Cholent

Monday Morning Cooking Club
www.mondaymorningcookingclub.com.au

Monday Morning Cooking club is made up of six woman who have been cooking together every Monday morning since 2006. Their directive was to put together a cookbook to raise money for charity. It was then their mission to take it one step further, and to actually try to find the best recipes from the best cooks in Sydney's Jewish Community.

'We wanted to share with the world our community's unusually strong, somewhat obsessive, connection with food".

Cholent is a traditional Jewish dish often made on Fridays and slow cooked all night ready the next day for Shabbat (Sabbath) lunch. It has always been thought of as an inexpensive hearty stew - full of beans, barley, potato and a little meat - and it feeds a lot of people. We’ve brought it into the modern world by cooking it in the slow cooker. It now cooks for 4 hours instead of 22! 

 

Ingredients

• 1/2 heaped cup dried lima beans
• 1/4 heaped cup dried red kidney beans
• 1/4 heaped cup pearl barley
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3 onions, chopped
• 500 g  fresh beef brisket or gravy beef, diced
• 750 g beef short ribs, cut across the bone into 3 pieces
• 3 small waxy potatoes, peeled and quartered
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 cups boiling water

Method

Start this recipe the day before serving.

1. Soak the beans and barley together in a medium bowl in plenty of water overnight (or for at least 6 hours). The next day, drain and rinse.
2. Place the EasySear pan from the slow cooker onto a high heat, add the oil, then add the onions and cook for 15 minutes or until caramelised, remove from the EasySear pan.
3. Add a little more oil if needed then add the beef brisket cooked until browned remove, then add the short ribs and cook until golden brown, 3-4 minutes or until browned. Remove.  
4. Place the EasySear pan into the base of the slow cooker. Add the first layer of beef brisket, followed by layers of beans/barley, fried onion, short rib and potatoes, finishing with some potatoes on the top.
5. Dissolve the salt in the boiling water and pour into the EasySear pan. It should come to just under the top layer of potatoes.
6. Place on the 'high' setting  and cook for 4 hours or if you want to put on before work, place on low and cook for 9 hours.
7. Allow the cholent to cool for 10 minutes before eating.