Cholent stew

“My Cholent recipe” by Jonathan Lederman.

Ideal winter weekend dish.

If your oven has a low temp setting of 90c then use that rather than a slow cooker.

If using slow cooker then on its low setting. Needs to be made the day before eating, due to extra long cooking.

Ingredients

2lbs-21/2lbs of stewing beef (larger piece or pieces rather than diced is best).

6-8 large potatoes peeled 2 onions quartered peeled

1/2 cup pearl barley washed

2 garlic cloves

1 pint beef broth (oxo is fine)

1/2 tsp each cumin, turmeric and paprika (reduce if you don’t want it too spicy)

6 eggs (optional)

4 whole large carrots peeled

Cup of dried butter beans

Salt and pepper

6 cups of water

Recipe

Place potatoes halved in the bottom of pot, in a single layer if possible Onions on top.

Then the beef in a single layer on top. If you have to pack the beef in that’s fine, then sprinkle the pearl barley and beans on top.

Then carrots on top of that and the the garlic sliced into slivers on that.

In a 6 cup jug mix together the beef broth, water, the spices, a couple of pinches of salt and 2 grinds of black pepper. If using the eggs, rinse them well in cold water and place them in round the edge tucking them in.

Pour the beef broth mixture into the pot. Top up with cold water until the whole mixture is more or less covered.

Cover with grease proof paper or foil if no grease proof, then put on the lid.

Cook on the low temp for 15 hours.

Check every now and then it’s not drying out, if it is then add water.

The great thing about this dish is that it’s almost impossible to over cook, so you can leave it in slow cooker or oven until ready to eat. Don’t stir during cooking process.

Peel eggs before serving!

When you go to serve it’s not the prettiest dish but the taste is fabulous. Obviously you will need to dig around a bit to get all the ingredients on to the plates. If you fancy, and you’ve got room in the top of the pot, you can add a dumpling.

Shop bought dumpling mix is fine, but make up the mixture as dry as you can so that the consistency is very sticky, add at the start a one large dumpling.

When pouring the broth over the pot try to avoid over wetting the dumpling.

Enjoy