The Best Matzo Balls Are the Ones Your Grandma Made for Passover

The only reason I know how to make matzo balls is because Grandma Judy taught me. It was years ago over a scratchy Skype call. I was living abroad at the time, and finding a matzo ball that actually tasted like “home” was impossible—unless I made them myself.

Growing up, our family’s Seder was always hosted by my grandparents. Grandpa Morty was in charge of leading the seder, reading from the Haggadah in a perfect diaspora Yiddishe accent, while Grandma Judy could be found over giant vats of matzo ball soup. She knew that no amount of itchy tights and an endlessly long seder service (IYKYK) could stop her grandkids from wolfing down half a dozen matzo balls each.

For me, my siblings, and cousins, Passover was the crowd favorite holiday. It’s interactive, theatrical even! Show me another holiday where you are encouraged to dip your fingers in wine or grape juice? Or the suggestion of slurping salt water off parsley leaves, or building crumbly towers of matzah and charoset. Not to mention leaving out a glass of wine and a seat at the table for a literal ghost. 

We tolerated the heavy parts of the Haggadah—tales of plagues, blood, and loss, stories of oppression, death, and wandering. The absurdity helped balance the grief. Frogs and locusts? We’d imagine cartoon frogs boinging across the dining room table as we giggled about silly stuff just out of earshot of the grown-ups.

And, of course, there’s the food. My Grandma Judy is unwavering in her belief that the best matzo balls should be light as air. No dense sinkers allowed. And honestly, I think she’s spot on. She still makes them for the family at age 93, and now I do my best to recreate them at home for my family and friends.

My role as a chef has always been as much about the relationship that connects food and memory as the dishes themselves. In more recent years, I started to call this idea Cooking with my MouthBrain. These taste/memories are like time machines and act as building blocks for recipes I develop. 

I can’t think of many foods that live more vividly in my MouthBrain than those craggy, floaty, imperfectly perfect matzo balls bobbing along in a golden chicken broth. In my food philosophy, you are what you ate—in other words, whatever you have eaten before shapes and informs so much of what you like to eat now. The matzo ball of my dreams will always be her’s. It’s like a Jewish culinary white whale. 

Passover is a holiday that asks big questions. Why is this night different from all other nights? We ask each year. How can we honor the struggle of our own ancestors and remain steadfast and intolerant of any oppression of a people committed in our name? 

For me, it starts with the small rituals: shaping matzo balls exactly the way Grandma Judy taught me, following her instructions to the letter. Because sometimes, to find your way home—or to a better future—you start by calling your grandma and asking her how much schmaltz goes into the dough.