Last year I didn’t have time to share my Pesach menu with you here, but I’ve pulled it out to begin making plans for this year, and am sharing it now in case it will be helpful for your planning. I also looked at my notes of the quanties of groceries that I used, as a guide for amounts this year.
Due to the birth of a new grandson on Sunday, and guest cancellations as a result of the war, we won’t be having as large a crowd as we did last year. We’ll be able to cut these amounts somewhat, but not dramatically, since we’ll still be hosting a good amount of family.
Last year’s shopping list:
- 50 kg potatoes
- 1 case baby potatoes
- 25 kg sweet potatoes
- 25 kg carrots
- 1.5 cases onions
- 2 pkg celery
- 1 kg bag peeled garlic
- 1 case clementines
- 1 case pomelos
- 4 cases tomatoes
- 1 case peppers
- 2 large heads cabbage
- 1 case whole chicken
- 3 salmon filets
- 4 kg beef tongue
- 4 cases chicken wings
- approximately 40 kg/two cases beef
- 2 kg hand shmura matza
- 5.5 kg machine shmura matza
- 5 kg non shmura machine matza
- 6 liters walnut oil
- 2 liters olive oil
- 2 liters lemon juice
- 1 liter vinegar
- 12 bottles wine
- 12 bottles grape juice
- 12 bottles seltzer
- 1.5 kg ground nuts
- 12 trays of eggs, 30 per tray
My house is stacked with cases of produce when Pesach begins, and everyone who comes in thinks I’ve overbought. Then two days go by, and they can’t believe that we’ve already gone through 25 kg of potatoes!
This isn’t an exhaustive list – there are vegetables that I didn’t list, like cucumbers, zucchini, fennel and kohlrabi. I bought a lot of dairy (cottage cheese, cream cheese, hard cheese, butter). There were all of the smaller items like spices, olives and pickles, and baking ingredients. But this list was what we actually used during the week of Pesach; we didn’t have much left over.
As you look at this, you may be able to understand why last year I wrote about how much work the cooking was for me as one person feeding a crowd of 20 daily. The quantities are large – when it says matbucha, that was six kg initially made and eaten in the first two days, followed by making a sixteen liter pot full for the rest of Pesach – and every single thing is made from scratch.
While my menu plan may change somewhat to integrate produce from great vegetable sales in the week or two before Pesach, this is the overall plan that I’ll be working with. Everyone makes their own breakfasts, which are usually omelets, shakshuka, matza brei, matza and spreads, and fruits. Then we have a large meat meal with everyone together each day of Pesach.
I make large quantities of dips before Pesach, and then we serve them every day at the meals, even if they aren’t listed. When I make kugels, I make four times a recipe, so I can put some in the freezer and pull them out as needed. I’ll add in more desserts as we get closer, since I like to try out new recipes every year; this year I’ve bought a lot of almond flour to play around with.
2026 Pesach Menu Plan
erev Pesach – meat vegetable soup, doughless potato knishes
Pesach night 1, seder – soup, roast, potato squash saute, Israeli salad, coleslaw, macaroons, ice cream
Pesach day 1, lunch – baked tilapia, matbucha, mayonnaise, tomato salad, marinated kohlrabi and carrots, potato kugel, onion kugel
Chol hamoed – Day 1 – breakfast – shakshuka; late lunch – pot roast with potatoes and sweet potatoes, salads
Shabbos night – soup, roast, dilled lemon carrot salad, tomato cucumber salad, sweet potatoes with carrots, potato kugel, chocolate chip cookies
Shabbos day lunch – mock liver, salmon, fennel orange salad, tomato onion salad, chicken, wings, roasted baby potatoes, butternut squash kugel, onion kugel, vegetable kugel, chocolate chip bars
Chol hamoed Day 3 – meat, baby potatoes, vegetable kugel, roasted eggplant and peppers, tomato salad
Chol hamoed Day 4 – fennel salad, tomato salad, marinated carrots and kohlrabi, matbucha, onion pie, sweet potatoes and potatoes, meat
Chol hamoed Day 5 – baby ribs, potato zucchini saute, tomato salad, health salad (marinated zucchini, carrots, red pepper, onion)
Last day of Pesach, dinner – soup, roast sweet potatoes, baby potatoes, lemony kohlrabi sticks, roast, macaroons
lunch – salmon, onion dip, fresh tomato dip, matbucha, mock liver, mayo, tongue, chicken, wings, dilled carrot salad, potato kugel, chocolate chip cake
Avivah
8 Responses
Re almond flour:
This is another one of our Pesach classics. Everyone loves it, and it goes together really quickly and easily. I have no idea what “mini chocolate chips” are, I use regular ones and everyone is happy. I don’t grease anything, just put a piece of baking paper in a pan and it’s good. And no, I don’t use beaters either. Just a spoon. If baking in a toaster oven with a grill, bake it covered (it will take longer).
Chocolate Chip Cookie Blondie Bars Makes 24 (2 inch square bars)
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup neutral oil, plus extra for greasing pan
2 tablespoons vanilla sugar
3 ¼ cups ground almonds
¼ cup potato starch
1 cup mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13-inch pan. Press in a piece of parchment paper that is big enough to cover the bottom and sides of the pan. Grease the top and sides of the parchment. Set it aside.
Place the sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla sugar into a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until combined. Add the ground almonds and potato starch and mix well. Add the chocolate chips and mix to distribute.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and use a spatula to spread it evenly.
Bake for 35 minutes or until the edges are brown, or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs on it. Let it cool. Loft out the parchment and then cut into squares or bars. Store at room temperature for up to five days or freeze up to three months.
Thank you so much for sharing your recipe, Shira! I love getting tried and trued recipes.
This is so helpful, though so far away from me at this point in my preparations 🙂
When you write meat – do you mean a roast and then slices of meat? or cubes of meat in a stew?
I love the variety of dips, vegetables and salads.
I almost always make meat as a roast, served sliced, so it’s separate from the other ingredients for those who don’t eat the other foods.
Mazel tov on the birth of a new grandson!! Wishing you and his parents a lot of nachas and may you all see him ltorah chuppa umaasim tovim!
Your menu sounds wonderful (and like a lot of work! How do you manage to be in the kitchen for so much time with young children at home?)
I am always fascinated by how many potatoes some people use on Pesach. I have a neighbor who before Pesach has tons and tons of potatoes (maybe also 50 kg, as you listed?) stored outside of her door for her large family, bli ayin hara.
We barely use any potatoes on Pesach (maybe 1-2 kg to make french fries for my kids). But that’s probably because we eat kitniyot, and I find potatoes not productive for my weight watching so I don’t use them much all year around (but they are certainly my favorite carb/vegetable!)
Thank you for the mazel tov, Shani!
Your question about how to be in the kitchen with young children at home is a good one. When I had teenagers living at home they were able to help out, so even though it looks like four kids at home is less than 9 or 10, it’s actually much harder now because there’s no one to share the work. This year I’ll turn over earlier so I can begin cooking sooner (last year we did the renovation so I couldn’t turn over until the kitchen was finished), and I’ll ask for more help. So I say now, but we’ll see when it comes to it!
I don’t use matza as an ingredient, so potatoes are the starch for Pesach – Pesach rolls, knishes, boiled, roasted, fried….:)
what jumped out at me with your menu is that pretty much every item (if not every single item) requires preparation- cutting, cooking, seasoning, multiple ingredients. and there are many types of dishes. it’s a matter of preference, but it adds a ton of work. and probably people take some of everything, eat more than they should (plenty of vegetables, but also starches), and things get used up faster. i serve a meat, a starch (or matza and spreads, which does get expensive in large quantities but we’re fewer and smaller people) and a vegetable (often israeli salad, cut larger than israelis will tolerate, and unseasoned). i make mayo, hot sauce, dressing, maybe avocado spread. brunch is cooked when i feel like it (eggs, gnocchi, etc), and there’s always matza and spreads and yogurt and cheese. i have one kid with celiac who eats a lot of oat matza, i can’t put our matza in food, nor can i use hers (we don’t eat oat matza on pesach. and it costs a fortune). i do also buy a bunch of prepared stuff and packaged snacks, esp to take on trips.
TG – Thanks for sharing how you do things in your home!
What I do doesn’t sound dramatically different than what you do, other than an additional salad or side dish. There’s a very, very big difference between cooking for children and cooking for a large crowd of adults. I cooked more simply for Pesach when my children were younger, too, and my children were home to help with the food preparation. I don’t remember ever feeling Pesach cooking was overwhelming until last year.
The nature of all choices is either you do the work, or you pay someone else to do the work. I don’t buy ready made or catered food, so that means I do the work. If someone can afford to buy everything and it works for them, that’s great, but it isn’t a viable choice for us. So that leaves the work involved in making fresh foods from scratch for a crowd.
Chol hamoed meals for us are holiday meals, and the food is part of the simchas hachag. Most of what I make is on the simpler side – roast chicken and meat are super simple, I don’t make any elaborate cakes, kugels,kreplach, bletlach, etc, but it’s true that even in the absence of patchke foods, everything takes time! If I see that my planned menu is more than what I have time and energy for, I’ll make adjustments and cut back.
It’s really important that Pesach feels like a holiday for me to enjoy as well, and I’ll be taking whatever steps I can to make sure I have time to relax with everyone rather than spending hours in the kitchen.