How to Perfect Sweet Noodle Kugel Every Time

Kugel is one of many Ashkenazi Jewish dishes that can be a hard sell for the uninitiated. One day we’re trying to explain why puréed fish balls sweetened with sugar and onion and served cold in their own jelly are a delicacy, the next we’re imploring people to just taste the smashed livers with boiled egg and chicken fat. We’re often not convinced ourselves. My late great-uncle Shush had a running list of foods from his childhood, some of which sounded awful but he loved, others that sent revulsed shivers through his body decades later (“a byproduct it seemed of cut-up snow tires whose tread had long since eroded,” he once wrote of a dish he remembered going by the name “eiter” in his Yiddish-speaking household).

I’ve described kugel to friends before, and their perplexed response has become familiar. Noodles? Baked with…sweet egg? And cheese? And raisins? There’s no doubt it sounds weird, but it’s one of those things that immediately makes sense once you eat it. The noodles are tender egg noodles, the eggs a custard with the kinds of cheese (or other dairy) that lend themselves to sweet things, like cottage cheese, cream cheese, and sour cream. And the raisins, well they’re optional, though I am firmly on team raisin because that’s what I grew up with.

The Many Faces of Kugel

In-the-know readers have already picked up on the fact that I’m only describing one of many kinds of kugel. For much of my childhood, I assumed the sweetened noodle version was the only kind of kugel. Then I learned some people make it savory, replacing the sugar and raisins with things like sautéed onions and herbs. And then one Passover many years ago, someone offered me a dry block of potato while asking me if I wanted “kugel” and in that moment I learned kugel didn’t even have to be made with noodles (for the record, that potato kugel I was served was dry, but I don’t want to imply that all potato kugel is bad, I’m sure good renditions exist).

According to Merriam-Webster, “kugel” comes from the Yiddish and German words for “ball,” which likely describes the shape it was once made into. Today both the noodle and potato types are most often cooked as casseroles, then cut into individual squares for serving, though you will sometimes see them cooked in muffin tins or other small portions as individual serving cakes. I’m sure there kugel takes even more forms that I just haven’t seen.

Suffice it to say, kugel can take many forms and flavors depending on the cook and household. This recipe is inspired by the one I grew up with, which my mother would make on occasion and was always a welcome treat for me and my sister, as good warm from the oven as it was the next day cold.

The Making of This Recipe

Sweet noodle kugel has always been in my life and I have strong sense memories of it. What I didn’t have was a recipe as a jumping-off point. I opened my mother’s old recipe tin, which she gifted me shortly before she died many years ago, and rifled through the index cards, past her hand-written recipes for carrot cake and artichoke soup and clippings from old issues of the New York Times, the tape holding them to the cards brittle and failing. No recipe for kugel though. Then I texted my sister on the off chance she had some record of mom’s way of making it, but no luck there either.

Just as well—it’s my job to find my way to a recipe with nothing more than a mental goal, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. I knew the basics—I needed egg noodles, eggs, some dairy (I was pretty sure I remembered little baked curds of cottage cheese in my mom’s version), sugar for sweetness, raisins (as I said, I’m team raisin), and some basic warm baking spice like cinnamon.

Then I scoured recipes online just to make sure I wasn’t far off from the norm, and saw that some folks use sour cream or cream cheese instead of cottage cheese, and noted melted butter being another very common add-in for a kugel custard. Ratios and egg quantities varied quite a bit from recipe to recipe; some used only yolks or a combination of whole eggs and yolks, while others just went with whole eggs. There was a rabbit hole of potential testing here given just how many tweaks one might make to all these variables, and if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to go that far down it. I had a clear mental goal, and I wanted to try to stick the landing as quickly as I could.

In my mind, what I wanted was a kugel that was tender and moist, not dense and dry, with enough custard to generously bind and hold all the noodles without it seeming like the noodles were swimming in a sea of egg custard. I wanted to to be sweet with warm spice notes, but not cloying. And I wanted crispy browned noodles on top to contrast with the tender interior.

While I didn’t want to get mired down in testing every possible number and combination of eggs and other ingredients (unless I had to because the custard wasn’t meeting my goals), I did know I wanted to test two things: the dairy type and the baking method itself, specifically whether it was better to bake the kugel “naked” or in a hot water bath.

I started my testing using six whole eggs for one 12-ounce bag of egg noodles. I guessed at the sugar by adding 3/4 cup, and poured in four tablespoons of melted butter because that’s half a stick, and isn’t half a stick both generously buttery and also just a nice even division for those of us who like such order in our lives? I figured I’d start with one cup of the cultured dairy, plus another half cup of whole milk to thin it.

It turned out well, within spitting distance of my mental goal, more or less my memory of the delicious kugel of my childhood. With some small tweaks, I was confident I’d get the custard where I wanted it—I bumped up the sugar slightly for a touch more sweetness, reduced the eggs by one for a custard that would set just a little less firmly and eggy, and doubled the cultured dairy for a more generous and delicate effect. A touch more liquid dairy, which I decided might be even better with richer half-and-half, and I’d be golden.

With these adjusted ratios, I was very happy with the result, and also had a more firm sense that you actually have a lot of play in terms of ratios and ingredients. As long as you have some eggs to set the custard (whether rich yolks alone or the full eggs), some diary for richness and flavor and to thin the eggs, and some sugar to sweeten it, it’s gonna be good. I’m pretty sure, knowing this and knowing my mom’s improvisatory nature, that she never had a recipe, she just winged it each time, and it was always great.

Here’s what I learned from my other tests.

Cream Cheese, Cottage Cheese, or Sour Cream?

Kugel recipes often call for one, or both (rarely all three), of these cultured dairy products in the custard. I whipped up batches using each to compare. Overall, I was surprised by how similar the resulting kugels were in each case; except for being able to see curds from the cottage cheese, I could barely tell them apart, maybe a hint more tang in the sour cream one, but really, they’re more the same than they’re different once mixed with noodles and baked into a custard. Here are a few things I did note:

• Cream cheese: This is the thickest and most difficult to incorporate fully into the batter. You could use a food processor or blender to completely work it in (many recipes call for this), but I wanted my recipe to be easy and not require extra dishes to wash, so I lazily smashed and whisked it in the best I could, leaving my cream cheese sample with visible bits of cream cheese floating in it. Once baked, I couldn’t discern them, so they must have melted into the custard as it bakes (good to know!). Still, I find cream cheese the most annoying of the three to use and would generally avoid it unless you happen to already have some in your fridge.
• Sour cream: Blends in beautifully and easily, and maybe offers a slight bit of extra tang that plays well off the sweetness of the dish, though as I said, I didn’t think it was a dramatic difference. In any event, highly recommended for its ease.
• Cottage cheese: Also blends in very easily, save for the curds, which hold their shape throughout and are visible in the final baked custard. I happen to like this, but if you are turned off by that idea, go for the sour cream (or use a food processor or blender completely obliterate the curds…though that’s just extra work you can skip by grabbing the sour cream instead).

You can also use a mixture of any of the three, say if you want a small amount of visible cottage cheese curd but otherwise the smooth and creamy expanse offered by sour cream. Overall though, proceed knowing you can use any of these with great results and no need to dirty a food processor or blender.

How to Bake the Kugel

My main question here centered on whether it was better to cook the kugel in a hot water bath, the way one often does with delicate custards, or if it’s just as well to chuck the whole thing in the oven and bake it in the surrounding dry heat, which is the more common method.

I should explain, all the kugel recipes I’ve seen do not even mention a hot water bath, so this question was really borne of my own professional experience with custards and curiosity if the more gentle technique of a water bath could be beneficial here. I’m sure someone has used a water bath for kugel before, I doubt I was the first, but it’s not common.

My testing results left me divided, as there are advantages and disadvantages to each. Whether you decided to use a hot water bath or not depends on what you prioritize:

• Naked Bake: Putting the baking dish directly into the oven with no water bath is the far more common method, and it’s without a doubt easier than rigging up a water bath. It works well, and its greatest advantage is it maximizes browning, both on the surface of the kugel (crispier noodles on top!) and all round the edges and bottom. For a lot of people these crispy bits are a feature, not a bug, and they wouldn’t trade them for anything. I kind of agree.

  But! Baking the kugel without a water bath without a doubt produces a slightly drier, less tender custard interior, Still good, but not perfect.

• Hot Water Bath: Setting the kugel’s baking dish in a larger roasting pan and pouring boiling water all around before sliding into the oven tempers the heat hitting the custard, since water can’t exceed its boiling point of 212°F (100°C) even in a hotter oven. The custard in a kugel cooked this way is more delicate, tender, and retains more moisture. It’s undeniably better. But that pool of water around the baking dish creates a zone of humidity in the oven that reduces the degree of noodle crisping on the surface (the crispy noodles are also a bit chewier) and completely prevents any browning on the sides and bottom of the kugel. For many, this alone is a reason to never use a hot water bath, but you’ll have to decide for yourself what you prize more: tender, delicate custard or crispy bits.

Choosing a Vessel

One 12-ounce bag of egg noodles and the custard perfectly fit a standard 9- by 13-inch baking dish. I want to point out, though, that you don’t have to use a baking dish, and the vessel you choose can influence what kind of kugel you end up with. When spread out in a 9- by 13-inch baking dish, the kugel has lots of surface area for crispy noodles on top, while the inner noodle custard portion is thinner.

If you want more custard in exchange for less crispy topping, you can bake the kugel in a vessel of different dimensions. Baking dishes vary by manufacturer, but depending on its height, a 9- by 13-inch baking dish typically has a volume of somewhere between three and four quarts. Given that, you could opt to use a deeper round casserole dish or some other baking vessel, as long as it holds at least three quarts. You could even divide the uncooked kugel mixture among large or small soufflé ramekins, muffin tins, etc.

Cooking times will of course change with vessels of different sizes and dimensions because heat will penetrate at varying rates, so keep that in mind if you go with a different type of dish.

A Note on Noodles

The photos here show the kugel with wide egg noodles. I just want you to know, you can use whatever size egg noodle you want—wide, medium, or even thin fine ones. Each will produce a kugel with a different texture. But that’s the fun of kugel, isn’t it? You can tweak and adjust as you see fit, or based on what you do or don’t have on hand, and still end up with a delicious snack. It’s pretty hard to mess this thing up. Now tell me, doesn’t that sound good to you?

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