Somewhere in America right now, a bubbe is standing over a pan of hot oil, waving away the smoke alarm with a dish towel and insisting that everything is completely under control. This is Hanukkah. This is the whole holiday in one image, and honestly, we would not have it any other way.
Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, runs for eight nights, and if you strip away the candles and the dreidels and the arguing over toppings, what you are left with is a very old, very delicious idea: we fry things because oil is the point. So before you light the first candle, let us talk about the food. All of it.
Why Everything Is Fried
Start with the story, because the food only makes sense once you know it. More than two thousand years ago, the Maccabees, a scrappy band of Jewish fighters, took back the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been seized and defiled. When they went to rededicate it and relight the menorah, tradition holds that they found only a single small jar of consecrated oil, enough for one day. It burned for eight.
That is the miracle Hanukkah celebrates, and it is why the kitchen matters as much as the candles. We eat foods fried in oil to remember the oil that would not quit. It is theology you can taste, which is the best kind.
The Latke, and the War Over What Goes On Top
The latke is the headliner, the crispy potato pancake that shows up every single night and never overstays its welcome. Grated potato, onion, egg, a little flour or matzo meal, squeezed dry and fried in oil until the edges go golden and lacy. Done right, it is crunchy outside, tender inside, and gone in about four seconds.
And then comes the fight. Every Jewish family in America is divided, gently but permanently, into two camps: applesauce or sour cream. The applesauce faction argues for the sweet-and-savory contrast, the old-country comfort of it. The sour cream loyalists counter that nothing cuts through fried potato like a cool, tangy dollop. There is no winner. There has never been a winner. This is a debate we are contractually obligated to have every year, and we will happily have it with you too. If you have strong opinions about latkes, you are already part of the mishpucha.
A word of respect for the cook, by the way. Frying latkes for a crowd is a genuine labor of love, performed in a cloud of oniony smoke while everyone else sits comfortably in the other room. Go thank whoever is at the stove. Better yet, hand them a drink.
Sufganiyot and the Rest of the Fried Lineup
If latkes are the American Hanukkah star, sufganiyot are the co-headliner, especially in Israel, where bakeries stack them to the ceiling for weeks.
If latkes are the American Hanukkah star, sufganiyot are the co-headliner, especially in Israel, where bakeries stack them to the ceiling for weeks. A sufganiyah is a round jelly doughnut, deep-fried and dusted with powdered sugar, usually filled with jam and increasingly with anything a baker can dream up. Same principle as the latke: fried in oil, eaten with joy, no apologies offered.
Different Jewish communities brought their own fried treasures to the table too. Sephardic and Mizrahi families might make bimuelos or other fried dough soaked in syrup or honey. The common thread across every tradition is the sizzle. When in doubt on Hanukkah, if it can be fried, it belongs.
Brisket: The One That Is Not Fried, and Nobody Cares
Not everything on the Hanukkah table came out of the oil. Brisket is the great slow-cooked anchor of Jewish-American holiday cooking, a tough cut of beef braised low and long until it surrenders into something tender enough to cut with a fork. It is not technically a Hanukkah food in the oil-miracle sense, but try telling that to a family expecting brisket. Some traditions are not written down in any book. They are simply understood, passed from one generation of fressers to the next, and this is one of them. Brisket is the taste of Jewish holidays in general, the dish people quietly measure against their own grandmother's version forever.
Gelt, Dreidels, and the Sweet Finish
Then there is gelt, the chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil that every Jewish kid learns to spot from across the room. The word gelt is simply Yiddish for money, and the tradition of giving a little Hanukkah money is genuinely old. The chocolate version is the fun modern cousin, doubling as the stakes in a game of dreidel, the four-sided spinning top whose letters stand for a Hebrew phrase meaning a great miracle happened there.
Fair warning: nobody has ever actually eaten Hanukkah gelt for the flavor. That is not the point. The point is the ritual of it, the small pile of foil coins, the arguing over dreidel spins, the way it makes a Tuesday night in December feel like something.
Come for the Latkes, Stay for the Whole Thing
Here is the beautiful part. You do not have to be Jewish to pull up a chair. If you have a friend who invites you over during Hanukkah, say yes, bring an appetite, and be ready to pick a side in the applesauce war. Curiosity done with respect is always welcome at this table. If you want to understand how the holiday sits alongside the season around it, we get into the great Hanukkah vs. Christmas conversation elsewhere, and if you would rather just start cooking, our recipes are a good place to begin.
Because in the end, Hanukkah is a food holiday wearing a history lesson, or maybe a history lesson wearing an apron. The candles remind us that a little light lasts longer than anyone expects. The latkes remind us that oil is worth celebrating. And the crowded, noisy, slightly-too-warm kitchen reminds us that the real miracle was always the people around the table. For more of where those flavors come from, wander through the dishes that built the Jewish-American kitchen.
Chag Sameach. Happy Hanukkah. Now go flip that latke before it burns.