourselves eating this for breakfast for days.

Enjoy it all till next time!