Jewish Meat Knishes Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are Jewish knishes? ›

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.

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. Read More: What is a Bialy?

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.

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.

The dough doesn't need to rest, so making the knishes will happen pretty quickly. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the eggs, oil and warm water. Stir until the dough comes together, and knead it briefly with your hands.

Knishes were popularized in North America by Ashkenazi Jewish refugees from the Pale of Settlement (mainly from present-day Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, and eastern Poland). In most traditional versions, the filling is made entirely of mashed potato, kasha (buckwheat groats), or cheese.

LATKE (pronounced 🙃 LAT-ka) is like a Jewish hash brown. It's also called a potato pancake! 👌Served with sour cream & apple sauce. POTATO KNISH is pastry dough on the outside & 😜mashed potatoes on the inside!

Bake knishes until the pastry is golden brown, about 40 minutes. Serve warm with spicy brown mustard.

Knishes are fist-size snacks consisting of mashed potatoes wrapped in paper-thin pastry dough and then baked or fried. Other varieties include fillings made from sweet potatoes, mushrooms, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, cheese, or kasha, which is made from buckwheat groats.

While the filling is what makes a knish more appetizing, the perfectly cooked exterior also plays a crucial role in its taste. Once our artisan chefs create the well-balanced filling and stuff them inside the dumplings, they brush the exterior with eggs and bake them to perfection.

Can you eat a knish cold? ›

We've baked them golden brown for you, and they can be eaten hot or cold. Serve them as a snack or a side dish.

A pillow of mashed potato, wrapped in dough and deep-fried.

*Knishes can be kept in the refrigerator for 7-10 days if left in vacuum sealed pouch. Please do not freeze knishes. Place the Kugel in it's frozen state on a flat surface/tray and allow to completely defrost (thaw).

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.

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.

Pierogies are simply dumplings that are typically filled with potatoes or cheeses (though you can truly fill them with anything) that are fried or sauteed and served with sour cream or butter. Gnocchi, however, is the Italian version made smaller and usually served like pasta with a sauce.

What they taste like: Pierogis are heartier and heftier than Asian dumplings like gyoza and Chinese potstickers. The dumpling wrapper is thicker and the filling is often rich. The dumpling itself is also bigger and heavier, and often topped with a sauce of melted butter.

In Polish pierogi is the plural form of pieróg (“dumpling”), but in English the word pierogi is usually treated as either singular or plural. In Polish tradition, the dumpling was introduced to the nation by the Dominican missionary St. Hyacinth, who died in Kraków in 1257.

Pierogi dough/skin is usually quite a bit thicker than gyoza, mandu or potsticker dough/skins and is more of a (with some exceptions) pasta-like thickness than asian dumplings. That is probably why pierogi is boiled first, as boiling would cook the thick dough more completely.