| Gribenes | |
| Alternate Name: | Grieven |
| Creator: | Ashkenazi Jews |
| Type: | Snack, side dish, or garnish |
| Main Ingredient: | Chicken or goose skin, onions |
Gribenes or grieven (Yiddish: גריבענעס, in Yiddish pronounced as /ˈɡrɪbənəs/, "cracklings"; Hebrew: גלדי שומן) is a dish consisting of crisp chicken or goose skin cracklings with fried onions.
The word gribenes is related to the German German: Griebe (plural German: Grieben) meaning "piece of fat, crackling" (from the Old High German German, Old High (ca.750-1050);: griobo via the Middle High German German, Middle High (ca.1050-1500);: griebe), where German: Griebenschmalz is schmaltz from which the cracklings have not been removed.
A favored food in the past among Ashkenazi Jews, gribenes appears in Jewish stories and parables, for example in the work of the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik.[1] As with other cracklings, gribenes are a byproduct of rendering animal fat to produce cooking fat, in this case kosher schmaltz.[2] [3] [4]
Gribenes can be used as an ingredient in dishes like kasha varnishkes, fleishig kugel, and gehakte leber.[5]
Gribenes is often associated with the Jewish holidays Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah.[3] Traditionally, gribenes were served with potato kugel or latkes during Hanukkah.[6] It is also associated with Passover, because large amounts of schmaltz, with its resulting byproduct gribenes, were traditionally used in Passover recipes.[3] [7]
Gribenes can be eaten as a snack on rye or pumpernickel bread with salt,[8] or used in recipes such as chopped liver,[9] or all of the above. It is often served as a side dish with pastrami on rye or hot dogs.[9] [10]
The dish is eaten as a midnight snack,[11] or appetizer. In Louisiana, Jews add gribenes to jambalaya in place of (treyf) shrimp. It was served to children on challah bread as a treat. It can also be served in a GLT, a modified version of a BLT sandwich that replaces bacon with gribenes.[12]