What should I prepare for the Passover dinner?

Question

What is your Passover tradition, if any? What is the traditional Passover dinner? Please let me know your experiences and suggestions. Thank you in advance. :)

Answer 1

First of all, anything with chametz is out. "Chametz" (leavened grain) is defined as wheat, barely, oats, rye, or spelt that has been in contact with water for more then 18 minutes. Or anything that's been cooked with chametz. Or made in a pot that was used to cook chametz. Observant Jews have to scrub down their kitchens, buy special foods, and use special dishes.
Next, are you/your Jewish friends of Europian or oriental/mideastern ancestry? Europian (Ashkenazic) Jews don't eat "kitniyot", certain foods that might get confused with chametz, such as rice, corn, and peas. Non-Europian Jews have no problem with kitniyot.
The must-haves for every Seder are matza (unleavened bread), wine or grape juice (enough for everyone to drink four cups), bitter herbs (horseradish or romaine lettuce), charoset (a dip made mainly from wine, cinnomen, and apples), and fresh herbs to be dipped in salt water (my family uses parsely). Beyond that, you can do whatever you want. If you feel like, you could have a vegetarian Seder, or a Chinese food-style Seder.
My family eats a pretty traditional meat meal. There's chicken soup, and matza balls, and some kind of chicken. There's probably a brisket in there somewhere. I'm Ashkenazic, but my rabbi let my family eat kitnoyot for health reasons, so there's a lot of rice. And there's a lot of ordinary (but chametz-free) dishes that I can't think of at the moment. And there's some absolutely awful chocholate or jelly-filled dessert at the end.
For the rest of Passover, I recommend matza pizza. I basically live on matza pizza for the week..

Answer 2

Boy, THAT is a lot to answer!

Let's keep it short.
Passover (or, in Hebrew, "Pesach") is a 15-step event.
I try to keep it simple and fun...and to feed the guests bits of food so they won't go hungry.
Charoset (a mixture of chopped apples, nuts and wine signifying the mortar), along with a roasted egg, etc., are all good noshes for guests.

I'm also a big fan of roasted lamb, but most guests don't care for that meat so I opt out with a brisket.
Also, tzimmes and chicken/matzoh ball soup IS the gold standard, as far as I'm concerned.

The link below will give you some idea of the tradition.
But use your imagination!
And whatever you do, do NOT use any chamitz (forbidden grain) in your dinner!
Oy vey!

Answer 3

you have to understand that the passover seder, is not a dinner, it is a service. seder in hebrew means order, or service. the meal is only one part, out of the 10 parts of the seder. there are ten parts to the passover seder. they are kaddash, urchatz, karpas, urchatz, yachatz, maggid, motzi, matzah, marror, korech, shulchan orech ( meal), tzafon, barach, hallel, nirtzah. as you can see the meal is only one part of the seder, and it is important to finish the seder after the meal, and do the last parts. the last parts, hallel, and nirzta are the most important because they praise god for taking the jewish people out of egypt with singing songs, this part is very good for the kids.