At the Israeli Table: Many Food Traditions, Many Influences

Use the regional background below as a starting point for exploring the food, rather than expecting one dish to represent every household. Food traditions differ within a country and continue to change through travel, migration, and everyday cooking.

In this story

Overview Foods Egg dishes Baked dishes, cookies, pastries, rugelach Confections, sweets and snack foods Non-kosher foods Street foods

Overview

Israeli cuisine primarily comprises dishes brought from the Jewish diaspora, and has more recently been defined by the development of a notable fusion cuisine characterized by the mixing of Jewish cuisine and Arab cuisine. It also blends together the culinary traditions of the various diaspora groups, namely those of Middle Eastern Jews with roots in Southwest Asia and North Africa, Sephardi Jews from Iberia, and Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.

The country's cuisine also incorporates food and drinks traditionally included in other Middle Eastern cuisines (e.g., Iranian cuisine from Persian Jews and Turkish cuisine from Turkish Jews) as well as in Mediterranean cuisines, such that spices like za'atar and foods such as falafel, hummus, msabbaha, shakshouka, and couscous are now widely popular in Israel. However, the identification of Arab dishes as Israeli has led to accusations of cultural appropriation against Israel by Palestinians and other Arabs.

Other influences on the cuisine are the availability of foods common to the Mediterranean, especially certain kinds of fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and fish; the tradition of observing kashrut; and food customs and traditions (minhag) specific to Shabbat and other Jewish holidays. Examples of these foods include challah, jachnun, malawach, gefilte fish, hamin, me'orav yerushalmi, and sufganiyot.

New dishes based on agricultural products such as oranges, avocados, dairy products, and fish, and others based on world trends have been introduced over the years, and chefs trained abroad have brought in elements of other international cuisines.

Foods

Israel does not have a universally recognized national dish; in previous years this was considered to be falafel, deep-fried balls of seasoned, ground chickpeas. Street vendors throughout Israel used to sell falafel. It was a favorite "street food" for decades and is still popular as a mezze dish or as a top-up for hummus-in-pita, though it is less common nowadays as a sole filling in pita because people are more aware of the health effects of deep-frying food in oil.

The Israeli breakfast has always been largely healthy, by today's standards, and one book called the Israeli breakfast "the Jewish state's contribution to world cuisine".

Egg dishes

Shakshuka, a North-African dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, is a national favorite, especially in the winter. It is traditionally served up in a cast-iron pan with bread to mop up the sauce. Some variations of the dish are cooked with liberal use of ingredients such as eggplant, chili peppers, hot paprika, spinach, feta cheese or safed cheese.

Omelettes are seasoned with onions, herbs such as dill seeds (shamir), spinach, parsley, mint, coriander and mallow with spices such as turmeric, cumin, sumac, cinnamon and cloves and with cheese such as safed and feta.

Haminados are eggs that are baked after being boiled, served alongside stew or meals; in hamin they are used in the morning for breakfast, also sometimes replacing the usual egg in sabich. They are also eaten as a breakfast alongside jachnun, grated tomatoes and skhug.

Baked dishes, cookies, pastries, rugelach

There is a strong tradition of home baking in Israel arising from the years when there were very few bakeries to meet demand. Many professional bakers came to Israel from Central Europe and founded local pastry shops and bakeries, often called konditoria, thus shaping local tastes and preferences.

There is now a local style with a wide selection of cakes and pastries that includes influences from other cuisines and combines traditional European ingredients with Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern ingredients, such as halva, phyllo dough, dates, and rose water.

Examples include citrus-flavored semolina cakes, moistened with syrup and called basbousa, tishpishti or revani in Sephardic bakeries. The Ashkenazi babka has been adapted to include halva or chocolate spread, in addition to the old-fashioned cinnamon. There are also many varieties of apple cake. Cookies made with crushed dates (ma'amoul) are served with coffee or tea, as throughout the Middle East.

Confections, sweets and snack foods

Baklava is a nut-filled phyllo pastry sweetened with syrup served at celebrations in Jewish communities who originated in the Middle East. It is also often served in restaurants as dessert, along with small cups of Turkish coffee.

Kadaif is a pastry made from long thin noodle threads filled with walnuts or pistachios and sweetened with syrup; it is served alongside baklava.

Halva is a sweet, made from tehina and sugar, and is popular in Israel. It is used to make original desserts like halva parfait.

Ma'amoul are small shortbread pastries filled with dates, pistachios or walnuts (or occasionally almonds, figs, or other fillings).

Non-kosher foods

Foods variously prohibited in Jewish dietary laws (kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (halal) may also be included in pluralistic Israel's diverse cuisine. Although partly legally restricted, pork and shellfish are available at many non-kosher restaurants (only around a third of Israeli restaurants have a kosher license) and some stores all over the country which are widely spread, including by the Maadaney Mizra, Tiv Ta'am and Maadanei Mania supermarket chains.

A modern Hebrew euphemism for pork is "white meat". Despite Jewish and Muslim religious restrictions on the consumption of pork, pigmeat consumption per capita was 2.7 kg in 2009.

A 2008 survey reported that about half of Israeli Jews do not always observe kashrut. Israel's anomalous equanimity toward its religious dietary restrictions may be reflected by the fact that some of the Hebrew cookbooks of Yisrael Aharoni are published in two versions: kosher and non-kosher editions.

Street foods

In Israel, as in many other Middle Eastern countries, "street food" is a kind of fast food that is sometimes literally eaten while standing in the street, while in some cases there are places to sit down. The following are some foods that are usually eaten in this way:

Falafel are fried balls or patties of spiced, mashed chickpeas or fava beans and are a common Middle-Eastern street food that have become identified with Israeli cuisine. Falafel is most often served in a pita, with pickles, tahina, hummus, cut vegetable salad and often, harif, a hot sauce, the type used depending on the origin of the falafel maker.

Variations include green falafel, which include parsley and coriander, red falafel made with filfel chuma, yellow falafel made with turmeric, and falafel coated with sesame seeds.