27 of Our Favorite Passover Recipes to Serve at Your Seder (2024)

FAQs

What foods are served at a Passover seder? ›

Traditions among Ashkenazi Jews generally include gefilte fish (poached fish dumplings), matzo ball soup, brisket or roast chicken, potato kugel (somewhat like a casserole) and tzimmes, a stew of carrots and prunes, sometimes including potatoes or sweet potatoes.

The Passover seder meal usually begins with a hard-boiled egg dipped in salt water. Then, the rest of the meal features matzah ball soup, brisket, and even matzah lasagna in some communities. Dessert often includes ice cream, cheesecake, or flourless chocolate cakes.

The SEDER (SADER) - the Passover meal - is the central celebration of the Passover. It's origin stems from our text today. The entire extended family is to come together. They go through the meal and the retelling of the story in first person as if they had been one of the slaves freed from Pharaoh's bondage.

Order and ritual are very important in the seder—so important that they are even reflected in its name: the English word seder is a transliteration of the Hebrew word sēdher, meaning “order.” The courses in the meal, as well as blessings, prayers, stories, and songs, are recorded in the Haggadah, a book that lays out ...

The tradition goes back to the 13th century, when custom dictated a prohibition against wheat, barley, oats, rice, rye and spelt, Rabbi Amy Levin said on NPR in 2016.

During Passover, Ashkenazi Jews traditionally stay away from not only leavened foods like bread, namely barley, oats, rye, spelt, and wheat, but also legumes, rice, seeds, and corn. The ban has been in place since the 13th century, but it's always been controversial.

At first glance the answer seems obvious: of course it was, notwithstanding the fact that it would have been very different from the seder we know today and would not have been called a "seder" at the time. The Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—unequivocally assert that the Last Supper was a Passover meal.

Families hold a seder on the first and sometimes second night of Passover. It is fundamentally a religious service set around a dinner table, where the order in which participants eat, pray, drink wine, sing, discuss current social justice issues and tell stories is prescribed by a central book called the Haggadah.

In a Christian Seder, the afikomen, or broken middle matzo, which is eaten for dessert, is reimagined as the bread of the Eucharist, symbolic of Christ. Because Jesus's Last Supper was a Seder, some Christians have begun to celebrate the holiday to be more like Christ.

Many seder plates include an orange, which is attributed to Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College. Heschel included an orange in recognition of gay and lesbian Jews, and others who are marginalized in the Jewish community.

What is a typical Passover dinner menu? ›

Traditional dishes include kugel (a casserole recipe made with potatoes), tzimmes (a roasted vegetable dish made with dried fruits), and Passover desserts like macaroons (a coconut cookie made without any flour).

Which means the seder can range from under 30 minutes (followed by a leisurely meal) to literally all night long. Traditionally, the seder has two parts: readings and rituals for before the meal is served, and readings and songs that follow the meal.

At a Passover seder, the following traditional items are on the table: Seder plate: The seder plate (there's usually one per table) holds at least six of the ritual items that are talked about during the seder: the shankbone, karpas, chazeret, charoset, maror, and egg.

During the seder the story of Passover is told through readings, songs, prayers, drinking wine, and eating specific foods. And it is customary for everyone seated at the Passover table (yes, even the non-Jews) to participate in the rituals.

The Torah's Book of Exodus, Chapter 12, offers one description of the instructions for Passover fare: “The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: [Each household] shall eat [lamb] roasted over the fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs” (Jewish Publication Society translation).