Try a Vegetarian Adaptation of Kreplach, Jewish Dumplings, Passed Down Through the Generations

Family Recipe: Jewish American Style premieres Sunday, April 5 at 6:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream via the PBS app by WTTW Passport members.
Get more recipes, food news, and stories at wttw.com/food or by signing up for our Deep Dish newsletter. 

When Micah Siva’s now-husband met her grandmother for the first time, they made kreplach together. 

“It’s something that we would always do together,” says Siva of the boiled, filled dumplings her grandmother often served at Jewish holidays, recalling “eating them with her and stealing them from the pan” or indulging in one “the next day cold out of the fridge in my hand.”

When Siva’s grandmother, who was around 90 when she met Siva’s husband, died, Siva decided to make kreplach herself, to “mourn but also celebrate.” 

She’s a vegetarian now, so she doesn’t fill the dumplings with the meat her grandmother used, instead opting for potatoes, sweet potato, tofu, or bean fillings. Her grandmother “taught me that kreplach were meant to use up leftovers and stretch whatever you had,” she says. “I just have different sorts of leftovers as a vegetarian millennial, not a 90-year-old woman with Ukrainian roots.”

Siva’s kreplach – which you can try from a recipe below – are an encapsulation of how family recipes carry memories and change with the imprint of each successive generation over time, a process explored through various dishes in Family Recipe: Jewish American Style, a PBS program that’s available to stream via the PBS app by WTTW Passport members and airs on WTTW Sunday, April 5 at 6:00 pm.

Siva is a dietitian with culinary school training who worked on Buzzfeed’s popular Tasty videos in the United Kingdom and has published Nosh: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine. She now lives in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park and works as a recipe developer who also hosts a women’s Shabbat club.

“I wouldn’t do what I do now if it wasn’t for my grandmother and sitting in the kitchen with her,” Siva says. She often makes kreplach on the anniversary of her grandmother’s death or birthday, and makes sure that she has some ready for her own mom when she comes to visit.

“I think with any dumpling you should only make them for people that you really love, because they’re such a pain and they make such a mess,” she says. But the kreplach are worth it to celebrate and memorialize her grandmother with her family, including her own son.

Sharing her version of her grandmother’s recipe in Family Recipe, Siva says, is “a really nice way to honor her and everything that she taught me and the values of hospitality and love through food that she instilled.”

Vegetarian Kreplach

By Micah Siva

Ingredients

For the dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour
Zest of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup water

For the filling:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups mashed potatoes
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

For assembly:
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoon water

Directions

1. Make the dough: Combine the flour, lemon zest, and salt in a food processor. With the blade running, add eggs and olive oil. Add additional water as needed (1 tablespoon at a time) until a dough forms. Roll into a ball, and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 15-30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened and golden, about 15-20 minutes. Add to the mashed potatoes and season generously with salt and pepper.

3. For assembly: Combine cornstarch and water in a small bowl.

4. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to 1/8th-inch thickness. Use a paring knife or pizza roller to cut the dough into 3-inch squares.

5. Using your finger, run the cornstarch mixture around the edges of each square. This acts as glue.

6. Place 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of potato filling in the middle of each square.

7. Fold over into a triangle and join the corner ends, forming a circular shape.

8. Place on a floured tray and repeat with all the filling and dough.

9. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Cook the kreplach for 2-3 minutes or until they float to the surface.

10. Serve with broth, or alongside fried onions.