Matzo Magic

The key to this cozy and comforting soup? It’s all about the matzo balls.

- produced by PAIGE GRANDJEAN,photography by MORGAN HUNT WARD

Tender matzo balls are served in a rich and flavorful chicken stock in this Ultimate Matzo Ball Soup (p. 27).

MATZO BALL SOUP

EVERY PASSOVER, I—like most Jews—look forward to one dish in particular: matzo ball soup. When my mom made it, the matzo balls were consistently, ethereally fluffy. They’d gently float on the surface of the broth, and you could run a spoon through them with no effort. To me, these “floaters” were precisely what matzo balls should taste and feel like.

But the first time I attended a Passover Seder at my aunt and uncle’s house, I was thrown for a loop. When the matzo ball soup came out, the dumplings were firm, compact, and chewy. This sparked a debate around the table. My cousins grew up eating firm matzo balls with a pronounced matzo meal flavor, otherwise known as “sinkers,” and to them, these were the Platonic ideal. How could two people from the same bloodline have such different perspectives?

It turns out, the Great Matzo Ball Debate is a worldwide phenomenon. When I asked professional chefs if they preferred floaters or sinkers, the answers were wildly inconsistent. “I absolutely want a light, fluffy matzo ball that rests buoyantly in the broth,” 2022 F&W Best New Chef Caroline Schiff told me. “I love a dense matzo ball,” said Eli Sussman, chef and co-owner of Gertrude’s in Brooklyn. “I want to be able to cut it into pieces and not have it completely dissolve.”