No more cholent for Shabbes, please

August 11, 2009 6:57 PM

I hate cholent, and most chamin recipes are just slightly-improved versions of cholent. Given that cooking must begin Friday afternoon, and the food has to be under constant heat until until noon-time Saturday, could you recommend any replacements for Shabbes cholent?

The only requirements are:

1. That it can be kept on constant heat for at least 15 hours without burning
2. It is served hot, without needed to be reheated
3. it isn't a stew-y gunk, like cholent
4. It's at least potentially kosher (no mixing of meat products and byproducts with dairy products, no pork/shellfish, etc).

I like light, dairy meals, if possible. Cholent is thick, heavy, and meaty, and just makes me feel queasy and slow.

And no, I cannot ask my Jewish friends, as they all cook cholent and only cholent for this purpose.

posted by flibbertigibbet to food & drink (10 comments total)

It's been a while, but I think I had good luck just making tomato-based minestones in the crockpot. They were fine even with the longer cooking time, although I didn't necessarily follow the guideline about having it 1/3 cooked before Shabbat began. I think most soups should be fine. (My experience is with crockpots. If you use a blech, I have no idea if this will work.) I usually had to sautee the veggies in a real pot on the stove first to get a decent flavor, though.
posted by needs more cowbell at 7:55 PM on August 11, 2009

Its recipes may not be kosher, but the reason to look at Molly Stevens' All About Braising is because it is a book not only of recipes but also of technique: you will find many methods that you can apply to the ingredients you prefer.

Though I've lived with Jewish roommates for six years (some who kept kosher, some who didn't, and none who made food for Shabbat at home) I am not Jewish myself, so my apologies if this question just reveals my ignorance: why must the food be hot? If that is merely a preference, and not a necessity (though I doubt you would have included it were it not a necessity) there are many light yet very filling recipes in Joyce Goldstein's Mediterranean Fresh which would be perfectly tasty if prepared the day before, and would need neither to be heated nor to be left cooking.

I also recommend very highly Gil Marks Olive Trees and Honey. It is a vegetarian cookbook with traditional Jewish recipes from around the world. I like it because the dishes are tasty; my observant friends like it because it is both vegetarian and kosher. All recipes are labeled either dairy or pareve, and there are suggestions for many different holiday meals, in addition to meals for Shabbat.
posted by ocherdraco at 10:18 PM on August 11, 2009

What about a fish chowder? LIke a New England clam chowder but with fish instead of clams... dairy, hearty, delicious. Or perhaps a lentil stew either vegetarian or with lamb or chicken in it. Both very different than cholent.
posted by zia at 12:52 AM on August 12, 2009

Ocherdraco: Essentially, many years ago, there was a divide between Jews who accepted the Oral Law (which, in this case, says benefiting from lights/ovens/etc. turned on before Shabbos is OK) and those who rejected it (who ate cold food in the dark on Shabbos, because you're not supposed to 'kindle a fire' on Shabbat). Eating hot food on Shabbos became a custom with the force of law. You have to eat at least one hot dish Friday night and one hot dish for lunch on Saturday. Which, again, kinda makes me cranky, as I would definitely be content with some nice cold dairy food.

Thanks guys! Olive Trees and Honey looks like it might be really helpful.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 2:52 AM on August 12, 2009

If your oven is suitable for use on Shabbat then you can serve hot rice - but it takes experimentation. You need to find the lowest setting that will keep your rice hot - there's a fine line between "hot rice" and "goo with a crust". Brown rice is better than white rice; long grain rice is better than medium or short. You can probably do the same trick on a stovetop.

Now that you've got hot rice you can have soupy things to go with it. Try gumbo, or chicken stew (at this temperature it won't be "gunk"), or spicy lentils. A pot roast with gravy will also be nice. Alternatively - and I am doing this out of the expansiveness of my heart, because this stuff tastes so good that I want everyone to try it - you could serve my Moroccan lamb shanks.

Ingredients: 6 lamb shanks, preferably cut through the bone so you can extract the marrowy goodness.

One tbsp ground cumin
One tbsp ground nutmeg
One tbsp ground coriander
One tbsp ground ginger
One teaspoon of cayenne pepper
One teaspoon of black pepper

Mix these spices together and roll your lamb shanks in about a quarter of this mix. Save the rest for later.

Use a zester to remove the peel of a lemon (or use a vegetable peeler and then chop the strips finely). Put this aside.

Brown the lamb shanks in olive oil and then put them in a closed casserole dish with the lemon zest and a can of crushed tomatoes. Cook in an oven at around 325 F / 160 Celsius and check to see if the meat is very tender. If it's not very tender then cook it a bit longer, and use a higher temperature next time. If you have the time, let the casserole cool down in the refrigerator and remove any fat from the surface before reheating it. Otherwise, just keep it warm over Shabbat.

This is very yummy.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:55 AM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

As long as you keep a cover or some foil around it, noodle kugel works surprisingly well. And, you can intersperse anything your imagination brings within the noodles. It's like a free-form lasagna that way. I prefer going sweet, with cinnamon and grated apple.

This recipe looks OK, but I prefer to leave out the raisins. There's a lot of variations on it, and it's kind of hard to mess up. You probably won't get the brown crust at the top, if you go with a low/slow oven, but the egg should be all nice and custardy... as long as the temperature makes it above the kill-microbes line.

Bon Appetit!
posted by Citrus at 6:33 AM on August 12, 2009

Eating hot food on Shabbos became a custom with the force of law. You have to eat at least one hot dish Friday night and one hot dish for lunch on Saturday. (flibbertigibbet)

Fascinating. I wonder if you might creatively make the hot dish a side dish to accompany a larger, cold dish.
posted by ocherdraco at 7:39 AM on August 12, 2009

I just want to add that my mother had a way of making cholent that I've never seen anywhere else, and I need to figure out how to reproduce. Basically, it was in a big baking dish (I think the kind of thing you might put a turkey in? Deep oval shaped with lid thing. I remember beans and whole hard boiled eggs and vegetarian kishke. The thing was - it was very dry. Not stew-y or chili-like at all.
posted by Salamandrous at 7:42 AM on August 12, 2009

Soup bones, lamb shank bones (as @Joe_in_Australia mentions), or the leftovers from a rotisserie chicken carcass (after you've eaten most of the meat) will help thicken it without making it too gunky. For vegetarians, you can achieve this with barley, lentils, or split peas.

Basically, if you just dump a bunch of stuff in the crock pot and cover it with water, you can't go too wrong.

Yum.
posted by AngerBoy at 4:49 PM on August 12, 2009

I've had good luck with a bean soup pseudo chili.
posted by eleanna at 10:10 PM on August 12, 2009