Jewish Meat Knishes Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is Jewish knish? ›

A staple of Jewish cuisine, a knish (pronounced kuh-nish) is a hearty snack of cooked carbohydrates (usually mashed potatoes) wrapped in buttery dough. Knish were brought to the US by European immigrants in need of hearty and affordable meals in their new home.

In most traditional versions, the filling is made entirely of mashed potato, kasha (buckwheat groats), or cheese. Other varieties of fillings include beef, chicken, sweet potatoes, black beans, or spinach. Knishes may be round, rectangular, or square.

Knish is a type of pastry, like empanadas and samosas, whereas pierogi are dumplings. Knishes are made with a thin dough, often phyllo dough, while pierogi are made with a thicker, noodle-like dough. Both can be filled with similar savory or sweet fillings like potato, cheese, and spinach.

A traditional knish has a pastry covering surrounding the savory grain filling. In this simplified version, the tender grain mixture is encased in a crunchy wheat germ coating. Quarter potatoes and steam until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Served warm from the oven, the open-top pastry — on the pleasingly thick side for a knish, even crustlike — is flaky and deep-golden-hued; and the potato filling is creamy, but still textured, with a good ratio of lumps, and perfectly seasoned, with plenty of salt and a nice hit of black pepper.

It's a soft, pillowy piece of dough, filled to the brim with seasoned mashed potatoes. Each piece is traditionally rolled into a round ball and baked, although they can be formed into squares and deep-fried for a crispy exterior.

There's no wrong way to eat a knish, but we like ours served hot, with a side of good mustard. Enjoy one as an appetizer, midday snack, or served alongside a soup or sandwich.

Knish can certainly be enjoyed all on their own, but serving them with your favorite mustard, horseradish, or sauerkraut is popular and recommended. Knish are great warm, at room temperature, or even cold – they're great picnic or lunchbox food.

Knish is a Yiddish word with a Russian root, knysh, "cake" or "dumpling." These petite snacks are either baked or fried, and can be round or square, with fillings that sometimes include cheese or kasha in addition to potatoes.

Knishes, Cut Open True, both knishes and bourekas (as well as bulemas and, to a degree, boyos) are stuffed pastries. However, most world cuisines feature some sort of stuffed dough. In no order other than what springs to mind: calzones, kubbeh, jiaozi, mantu, kreplach, kutab, samosas and burritos.

Are Gabila knishes fried? ›

A pillow of mashed potato, wrapped in dough and deep-fried. Like a giant French fry — chewy and a little crisp outside, with soft dense potato inside.

Over the years, I learned that you have to coat the kasha with egg first, because that ensures the groats won't run together in a soggy mush, and each grain retains its integrity. A bit like macrobiotic rice, suitable for chewing hundreds of times.

A bomb of starchy fillings like nutty kasha groats or mashed potato with caramelized onions, wrapped in a thin sheet of dough and baked, the knish is claimed by Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians, and came to New York on the backs of Jewish immigrants.

A Jewish meat knish (kuh-NISH) is a baked dumpling filled with meat, potatoes, kasha, sauerkraut, onions or cheese (and lately spinach, sweet potatoes, and other ingredients), that is traditionally baked but sometimes fried. It's similar to a British pasty, Mexican empanada, Russian pirozhki, and an Italian calzone.

The tradition of covering kitchen surfaces with foil during the Passover, or Pesach, all has to do with ensuring the surfaces upon which food is prepared during the Passover week are free of chametz. Chametz refers to foods with leavening agents, which are forbidden during Pesach.