Many articles are published this time of year regarding the pre-preparation time for Passover. They focus mainly on cleaning the house, and possibly buying ingredients for your Passover recipes. But it’s rare to find any practical advice for someone who wishes to cook their Kosher for Passover foods well in advance of the holiday. In this special guest blog, Rivka Slatkin offers an innovative and time-saving way to start cooking Kosher for Passover recipes, well before kashering your entire kitchen.
I used to think that preparing for Passover in advance meant cleaning every room in the house BUT the Kitchen. For weeks I’d scrub and deep clean and go through everything except the kitchen. Why even bother starting on the kitchen when I still needed it!? Sure it felt great to know that I had completed much of the needed Passover cleaning responsibilities for the entire house but I would always feel that my job was unfinished, like I had a nagging feeling that all of my work was futile because there was no way I could cook until the last minute, until I would eventually turn over the kitchen.
That all changed one particular year when I decided to go on a trip one week before Passover. This was a work trip, just for me, without my family, and perhaps out of guilt- I really racked my brain about how I could leave with a happy conscience one week before Passover. I really didn’t want to leave my husband with turning over of the kitchen and the cooking so I worked hard to get creative with both and justify my departure with most of the Passover work complete.
I guess you could say some good came out of my pre-Passover departure because before I left I had cooked ALL of my main Passover dishes and many of my side dishes for the Seder meals. “What? How?” you may ask. No, I don’t have a Passover kitchen. No, I didn’t turn over 2 weeks in advance. I created a makeshift Passover kitchen and now I do this every year, highly recommending that all of my readers at Jewish-life-organized.com do the same.
If you want to prepare for Passover in advance, (we are now about 4 weeks away and the best time is now,) not only will you want to begin cleaning all of the rooms in your home as well as other performing other tasks related to Passover such as clothes shopping and appointment scheduling, but you’ll also want to cook Passover food.
After all, that’s what you love to do, right?
And you, readers of GourmetKosherCooking.com are SUPER lucky to have the most wonderful access to gourmet Kosher Passover recipes so you are one step ahead of the rest when it comes to planning and eventually serving delicious Passover meals.
If you want to begin cooking Passover food – here’s what you need to do to get started.
1. Go through GKC and select the Passover recipes that you think will work for your family. Pick recipes that are specially designated for Passover, or go ahead and ask the GKC founders how you can convert your favorite GKC recipe into a Kosher for Passover recipe.
2. Next, purchase a crock pot to be strictly used for Passover. If you have the room and $$$, you could purchase a separate Passover oven but you don’t need to. You could really just dedicate 1 crock pot towards Passover and begin cooking meats and poultry in the crock pot.
Your browser may not support display of this image. I know crock pots tend to get a bad reputation when it comes to flavors and “cholent”esque meals, but if you watch the amount of time your food is spending in the crock pot and you purchase one that is not going to merge flavors meant to be kept separate into one big “mush“, you’ll be fine. Here’s one that I personally use and find it to be just what I need: Click here to find out more about my Hamilton Beach 6 Quart Crockpot.
Think of your crock pot only as an alternate heat/cooking source and don’t feel as if you are sacrificing your typically gourmet meal preparation. Take your favorite Gourmetkoshercooking.com recipes and simply prepare them and cook them as you would in the oven, keeping an eye on how long the food is cooking for. You’ll also need a Passover cutting board and stash of Kosher for Passover spices and a knife.
Your browser may not support display of this image. If you really can’t get over the idea of using a crock pot for cooking Passover meals, if you have a wall outlet for your makeshift Passover kitchen, you may also use a separate burner or range for cooking Passover recipes in advance. Follow this link to purchase your own small range for Passover cooking.
3. Prepare a work surface, sink, and pantry area. In your makeshift Passover kitchen, you’ll need 2 more items: a table and a sink. Even in the most dungeon-like of laundry rooms, you’ll have at least a laundry sink to work with! All that is left to put into your makeshift kitchen is a folding table and perhaps a cabinet or shelf to store Passover non-perishables.
That’s it! Your Passover kitchen is ready to be used so all you have left to do is select your recipes and go shopping! I know that for some of you, creating a mini Passover kitchen weeks before Passover is going to be tremendously helpful J
I hope you find this tip as useful as my readers do and I can’t wait to hear how successful your Passover preparation is this year!
Rivka Slatkin is the founder of Jewish-life-organized.com, a website dedicated to creating Confident, Capable, and Happy Jewish Homemakers. She is currently working on a *NEW* gadget designed to make Passover meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking simple and fun! Test drive the new gadget today!
Tags: passover preparation
Funny you mention it. I’ve been considering doing just this with a slight variation. I’m not worrying about a crock pot, but buying a stack of disposable pans, running a self-clean cycle on my oven and doing a cooking marathon of food that will be placed in the freezer long before Passover is near. So it might need to be kashered again before Passover, but so what? It’s not that much work and I think it will really be worth it in the long haul.
do you have any suggested menus, menus that you use that lend itself to this type of cooking/freezing?
See the menus section on the site and old menus too on the site. Either look in menus, on right column middle area or search menus.
We recently had a snow closure a month before Pesach. I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me by so I did exactly what you described in your blog. My utility sink, table cloth, kosher for Pesach chopping board, mixer and 1 kosher for Pesach oven became my makeshift kitchen. I have to admit, I thought I was the only one in the world doing this! I am so excited to have all my cakes and frozen foods finished! It’s not a big deal to have to do the oven again if I go back to chometz. I am bookmarking this site. Thanks a million!
I have been preparing cakes and kugals and desserts right after Purim for years in my makeshift basement kitchen. I have stainless steel sinks from my past laundry area (my laundry is now on the first floor), an inexpensive Pesach oven, a frig and top freezer and I put together two folding tables in the shape of an ‘L.’ I cover the tables, kasher the sink and away I go. I store all my Pesach materials in that area, and I clean the first floor kitchen slowly and don’t turn over my kitchen on the first floor until the day before Pesach. I even prepare my meats and chickens a good week or two before Pesach in the makeshift kitchen. The best part of cooking this way is that the preparation is without pressure and the kids don’t come near the area, so I’m not making everyone crazy about staying away from the “Pesach Area” on the first floor.