Recipe
🍳 BREAKFAST
Cheese Bourekas
Flaky puff-pastry triangles filled with tangy feta and ricotta, glazed with egg and scattered with sesame and nigella seeds.
Israeli · medium · serves 6
prep 30 min · cook 25 min
~381 cal · 27g protein · 5g carbs · 28g fat · 1g fiber · 1g sugars · 15g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Bourekas are the flaky, sesame-topped pastries that fill every Israeli bakery window on a Friday morning, buttery puff-pastry parcels wrapped around a salty cheese filling and baked until they shatter at the first bite. They came to Israel with Sephardic and Balkan Jews from the former Ottoman Empire, a direct descendant of the Turkish borek reworked around puff pastry rather than the thin filo of its Mediterranean cousins.
There is an unwritten shape code that every Israeli reads instantly: triangles hold cheese, rectangles hold potato, and coiled rounds hold spinach or mushroom. The classic cheese version leans on tangy feta softened with ricotta and a little melting kashkaval or mozzarella, brightened with dill, then sealed, brushed with egg and showered with sesame and earthy black nigella seeds before baking.
A dairy pastry through and through, bourekas are eaten warm for breakfast or brunch, traditionally alongside a hard-boiled egg, chopped Israeli salad, pickles and a splash of hot sauce or amba. They are bakery food, market food and Shabbat food at once, and few things say Israeli morning more plainly.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
2 sheets puff pastry sheets, thawed but cold
7 oz feta cheese, crumbled
1 cup ricotta cheese, well drained
1 cup kashkaval or mozzarella, grated
1 egg (for the filling)
2 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 egg, beaten with a little water (for the wash)
3 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp nigella seeds
Instructions
1
Mash the feta, ricotta and grated cheese together with the filling egg, dill and black pepper into a thick, scoopable paste, going easy on any extra salt since feta is already salty.
✎ Chef’s note
Drain the ricotta in a sieve for 15 minutes first. A wet filling steams the pastry from within and stops it crisping.
2
Roll each cold pastry sheet just enough to smooth the seams, then cut into squares of about four inches.
3
Place a heaping tablespoon of filling slightly off-centre on each square, fold corner to corner into a triangle, and press the edges firmly, crimping with a fork to seal.
✎ Chef’s note
The triangle is not decoration. In an Israeli bakery it is the code that tells you a boureka is filled with cheese rather than potato or spinach.
4
Arrange on a lined tray, brush the tops with the egg wash, and scatter generously with the sesame and nigella seeds.
5
Chill the tray for 10 to 15 minutes, then bake at 400F for 22 to 28 minutes until dramatically puffed and deep golden.
✎ Chef’s note
Cold pastry into a hot oven is the whole trick, the sudden heat throws up the flaky layers before the butter can melt out.
6
Cool for 5 minutes, then serve warm with a hard-boiled egg, chopped salad and pickles in the traditional way.
Sephardic-Israeli bakery tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Tel Aviv. Shakshuka is North African, from the Maghreb, and it came to Israel with Libyan and Tunisian Jewish families in the 1950s and 1960s before becoming widely popular only from the 1990s. Hummus and falafel carry the same argument, so what a city can honestly claim is how it eats them, not who first made them.
🗺️
Israel. What is distinctive is the range of kitchens in one small place. Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, Persian, Ethiopian, Polish and Russian cooking arrived within a few decades of each other and are still identifiable, which is why a market stall may sell jachnun, malawach, kubbeh soup and gefilte fish within a few metres. The chopped salad of tomato and cucumber, dressed only with lemon and oil, is the common denominator.
🌍
Asia. Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, and its food spans the delicate seasonality of Japanese washoku, the chili-fired curries of India and Thailand, and the wheat-and-lamb traditions of Central Asia. Rice, noodles, soy, and fermentation recur across its regions, while ancient spice routes and religious traditions shaped distinct grammars of flavor. Whether from a street-cart wok or a monastery kitchen, eating is deeply communal and ritual-rich.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Israel
SabichPita stuffed with fried eggplant, hard-boiled egg, hummus, salad, and a drizzle of tangy amba and tahini.
Jerusalem Mixed GrillMeorav Yerushalmi: chicken and offal seared fast with onion, cumin, and turmeric, stuffed into laffa.
MalawachA flaky, buttery Yemenite-Israeli pan-fried flatbread served with grated tomato and zhug.
Browse all Israel recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Oven.
Storing it: Store in an airtight container. Most keep 2 to 3 days at room temperature, and longer refrigerated.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Cheese Bourekas?
Flaky puff-pastry triangles filled with tangy feta and ricotta, glazed with egg and scattered with sesame and nigella seeds.
Where does Cheese Bourekas come from?
Cheese Bourekas is a Israeli dish from Tel Aviv, Israel.
Can Cheese Bourekas be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Cheese Bourekas recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Cheese Bourekas safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Cheese Bourekas take to make?
About 55 minutes total (30 minutes prep, 25 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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