Passover Cheese Blintzes Recipe | CDKitchen.com (2024)

FAQs

Why do Jews eat blintzes? ›

If you want to serve something special to break the fast on Yom Kippur, consider blintzes. These are very thin pancakes folded around a cheese filling and topped with butter, jam, berries or sour cream.

Certified Kosher by the Orthodox Union.

Serve the blintz: Heat a pat of butter over medium heat in a skillet. Fry blintz until browned on both sides. Transfer to a place and serve with sour cream or a fruit sauce or jam or your choice.

» Because the Torah allows eating only animals that both chew their cud and have cloven hooves, pork is prohibited. So are shellfish, lobsters, oysters, shrimp and clams, because the Old Testament says to eat only fish with fins and scales. Another rule prohibits mixing dairy with meat or poultry.

A blintz (Hebrew: חֲבִיתִית; Yiddish: בלינצע) is a rolled filled pancake in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, in essence a wrap based on a crepe or Russian blini .

Blintzes vs Crepes

The main difference is crepes are only cooked once, and be be served plain, without filings. Blintzes, are always served filled, usually with a cheese mixture, and are cooked twice; once when made, and again after they are filled and pan fried.

The Origin of the Blintz

The blintz originated from Eastern Europe from a Jewish community called Ashkenazi. The Slavic translation is “pancake” since it resembles a pancake. Traditional fillings include sweetened cheese with raisins.

Russian blinis tend to be thicker than blintzes (which came by way of Eastern Europe to the U.S. via Jewish immigrants) because blinis are made with a yeasted batter that's left overnight to rise, whereas blintzes — like crêpes — are made of flour, milk, and eggs.

Oats Are Allowed, But Oatmeal Definitely Isn't

Historically, eating chametz during Passover was enough of a trespass that the punishment, according to the Torah, is literally being expelled from the Jewish community in a practice known as karet/kareth.

Can Jews eat potatoes on Passover? ›

Potatoes are the answer to that yearly question, "what am I going to cook for Passover?" Instead of focusing on what you can't eat during Passover, enjoy what you can eat, like potatoes.

Chametz includes grains like wheat, oats, rye, barley and spelt, which are prohibited if they've had contact with water/moisture for longer than 18 minutes, leading to rising or “leavening.” Leavening agents, like yeast and sourdough, are also considered chametz.

Ricotta or fromage blanc can also be substituted. Both the crêpes and the filled blintzes can be made ahead of time; just cover and chill overnight or freeze for up to one month.

Uncooked blintzes can be frozen individually on a tray, then wrapped individually and frozen for up to 3 months. The cooked blintzes can be refrigerated for up to 1 day; they can be frozen, using the method for uncooked blintzes.

Their very brief window of departure meant there was no time to properly bake bread, which needs hours to rise, so the Israelites could only bring an unleavened version with them. As all Jewish people must annually remember the Exodus as if they had personally been there, eating matzo helps fulfill this commandment.

The first known mention of apples and honey being eaten on Rosh Hashanah comes from the 14th-century legal work Arba'ah Turim, which states that German Jews ate apples and honey in order to bring sweetness into the New Year.

In part, the bagel became largely associated with Jewish culture because boiling bread before toasting it served as a loophole to get around the laws that banned Jews in Poland from baking bread.

Hence, the custom of eating both apples and honey as food on Rosh Hashanah, not only for their nutritive value but especially because of their value as symbols. Honey, into which we dip apples is an expression of hope that sweetness will mark the lives of Jews in the coming year.