275 Preparations for a Shabbos Seder
As this year the first seder is on Friday night, many more of the seder preparations must be done on Friday, Erev Shabbos, than in an ordinary year. If one forgot to do the preparations on Erev Shabbos, a number of changes need to be incorporated in order to make it permissible to prepare these items on Shabbos, which will be explained in this paragraph. One should only prepare the minimum salt water that is needed for the seder (the dipping of the karpas in the early part of the seder and of the egg at the beginning of Shulchan Orech), and the saltwater texture should not be strong, i.e., the salt should constitute less than two-thirds of the total mixture. The charoses should be cut into large pieces, as cutting food into small pieces is prohibited on Shabbos; the wine should be put into the mixture first and then the fruit added; the mixture should be of a liquid, not thick, texture; and one should mix it with a shinui, not in the normal way of mixing, such as by using one’s finger. If one does not have a roasted zeroa, they should use cooked chicken or any other cooked dish.