Home > Gefilte fish

For gefilte fish, the fish is first deboned, often while still at the market. Next, the fish is ground into a fine paste and boiled with carrots and onions. It is then stuffed into a whole fish, giving it the name gefilte or "stuffed", although this step is often (somewhat paradoxically) omitted. It is often served with a horseradish and beet mixture, known as chrain.

Gefilte fish can be either sweet (generally among Jews of German, Austro-Hungarian and Polish descent) or seasoned with salt and pepper (common among Jews of Russian and Ukrainian descent). Traditionally, cheap fish such as carp, pike, or whitefish were used to make gefilte fish, but more recently other fish with white flesh have been used, and there is even a pink variation using salmon.

An explanation for the popularity of gefilte fish is its ease of consumption on the Sabbath. Jewish law dictates that removing bones from fish falls under "separating" (borer), one of the 39 forbidden activities on the Sabbath. Ground and bone-free fish removes this problem. This makes gefilte fish a common starter for one of the three traditional Sabbath meals.