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Fields & Fire BlogBring on the Barley – Cholent
It’s recipe time folks. Now that most of you who are shareholders have your shares in your kitchens (yay!), I’ll definitely be making more effort to share grain and bean recipes here. Today, I want to first point you back to this baked beans recipe, which I really recommend for those of you who got Boston Favorite Beans. Yum! (It can be made with navy beans or other white beans as well.)
Today, I’d like to share this delicious recipe for Cholent, which uses beans and barley. I’ve been interested to try Cholent for a while – it’s a traditional Jewish dish, a slow cooked one-pot stew assembled the day before the Sabbath so that no work is done on the Sabbath, but a hot meal can still be enjoyed.
I am a big fan of dishes that can be made ahead, and which only get better with time. Cholent definitely scores big on both those. This recipe is adapted from the book Real Stew by Clifford A. Wright, which is a great book. I find that it’s a flexible recipe – if you don’t have one or two of the ingredients, you can substitute or leave them out, and still have a great stew. It also lends itself easily to a vegetarian conversion.Traditionally, it’s served with dumplings or challah.
(sorry for no photo of our Cholent – we have precious little inside light these days, and it does not make for good dinner pictures!)
Cholent
2 pounds beef marrow bones (shank bones – optional)
2 large onions, cut into chunks
2 pounds beef brisket or flank (for veg. version, sub mushrooms, such as button or portabella)
1 pound potatoes (Yukon Gold work well), peeled
4 large garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1/4 pound schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), chopped (if you don’t have any schmaltz lying around – and why not? – or for the veg. version, sub a hearty drizzle of walnut oil or olive oil)
1/2 cup dried red kidney beans (or Boston Favorite Beans), soaked overnight in cold water, drained
1/2 cup dried white navy beans, soaked overnight in cold water, drained
1 cup barley (hulled, but not pearled, if you’re buying from the store), soaked overnight in cold water, drained
1 1/2 – 2 qts water, as needed
1/4 cup honey
Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Lay the beef marrow bones and onions on the bottom of a large, heavy ovenproof casserole dish or Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid. Then, layer the beef (or mushrooms) and potatoes on top and season with salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle in the garlic. Sprinkle the schmaltz over the meat and potatoes. Distribute the beans and barley over the top, season again with salt and pepper to taste, and add enough of the water to just barely cover the ingredients. Drizzle the honey on top.
Place in the oven about 6 p.m., and leave until noon the next day. (Mine was actually ready to eat after only 6 hours.) Serve immediately. Bon Appetit!
This sounds wonderful!!!! Can’t wait to try it.
Oh this looks so yummy. Weekend meal ahead. Thanks for sharing Adrie, as always
Thank you so much for this recipe. I will try it tomorrow night. My family just recently started observing the Sabbath and I am so pleased to find a warm meal that we can eat on Saturday. Just found your blog last week and have been deeply enjoying it and finding great inspiration about meal planning, buying less, and having less plastic in my home. Keep it coming!
Enjoy!
Know you’ll love this Bethany – it’s good with lamb, too(should’ve said that!)
Sarah, Thank you so much for your kind words. Welcome! And Shabbat Shalom.
Adrie,
Fine minds think alike. The night before last I thought that it was time to have baked beans, I soaked the beans overnight, (our own Tiger Eye Beans) put the soaked beans in a pot and placed on the cook stove to cook then went to work. My husband was home , I checked out the Fields and Fire Blog and there it was – your recipe for baked beans. I called my husband, read him the ingredient list and baking instuctions and when I arrived home we had beans for dinner. He did a GREAT job they were fantastic! The timing was perfect.
Thank you so much for your blog!
Cathy
Cathy,
Awesome! We grew Tiger Eyes as well – I’m actually about to post a photo of them, so funny. So glad you liked them – I love that recipe. Thank you for your kind words.
This sounds so good… I’m wondering what I could substitute for the potatoes. Do you think the dish wouldn’t work without the honey? Unfortunately this is how I think almost every time I encounter a new recipe, which is such a drag. Bah. But schmaltz, I can definitely eat schmaltz. I just love that word and the stuff itself. Lately I’ve been realizing how many Yiddish words I’ve been using with Lily, like if she’s especially grubby I say something like “come here and let me wipe the schmutz off.”
And speaking of shares in the kitchen… I made fresh pasta today with the red fife wheat! It’s still drying at the moment but it looks spectacular. Lily helped me grind the wheat and tried very hard to help with the pasta rolling and cutting. She also wanted to help the pasta dry but accidentally knocked over the drying rack, so the tagliatelle will be a little shorter than anticipated. Tomorrow I think we will have the big taste test; this probably calls for ragu Bolognese (yay ground beef from Chestnut Farms) and freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.
Jen – Hooray for yummy Red Fife pasta! The cholent will totally work without the honey, it really is very flexible. For a potato sub, these possibilities come to mind (not sure which if any will work for you – but I’m interested to know, so tell me!):
sunchokes would be great
parsnips
rutabaga
turnip
topping the cholent with whole wheat biscuits instead
Also, you could just leave them out. And Yiddish is such a great language, especially with kids. I”m always hounding Ben’s mom for more lingo. We love “krupski” (spelling?)- the heel of the bread.
Thanks for the Cholent recipe! I am always looking for ways to spice up my cholent, and it was amazing to open up my e-mail and find not only a great explanation of what it is and why it is made, but a wonderful-sounding recipe as well. I’ll try it this Shabbat for sure!
Last week, in celebration of Tu B’Shvat (Birthday of the Trees) we showcase seven fruits and grains mentioned in biblical texts, figs, olives, dates, pomegranate, grapes, wheat and barley. I have always know that there was a difference between wheat and barley, in taste and baking texture, but when it came to actually telling the difference, we were always at a loss.
This year, however, my girls, Mike and I examined a bowl of un-ground, uncooked barley and one of wheat. It was so delightful to be able to tell the difference by sight as well as smell, taste and feel. Thank you for facilitating this, and for helping me to teach our daughters (and ourselves) about whole, unprocessed foodstuffs!
Actually a crock put works well for cholent, too!
Sound like a yummy recipe. I’ll second Andrea’s move for a crockpot, but just a note on that. You really need one with a “keep warm” setting as opposed to just keeping it on low or else many a cholent has burned by the next day. Nearly weekly, my husband Tuvia makes AMAZING cholent using all kinds of ingredients, flanken meat is definitely the best, but can be substituted with chicken (the bones become super soft and succulent by the next day), and other ingredients such as brown rice, oats, even white wine or beer lend nice texture and taste. There are lots of other secret ingredients and these local grains are making our cholents even better!
Andrea,
So glad to hear we brought goodness to your table! And you’re totally right about the crockpot – I forgot to mention that.
Tamar,
Thanks for these yummy ideas!