Largest matzo ball - Tucson Jewish Food Festival sets world record
TUCSON, AZ, USA--During the Third Annual Jewish Food Festival Executive Chef Jon Wirtis of Shlomo and Vito's restaurant used 125 pounds of matzo meal, 25 pounds of schmaltz (chicken fat), more than 1,000 eggs and 20 pounds of potato starch to create a 488-pound matzo ball wich sets the new world record for the Largest matzo ball.
Photo: Chef Jon Wirtis puts the finishing touches on The World's Largest Matzo Ball. He cooked up the big ball in a six-foot high, six-foot wide pot.
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The World's Largest matzo ball weighs 488 pounds, and measures 106 inches in diameter. Ingredients included more than 1,000 eggs, 25 pounds of chicken fat, and 125 pounds of matzo meal.
And for the chicken soup alone, chefs used 320 chickens, 80 pounds of carrots, 40 pounds of celery, and 40 pounds of onions. It took a fork lift to reveal the giant matzo ball and a scale fixed to the crane to read the weight.
The chef says the biggest challenge was getting the bread to stick together, so he had to modify his grandmother's old recipe to make a matzo ball of that size.
The secret ingredient ended up being potato starch, which bonded the other ingredients together.
He covered the matzo ball in heavy cheese cloth to hold it together during the hours of boiling it took to cook it all the way through, and the rest is world-record-setting history.
Chefs at Desert Diamond Casino and the Hilton El Conquistador Resort helped make the hundreds of gallons of broth needed to cook the matzo ball.
The president of CAID Industries managed the crafting of the 1,500-pound kettle, and volunteers from Davis Monthan's 355th Operations Support Squadron helped fill it.
Proceeds from admission costs go to several organizations inlcuding the Community Food Bank, to ensure holiday meals for everyone.
