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Helzel (from ) or gefilte helzel is an
Ashkenazi Jewish dish. It is a sort of
sausage
A sausage is a type of meat product usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs, may be included as fillers or extenders.
...
made from poultry neck skin stuffed with flour,
semolina
Semolina is the name given to roughly milled durum wheat mainly used in making pasta and sweet puddings. The term ''semolina'' is also used to designate coarse millings of other varieties of wheat, and sometimes other grains (such as rice or ma ...
,
bread crumbs
Breadcrumbs are a culinary ingredient consisting of flour or crumbled bread of varying dryness, sometimes with seasonings added. They are used for a variety of purposes, including breading or crumbing foods before frying (such as breaded cut ...
or
matzo meal (when cooked on
Passover
Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Biblical Egypt, Egypt.
According to the Book of Exodus, God in ...
),
schmaltz, and fried onions and sewn up with a thread.
Chicken or goose necks are commonly used but duck or turkey necks can be substituted. The stuffing can also include internal meats, such as chopped heart, gizzard, liver. Sometimes the stuffing is flavored with garlic and black pepper. Helzel may be cooked in chicken soup or used as an ingredient in
cholent. Because of its sausage shape and the flour-based stuffing, helzel is sometimes called "false
kishke
Kishka or kishke (Belarusian language, Belarusian: кішка, ''kishka'' ; Czech language, Czech: ''jelito'' ; Slovak language, Slovak: ''krvavnica'' (regionally also ''hurka''); ; Romanian language, Romanian: ''chişcă''; Yiddish language, Yi ...
".
The name derives from
Yiddish
Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
( 'neck') which in turn stems from German .
Until well into the 20th century, the dish was a
comfort food
Comfort food is food that provides a nostalgic or sentimental value to someone and may be characterized by its high caloric nature associated with childhood or home cooking. The nostalgia may be specific to an individual or it may apply to a ...
of
Ashkenazim
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language ...
typically served on
Shabbat
Shabbat (, , or ; , , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the seven-day week, week—i.e., Friday prayer, Friday–Saturday. On this day, religious Jews ...
and
Jewish Holidays
Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' (, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed by Jews throughout the Hebrew calendar.This article focuses on practices of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism. ...
.
In the 20th and into the 21st centuries, its popularity has declined.
Similar dishes
The Ashkenazi helzel bears a similarity to ''tebit'', an
Iraqi Jewish variant of ''
hamin'', which includes a whole chicken skin filled with a mixture of rice, chopped chicken meat, and herbs.
See also
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List of chicken dishes
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List of sausage dishes
This is a list of notable sausage dishes, in which sausage is used as a primary ingredient or as a significant component of a dish.
Sausage dishes
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List of stuffed dishes
This is a list of stuffed dishes, comprising dishes and foods that are prepared with various fillings and stuffings. Some dishes are not actually stuffed; the added ingredients are simply spread atop the base food, as one cannot truly stuff an oys ...
Notes
References
External links
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{{Chicken dishes, state=collapsed
Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine
Sausages
Stuffed dishes
Chicken dishes
Semolina dishes
Shabbat food
Historical foods