Jewish Soups: From Chicken Soup to Borscht and Beyond

The Universal Healer

If there is one food that transcends every denomination, every community, and every disagreement in Jewish life, it is soup. Specifically, chicken soup — the golden, fragrant, deeply nourishing bowl that has sustained Jewish families through illness, cold weather, Shabbat dinners, and existential crises for centuries.

But chicken soup is only the beginning. The Jewish soup tradition is vast — from the beet-red borscht of Ukraine to the mushroom-dark barley soups of Poland, from the cold sorrel schav of summer to the hearty lentil soups that echo the biblical story of Esau.

Chicken Soup: The Golden Standard

Chicken soup is the cornerstone of Ashkenazi Jewish cooking. Its preparation is both simple and endlessly debated — every family has its own recipe, its own secret, its own conviction that their version is definitive.

The basic method: a whole chicken (or parts, with bones) is simmered slowly with carrots, celery, onion, dill, parsley, and sometimes parsnip and turnip. The key is low heat, long cooking, and patience. The fat that rises to the surface — the schmaltz — can be skimmed for a lighter soup or left in for richer flavor.

Maimonides, the 12th-century physician and philosopher, prescribed chicken soup for the ill and weak. Centuries later, a study at the University of Nebraska confirmed that grandmothers were right — chicken soup has mild anti-inflammatory properties that can genuinely help with cold symptoms.

The soup is typically served with one of several accompaniments:

• Matzo balls (kneidlach): Dumplings made from matzo meal, eggs, and fat — either dense and heavy (“sinkers”) or light and fluffy (“floaters”), a debate as divisive as any in the Jewish world
• Egg noodles (lokshen): Thin, wide noodles in golden broth
• Kreplach: Meat-filled dumplings (see below)
• Rice or farfel: Common in Sephardi and simpler preparations

Borscht: The Ruby Soup

Borscht — beet soup — is one of the most iconic dishes of Eastern European Jewish cooking. The word itself (from Ukrainian/Russian) entered Yiddish and then English, becoming almost synonymous with Jewish immigrant culture (“the Borscht Belt” was the nickname for the Jewish resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains).

Jewish borscht comes in several varieties:

Hot borscht: Beets simmered with onion, sometimes cabbage and potato, seasoned with lemon juice or vinegar for tang, and served hot with a dollop of sour cream. Some versions include beef or flanken (short ribs), making it a hearty main-course soup.

Cold borscht: The summer version — chilled beet soup, thinned to a lighter consistency, served cold with sour cream and often a boiled potato or hard-boiled egg. Its vivid magenta color makes it one of the most visually striking dishes in any cuisine.

Cabbage borscht: A variation that emphasizes cabbage over beets, sometimes sweet-and-sour, popular in Lithuanian and Galician Jewish cooking.

Mushroom Barley Soup

If chicken soup is Jewish medicine, mushroom barley soup is Jewish comfort. This thick, earthy soup — dried mushrooms simmered with pearl barley, carrots, celery, onion, and dill — is one of the great cold-weather dishes of the Ashkenazi kitchen.

The soup’s heartiness reflects its origins in the forests of Eastern Europe, where wild mushrooms were abundant and barley was a staple grain. Dried mushrooms were used because fresh ones were seasonal, and the drying process concentrated their flavor into something dark, intense, and deeply savory.

Lentil Soup

Lentil soup connects Jewish cooking to its most ancient roots. The Torah itself contains a lentil soup story — Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red lentil stew (Genesis 25:34).

Lentil soup appears across the entire Jewish world — the red lentil soups of Sephardi and Middle Eastern cooking (seasoned with cumin, lemon, and sometimes turmeric), the brown lentil soups of European tradition, and countless local variations.

Lentils are also associated with mourning — their round shape symbolizes the cycle of life, and lentil dishes are traditionally served to mourners. At a house of mourning (shiva), a pot of lentil soup is a common and deeply meaningful offering.

Kreplach

Kreplach are Jewish dumplings — small pockets of thin dough filled with ground meat (traditionally leftover from Shabbat roast), sealed, and cooked in chicken soup. They are the Ashkenazi answer to Italian tortellini, Chinese wontons, and Polish pierogi — and like those dumplings, they likely evolved from ancient Central Asian traditions that traveled the Silk Road.

Kreplach are traditionally served on three occasions: the afternoon before Yom Kippur, on Hoshana Rabbah, and on Purim. The custom connects to the mystical idea that these are days when hidden things are revealed — just as the filling inside the kreplach is hidden inside the dough.

Schav and Other Rare Soups

Schav (cold sorrel soup) is one of the most distinctive — and most endangered — dishes in the Jewish soup repertoire. Made from sorrel leaves (a sour, spinach-like green), the soup is cooked, cooled, and served cold with sour cream. Its tart, lemony flavor was a refreshing summer staple, but as sorrel has become harder to find, schav has become increasingly rare.

Other soups worth knowing:

• Fruit soup: Cold, sweet soups made from cherries, plums, or mixed dried fruits — served as a starter or dessert in Hungarian and Romanian Jewish traditions
• Garlic soup: A simple but powerful healing soup in Polish Jewish tradition
• Split pea soup: A hearty winter staple, often made with a ham bone in non-Jewish versions but with a marrow bone or smoked turkey in Jewish kitchens

A Bowl of Memory

Every Jewish soup is more than food — it is memory in liquid form. The smell of chicken soup on a Friday afternoon is the smell of Shabbat arriving. The taste of borscht is the taste of a grandmother’s kitchen. The warmth of mushroom barley on a cold day is the warmth of a tradition that has sustained people through centuries of winters.

As the old Yiddish saying goes: “Worries go down better with soup than without.”