The Cooking Bracha: A Blessing for Making Food
Adapted from Leah Koenig

Jewish tradition loves to bless food (or rather to bless God for food).  We bless bread, we bless wine – we bless snacks as well as meals.  We have different blessings for fruit grown on trees vs. fruit grown in the ground and, remarkably, when we’re done eating and feeling satisfied, we bless again!  But for some reason, despite all these food blessings, there is no Jewish blessing for cooking.

The act of standing in a kitchen – coaxing raw ingredients from your CSA share, into a nourishing meal through heat, patience and wisdom, seems pretty holy.  The mere fact that the ingredients are there to cook is, in itself, no small miracle!  So a couple of years ago, in conjunction with Hazon’s Beit Midrash on (what else?!) Jews, food, and contemporary life, we wrote a cooking bracha (blessing).  It’s a blessing to be said just before: before turning the stove on under a pot of water, before dipping one’s hands into the flour, before the flurry of activity that, God willing, will create a delicious meal worthy of its own blessing.

If you like this blessing, take the time to use it before turning your share into an incredibly meaningful meal.

Cooking Bracha
By Leah Koenig & Anna Stevenson

“Blessed are You
Creator of the world
Who brings forth fruit from the Earth.
Blessed are You,
Who gives us knowledge of cooking, and time to cook
And who has blessed us with the need for nourishment
so that we can fully understand Your gifts.
May it be Your will
That the food that I cook
Bring nourishment, fulfillment, and happiness
to those who eat it
And bring honor to the land and all the people that make this meal possible.”