Yerushalmi kugel - easy recipe with no boiling sugar! (2024)

The classic taste of Yerushalmi Kugel – aka Jerusalem kugel – without any of the fuss! Your family will love this easy and delicious lokshen kugel flavoured with caramel and black pepper.

Sometimes, food can really change the way you experience a situation.

When I was quite small, my family went on holiday to Israel, and stayed in a self-catering apartment in Jerusalem. On the Friday, we were directed to a shop which sold “Shabbos dinner to go” – ready prepared chicken, potatoes, kugel, tsimmes etc. Good, solid, Ashkenazi food that just needed heating up.

Yerushalmi kugel

Among the delights on offer was Yerushalmi kugel. It wasn’t something any of us had eaten before. This golden noodle kugel, flavoured with caramelised sugar and black pepper, is a local specialty. It was developed in Jerusalem by groups of Chasidic Jews, some time around the late 1700s.

According to The Encyclopaedia of Jewish Food, these innovative cooks hybridised traditional savoury salt-and-pepper kugel with sweet lokshen (noodle) kugel. The Yerushalmi kugel, sometimes called ‘Jerusalem kugel’, was born!

Glorious aroma

But back to our Shabbat dinner take-away. The Yerushalmi kugel on offer looked, and smelled, amazing.

It smelled so amazing, in fact, that as we drove our dinner back to the apartment in our rental car, we were all in raptures about the wonderful aroma – sweet and spicy – rising from the still warm kugel.

When we arrived back, our landlady/neighbour rushed out to us. “Are you OK?!” she asked. She seemed really concerned.

We were puzzled. We’re fine, we said. What’s happened?

Apparently there had been an earthquake as we were driving home. The ground beneath us had literally shaken, and we were so swept up in the glorious fragrance of Yerushalmi kugel that we hadn’t even noticed.

That my friends, is the power of a good Yerushalmi kugel.

Yerushalmi kugel 2.0

I didn’t attempt to make a Yerushalmi kugel until about twenty years later. This time, I was actually living in Jerusalem, not just visiting. A friend of my flatmate came to stay one weekend, and she made the kugel. It was delicious!

I asked her for the recipe and was delighted when she obliged. It became a regular feature on my Shabbat table.

Cheat’s kugel!

Having very little experience of either making or eating Yerushalmi kugel, I had no idea until a few years later that her recipe was a bit of a cheat! It doesn’t caramelise the sugar, but uses brown sugar to give a similar flavour. However, after another friend got pretty bad caramel burns while making a Yerushalmi kugel, I’ve been quite wary of attempting the ‘real thing’ – especially when the cheat’s version tastes so good!

Over the years I’ve tweaked this Jerusalem kugel recipe here and there to give more caramel flavour. However I think this version is really fantastic. The combination of sweet caramel and spicy black pepper is surprising but completely delicious, and it smells amazing as it bakes in the oven!

Ingredients in Yerushalmi kugel

You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and you can’t make a lokshen kugel without breaking lokshen… or something like that!

To make this fabulous Jerusalem kugel yourself, you will need:

• Lokshen – of course! Fine noodles such as angel hair or vermicelli are perfect.
• Sugar – the recipe uses both white and brown sugar for both sweetness and flavour.
• Caramel flavoured syrup – to provide the classic caramel flavour without the danger of boiling sugar yourself. Use any ‘coffee’ syrup or dessert syrup you like, as long as it’s caramel flavoured.
• Black pepper – to give your Yerushalmi kugel its spicy flavour.
• Egg – to hold everything together.
• Vegetable oil
• A pinch of salt
• Hot water – from the kettle.

Sweet? Savoury? Side dish or dessert?

Despite the sugar, and caramel, Yerushalmi kugel is often served as a side dish alongside the main part of the meal. It’s also a favourite treat at kiddush – the after-service refreshments served in many synagogues on a Shabbat morning. Although it’s undoubtedly sweet, real aficionados often enjoy their kugel with a tangy pickled cucumber on the side!

So, is it sweet or savoury? It’s both! You can enjoy your Yerushalmi kugel just exactly how you like.

Classic flavour

While this recipe is made without ‘real’ caramel, it still has the classic flavours of caramel and black pepper running right through it. This version is mildly spicy, but if you prefer a stronger taste, simply add a little more pepper.

I hope it helps to distract from whatever earth-shaking events are happening around you!

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More delicious kugel recipes

If you want a recipe that does require you to caramelise the sugar (eek!) then check out this Yerushalmi kugel recipe from author Ariel Kahn, which helped inspire his wonderful novel Raising Sparks.

If you love a noodle kugel, you might also enjoy Mum’s lokshen kugel with apple, or this delicious sweet cheese and blueberry noodle kugel.

You might also like to try these noodle kugels from other bloggers:

• Cranberry orange noodle kugel from Ronnie Fein
• Noodle kugel with candied pecans from What Jew Wanna Eat
• Lokshen melba kugel from All That’s Jas
• Vanilla noodle kugel from Tori Avey

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