Let Me Tell You About My Balls…My Matzo Balls

If you follow my Instagram (ahem, @lookwhattarynate), you’ve probably noticed the mildly absurd amount of matzo ball soup I make for someone who lives alone and isn’t a 75 year old Jewish grandma. In fact, I actually love the stuff so much, this isn’t even the first article I’ve written about it, but a bunch of you were asking for my recipe so here we go. 

To be clear: this isn’t so much of a recipe (because I don’t really believe in them) but I’ll walk you through the steps I take when I make it. 

Matzo ball soup is just straightforward chicken soup but then with…you guessed it, matzo balls. I’ll explain what they are in a minute.

But first, soup.

INGREDIENTS (This makes one pot, which is probably 6-8 servings.)

• *Chicken (see note below on this)
• 2-3 large carrots, chopped into 1” chunks
• Half a bunch of celery, chopped into 1” chunks
• One yellow or white onion, chopped into 1” chunks 
• Salt
• Pepper
• Dill
• Bay leaves
• Olive Oil
• Water

*You’ll want dark meat chicken- legs and thighs definitely make the best soup. If you’re cool and live in a real house with real storage space and you own a massive stockpot, you can use an entire chicken. But if you’re a city dweller and have a normal-sized stockpot, you’ll need four pieces of chicken. 

The Steps

Step 1: Season your chicken with salt and pepper on both sides. Don’t be shy about this. 

Step 2: Heat up some olive oil in your stockpot (medium heat) and toss in your vegetables. Gently salt them and sauté until they start to sweat and release some moisture. You should see them lose a little color as well. 

Step 3: Take your liberally seasoned chicken pieces and nestle them into the pot so each piece is making some contact with the bottom of the pot. You probably have to scooch some veggies out of the way to make room. 

Step 4: Let the chicken sit for about five minutes then flip. You should see some nice color form on the skin of the chicken. 

Step 5: Fill up the pot with room temperature water. I like to fill another cup and pour it in that way so I don’t have to carry a heavy hot pot to the sink. Leave about 2 inches of room from the top. 

Step 5: Sprinkle two huge pinches of salt and a bunch of black pepper, plus some dill and bay leaves. Start small, you can season again later.

Step 6: Turn the heat down to low, cover the pot, and walk away.

Good chicken soup needs to sit for a while. I mean like 3-4 hours. If the heat is too high, you’ll lose a lot of moisture to evaporation which means a couple of things:

1. Your flavor will be much more concentrated since you’re reducing the water content.
2. But you also will lose volume so if you’re trying to feed a bunch of folks, you may not have enough. 

Check on it regularly to make sure the heat isn’t too high and give it a stir. The chicken can stay in there for quite a while. It won’t dry out since it’s being cooked in liquid, but it will fall off the bone which will make the bones harder to find. I like to pull them out after a couple hours, pull the meat off, and then drop the bones back in. All the good fat in there is what makes for good soup! 

And now, the balls

(Sorry, it’s a bad joke but it’s still funny. Yes, I know, I’m 5. Blame my father.)

Ready for the deep dark secret to how I make my matzo balls?

….I follow the recipe on the Manischewitz can of matzo meal.

OH, THE HORROR. I KNOW.

I’ll walk you through it anyway. 

I like to buy the matzo meal in a can, not in the boxes because it’s just straight up matzo meal which means I can season it myself and there’s no extra preservatives or whatever in there.

Ingredients

You need:

• 1 cup matzo meal
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp seltzer water/chicken stock/water
• Salt plus some other fun seasonings: garlic powder, onion powder, garlic salt, Trader Joe’s Onion Salt (addicted, I swear)

This recipe makes like 8 golf ball-sized balls so if you’re me and you eat 8 in one sitting, you probably want to double or triple the recipe. 

Pro-tip: I started using seltzer water instead of stock for my additional liquid and WOAH did they get fluffy! I like my matzo balls a little bit on the firm side but with some added fluff so the bubbly water really helped. 

The Process

You’re just going to stir together all those ingredients I listed in a medium-sized bowl. Make sure everything is super well distributed or you’re going to get some nasty textures in there. Season more than you think you need to- we all know how dry and boring matzo is- it’s no different in this form. 

Set the bowl in the fridge for exactly 20 minutes. I’m serious, time it.

While that’s getting chilly, boil a medium-sized pot of salted water. Don’t fill it up too high because your balls will need room to puff up.

After your 20 minutes are up, take out your bowl of strange paste, wet your hands, and begin forming the balls. You want your hands wet or the goo will stick to them. Go for golf ball sized to get a good amount out of the recipe. Drop them straight into the water and once you’ve rolled all the balls, cover the pot and turn the water down to medium-high. 

You really only need about 10-12 minutes but check on them a couple of times to make sure they’re getting evenly cooked- you may have to flip them over. Take one out, split it open, and check the color of the insides. If it’s still darker beige, that means it’s not fully cooked- they’ll get lighter as they heat up. Once done, scoop them out and plop them in your soup pot and BOOM. You’re ready to go.

Some Notes

• Check on your soup many times. Make sure you’re tasting and seasoning appropriately. Remember, this pot is mostly water which means it needs help getting flavorful.
• Don’t forget to scoop out the bones before serving!
• I was serious about the 20-minute mark for the matzo balls- any more and they get too hard, any less and they don’t firm up enough.
• You can add lots of fresh herb into the soup- dill, parsley, etc.- but I would keep the matzo ball seasonings to dry powders only.
• Black pepper looks super weird in your matzo balls- pepper the soup instead. 

And there you have it, people. You get to see behind the wizard’s curtain. Feel free to send me a note with any questions or even better, with photos of your own soup!