I Need Fool-Proof Matzo Ball Recipes

J: Well, two things are happening in my brain, actually. I'm outraged, but not at you guys. I'm outraged, because I feel like you guys just outed my mother-in-law's secret. That's probably what she's doing.

KK: I spoke to her before this call.

J: I knew it.

CM: She's on line two. Yeah, listen, in parsing out the ingredients on a matzo ball mix, like Kate, what are we looking at? It's matzo meal?

KK: Matzo meal, it's always eggs.

CM: Right. Well, so even in the mix, the way that you prepare it is you're adding fresh eggs to it. It usually has a little bit of chemical leavener, some seasonings. Kate, is there one that you prefer? It sounded like there were two that you've used.

KK: Yeah, there's Manischewitz, which everyone knows. They actually rebranded their packaging as of late.

CM: It's classy.

KK: Yeah, and then there's Streit's, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, it's S-T-R-E-I-T apostrophe S. I slightly prefer that one, but they're both very similar if you're looking at the ingredients and what you're adding in.

CM: You've got some options here. We want to pitch you on, listen, for the ultimate and foolproof matzo balls, Kate fully endorses mix. Also, Emma LaPerouc, one of our cooking editors, she fully endorses mix, and these are not people who are afraid to make a recipe from scratch.

KK: Something I will note before we get into it is that I still make a chicken stock from scratch. I think-

CM: Yeah, talk about that.

KK: What's really nice is obviously, you're having people over, you don't want them to just think that you dumped a few cans of chicken broth and some mix, which still requires some effort. They're not coming frozen. You're adding in eggs and oil, and you're putting them into walnut sized balls, and boiling them.

There's still effort there, but I think what's kind of a nice balance is, okay, maybe you're not making the matzo balls from scratch, but you are making the chicken stock from scratch.

CM: That's where I think you can kind of crush this. The recipe that I wanted to shout out for both matzo balls and for the actual broth itself is by Molly Baz, a former colleague here. Her matzo balls are called No-Nonsense Matzo Balls on BonAppétit.com, and the recipe that has both the broth and matzo balls is just called Matzo Ball Soup. We'll link to both of these in our show notes.

One of the things that I think really sets her broth apart is she's using a base of roasted chicken wings to get really nice richness and color to the broth. In addition, she's simmering some chicken legs in that prepared broth for nice, shreddy, tender, rich meat, and further kind of reinforcement of that broth.

She's got some aromatic veg, she's got a parsnip in there, which, listen, that would automatically disqualify it for me on any other day, but I'm feeling generous, and if you want to put parsnip in there, I can't physically restrain you from doing that, but everything else really checks out, carrots, parsley, black pepper-