Chicken gribenes | |
Alternative names | Grieven |
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Created by | Ashkenazi Jews |
Main ingredients | Chicken skin, onions |
In Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, gribenes or grieven (Yiddish: גריבענעס, [ˈɡrɪbənəs], "scraps"; Hebrew: גלדי שומן) are crisp chicken or goose skin cracklings with fried onions. As with other cracklings, gribenes are a byproduct of rendering animal fat to produce cooking fat, in this case kosher schmaltz.[1][2][3]
A favored food in the past among Ashkenazi Jews,[2][3] gribenes is frequently mentioned in Jewish stories and parables.[citation needed]
Gribenes can be used as an ingredient in other dishes like kasha varnishkes, fleishig kugel and gehakte leber.[4]
This dish is often associated with the Jewish holidays Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah.[2][3] Traditionally, gribenes were served with potato kugel or latkes during Hanukkah.[3][5]
Gribenes are also associated with Passover, as large amounts of schmaltz, with its resulting gribenes, were traditionally used in Passover recipes.[2][6]
Gribenes can be eaten as a snack, typically on rye or pumpernickel bread with salt,[7] or used in recipes such as chopped liver,[8] or all of the above.[6] It is often served as a side dish with pastrami on rye or hot dogs.[8][9]
This dish has also been eaten as a midnight snack,[10] or as an appetizer.[2][9] Some Jews in Louisiana add gribenes to Jambalaya in place of (treyf) shrimp.[2] It was served to children on challah bread as a treat.[3] It is also sometimes served in a GLT, a modified version of a BLT sandwich that replaces bacon with gribenes.[11]
The word gribenes is related to German Griebe (plural Grieben) meaning 'piece of fat, crackling' (from Old High German griobo via Middle High German griebe),[2] where Griebenschmalz is lard from which the cracklings have not been removed.