Cholent Image Used Under Creative Commons License From mangiamccann.com
Citizens! Like the mighty phoenix, I have arisen from My ashes! After two months of meditation and secret planning, the Hetman of History, the Paladin of Pleasure – YOUR TFD – RETURNS! I am honored to mark this occasion with a series of sponsored posts focusing on ancient grains, with the first being the Jewish Shabbos meal of Cholent!
Thanks to the amazing people at Grand Teton Ancient Grains, I am now inspired to create a recipe near to the hearts (and stomachs!) of religious Jews of Eastern European descent – the mighty cholent that reigns supreme on the Shabbos table (with Challah!), made more succulent by My unmatched palate and their einkorn (more on this later!)!
Cholent (Yiddish: טשאָלנט, romanized: tsholnt) is a traditional slow-simmering Sabbath stew in Jewish cuisine that was developed by Ashkenazi Jews first in France and later Germany, and is first mentioned in the 12th century!
One linguist says the etymology of cholent relates to the Latin present participle calentem (an accusative form of calēns), meaning “that which is hot” (as in calorie), via Old French chalant (present participle of chalt, from the verb chaloir, “to warm”). One etymology derives the word instead from the French chaud (“hot”) and lent (“slow”).
Another folk etymology derives cholent (or sholen) from שלן, which means “that rested [overnight]”, referring to the tradition of Jewish families placing their individual pots of cholent into the town baker’s ovens that always stayed hot and slow-cooked the food overnight. Another mooted etymology is from Old French chaudes lentilles (hot lentils).
Shabbat stews were developed over the centuries to conform with Jewish laws that prohibit cooking on the Sabbath (Shabbos). The pot is brought to a boil on Friday before the Sabbath begins, and sometimes kept on a blech or hotplate, or left in a slow oven or electric slow cooker, until the following day.
Over the centuries various Jewish diaspora communities created their own variations of the dish based on local food resources and neighborhood influence.
There are many variations of the dish, which is standard in both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi kitchens and among other communities. The basic ingredients of cholent are meat, potatoes, beans, and barley – though all shabbat stews contain some type of grain and meat or featured vegetable. Slow overnight cooking allows the flavors of the various ingredients to permeate and produces the characteristic taste of each local stew.
In traditional Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi families, stew is the hot main course of the midday Shabbat meal served on Saturdays typically after the morning synagogue services for practicing Jews. Secular Jewish families also serve stews like cholent or eat them in Israeli restaurants.
For practicing Jews, lighting a fire and cooking food are among the activities prohibited on Shabbat by the written Torah. Therefore, cooked Shabbat food must be prepared before the onset of the Jewish Shabbat at sunset Friday night.
Cholent was first mentioned by name 1180 CE by R. Yitzhak ben Moshe of Vienna who said: “I saw in France in the home of my teacher R. Yehuda bar Yitzhak that sometimes their cholent pots were buried. And on Shabbat before the meal, the servants light the fire near the cauldrons so that they warm well, and some remove them and bring them close to the fire”.
The origins of cholent date back to the 11th century, when the Christian Reconquista of Al-Andalus or Islamic Spain, when culinary techniques from the Moorish period spread northwards into Europe through Provence. In the late 12th or early 13th century, the Sephardic Sabbath stew known as hamin became a part of the traditions of the Jews of France.
Among the French Ashkenazi Jewish population, the traditional stew was renamed tsholnt, cholent or schalet, perhaps from the old French for warm, chald or chalt (the antecedent of today’s chaud), or from chald-de-lit (“warmth of the bed”).
By the 13th century, the stew is described as having become widespread in Bohemia and Germany. Originally made with fava beans, the cholent of the French Ashkenazi was substituted with dried haricot beans from the Americas in the sixteenth century.
Since then, white beans, red kidney beans, pinto beans, and dried lima beans have all become common ingredients. Some Romanians add chickpeas in “a remnant of the Sephardic influence due to Ottoman control of the area”.
Since European agriculture favored bread wheat instead of durum, substitutions were made. In Germany, spelt became common in cholent, while in Eastern Europe, the grain of choice became barley. The usual choice of meat in cholent is beef, either flank or brisket, or, occasionally in Western and Central Europe, goose or duck.
In the mid-19th century, Polish cholent featured generous amounts of potato, while Hungarian cholent used no potato at all. German variations added root vegetables. Onions might be added fried or raw, alongside garlic. The stew might also be sweetened with honey, sugar, or fruit, and spiced with cloves, paprika, or bay leaves.
As the Jewish diaspora grew with Jewish migrations into Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere in the Middle East and Central Asia, Jewish diaspora communities developed their own variations of the dish based on the local climate, available ingredients and local influence.
John Cooper argues that shabbat stews like cholent would have spread from Jerusalem east towards Babylon and simultaneously across the Mediterranean by North Africa into Iberia and eventually Italy and France while Marks cites Persian, Yemen, and Italian communities to predate Sephardim in Iberia.
The most accessible foods to Jews living in Israel before the destruction of the Second Temple are likely to have been the Mediterranean triad: grain, oil and wine, which were available at low cost and vast amounts.
While both wheat and barley were grown in Israel, barley was more likely to supplement inland diets. Cooper argues wheat would have been twice as expensive as barley which could grow in rougher soils closer to Jerusalem. Barley could also be harvested earlier ensuring multiple crops in the same season.
Meats were considered luxury goods that few could afford, except on special occasions like Shabbat and other holidays. Lamb and goat would have been more common as they grazed in arid climates, and provided supplementary products like wool and milk, while cattle were more expensive to maintain and prized as sacrificial offerings.
A famine in the 14th century in Northern Europe caused a rise in cattle prices near Western Europe and North Africa, where most Jews were living under Moorish rule. This led to chicken replacing cattle as livestock, and resulted in many recipe alterations to accommodate these changes in Iberia and Northern Africa.
The concept of “re’ach nicho’ach” describes the direct line of spiritual connection of scents from the nose to the soul, giving the egg an extra spiritual strength for Jews. In Kabbalah, the eggs are even watched over by an angel.
The rise of the Spanish conquest of Iberia, known as the Reconquista, stretched from as early as the establishment of Christian Kingdom Asturias in the early 8th century until the surrendering of Granada in 1492 by the ruling Moorish Kingdom.
Jews were faced with limited options after the Alhambra Decree expelled non-Christian religious practices or face expulsion. Jews who migrated west across the Mediterranean after the destruction of the Second Temple became known as “Sephardic” Jews (literally Spanish Jews).
They often reintegrated themselves to well established Jewish communities in North Africa or even the Ottoman Empire where the Ladino language, a mix of Hebrew and Spanish, began to explode in popularity.
Jews “conversos” (converts) converted, either sincerely or as a ruse, began to mainstream Jewish practices into Iberian culture. Sephardim who remained religious learned to hide observation of shabbat by “hiding” or “concealing” their pots in the embers of household fires or underground ovens from their Christian neighbors.
Hamin became known as adafina or dafina as local ingredients changed hamin’s base to a rice and chicken dish to match local practices. Stews like “Gallina a la Vinagreta” began to rise in popularity nationally around the same making the ingredients almost indistinguishable.
The slow warming of the embers inspired an extra layer of precaution to the prohibition of cooking on shabbat, the blech. The blech covers a fire or modern stovetops to prevent cooking while allowing heat to transfer from one item to another indirectly as a warm source without “kindling.
Hamin, scheena and cholent all commonly use a blech pinpointing their distinctions to a similar time period. The unique cooking requirements of were later the inspiration for the invention of the slow cooker.
Even in ancient Israel, it is likely that vegetables supplemented stews with native vegetables like leek, garlic, and onions, which were more accessible to poorer communities like future Ashkenazi.
Historians have little proof other than modern economic trends; these recipes were not well-documented at the time, and the decomposition of vegetables makes it difficult to find conclusive archaeological evidence of their presence in any given period.
After the Columbian Exchange, new vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, and beans rose in popularity. They offered more substantial nutrients at lower costs than meats but with more flavor than barley, wheat, or rice.
In the Maghreb, a South American hot chili pepper called “harissa” thrived in the region’s soil. Slow cooking crushed wheat, tomatoes, and harissa created a spicy sauce that added new flavors to classic rice dishes – TFD thus adds harissa to His cholent.
Beans from the New World rapidly replaced barley and rice used in North Africa and Europe. In Greece and Turkey, “avicas” substituted the rice in hamin with white beans and even smaller haricot beans left over from Shabbat’s Friday night dinner.
In Israel, cholent has become a dish widely available in restaurants. In 2013, cholenterias, casual restaurants specializing in cholent, emerged in Bnei Brak and the Haredi neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and became the premier night hangout areas for Haredi men. Soon afterwards, cholent dishes spread to restaurants in secular areas.
Sephardim in Tel Aviv originated “sofrito” made of beef, potatoes, and various spices eaten at Friday night shabbat dinners and added to the main meal the next day. In Germany, the Netherlands, and other western European countries the special hot dish for the Shabbat lunch is known as schalet, shalent, or shalet.
The Jewish people of Hungary adapted the Hungarian dish sólet to serve the same purpose as cholent. Sólet was likely modified by the Jewish people living in Pannonia when the Magyars arrived.
In Italy, pasta is a common substitute for beans or rice in shabbat stews and is called “hamin macaron” when sampled in Iberia. The rise of Chassidism in the late 18th century popularized black beans in Eastern Europe as the Baal Shem Tov’s favorite bean while Alsatian Cholent in France featured lima beans.
In the shtetls of Europe, religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and other cities in the Land of Israel before the advent of electricity and cooking gas, a pot with the assembled but uncooked ingredients was brought to the local baker before sunset on Fridays.
The baker would put the pot with the cholent mixture in his oven, which was always kept fired, and families would come by to pick up their cooked cholent on Saturday mornings.
The same practice was observed in Morocco, where black pots of s’hina were placed overnight in bakers’ ovens and then delivered by bakers’ assistants to households on Shabbat morning. Jewish stews were characterized by flour paste used to seal pots to prevent cooking and tampering which could cause the meal to become treif.
Citizens of TFD Nation, this recipe for cholent is resolutely traditional in so many ways – the choice of meats, vegetables, etc. – and diverges into heterodoxy in several others. Never fear, I mark My heresy to enable you to remain orthodox and true to the core ideals of the dish! That said, My changes are quite, QUITE delicious!
For the meats, I go with the classic choices of short rib (cut into the flanken cut, strips about 2″ wide and the bone, please!), oxtail and sausage! The oxtail adds both beefy savor as well as delicious collagen to thicken the cholent – if you are averse to oxtails (for shame!), you can replace it with more flanken.
I also like to add beef sausage to My cholent – Jack’s® Gourmet Kosher Beef Kielbasa Sausage is My preferred choice (and needless to say – if you keep Kosher, ALL the meats should be Kosher, of course!).
It is in the seasoning of the meat that most of My heresy becomes evident – I prefer to marinate the meat in a combination of a HUGE amount of crushed fresh garlic (this is normal!), plus the decidedly UNorthodox combo of Tunisian harissa, Yemenite hawaiij seasoning, Japanese white miso and Accent® (aka MSG) – My preferred brands are at the links.
I prefer to add richness to the stew by using beef stock instead of water, enhanced by the use of marrow bones (a necessity in ANY good cholent!), as well as dried porcini mushrooms – buy them from here.
In recognition of the many different ingrdients used in historic cholent, I have Dictated that a combo of different legumes and grains shall grace My unmatched version of this classic recipe. My preferred brand of dried pinto beans are these, barley from here.
Most importantly – I prefer einkorn, the most ancient form of wheat, to use instead of wheat berries. The flavor compared to wheat is UNMATCHED!!!
You can buy the best einkorn to use in My cholent from the amazing folks at Grand Teton Ancient Grains – their einkorn berries are the best I’ve ever had and you can easily grab them from here! You will NOT be sorry at all, and there are several other recipes using their products to follow this one in the VERY near future! Stay tuned, Citizens!
A little bit of Kitchen Bouquet adds both color and flavors the cholent, and I love to use the intensely flavorful appertif (VERY VERY untraditional, but delicious!) known as Elixir Végétal de la Grande-Chatreuse – an ancient predecessor to modern Chartreuse! You can buy it from here and omit it, if you so choose (though it is delicious in the recipe!).
Served in tandem with a classic fresh and bracing cucumber salad, My cholent is indeed a meal worthy of gracing your Shabbos table, Citizens! Remember this makes a GROTESQUE amount that will only get better over several days – this is classic “cucina povera” (poor person’s cooking in Italian) and was designed to feed MANY over MANY days!
2lb. Kosher short ribs with bone - flanken-cut to 2 inches wide
12oz. Jack's® Gourmet Kosher Beef Kielbasa Sausage (if unavailable, replace with equivalent of boneless short rib or oxtail)
1lb. Kosher oxtail (if unavailable, replace with short rib or sausage if you prefer - but it REALLY works well in this recipe!)
***
Cholent Meat Seasoning:
2 1/2 Tbsp. Tunisian Harissa (WILDLY optional - but TFD very much enjoy the heat it brings! TFD endorses only Zwita brand!)
2 Tbsp. Yemenite Hawaiij seasoning (WILDLY optional, omit for original!)
1 tsp. Accent (WILDLY optional, but recommended)
3 Tbsp. white miso (WILDLY optional TFD addition, omit for original and replace with kosher salt to taste)
10 cloves garlic, pounded (the pre-peeled garlic in quantity is recommended - Asian markets have the best quality!)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
***
4 marrow bones (this adds huge flavor and the removed marrow is eaten on toast with kosher salt
8 eggs—boiled first for 5 minutes to protect from breaking while slow-cooking. (Shells stay on until the cholent is done) - try duck eggs, If you can find them, they're TFD's favorite - use 6 in that case
4 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut in big chunks - peel the potatoes a few hours before you start cooking, and just leave them in the open air (do not cover with water). They will grow unappealing black spots, that will disappear after cooking, so don’t worry about it. The potatoes will taste sweeter and will have a heavier and nicer texture!
1cup crumbled dried porcini mushrooms (optional but strongly recommended!)
1 large brown onion, quartered (to cook as is)
1 large leek, white and light green part only, cut lengthwise, washed and thinly sliced
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 large peeled brown onions (diced to sauté with beans/grains)
8 Tbsp. corn or sunflower oil, divided
1cupdry pinto beans (they must be dry, not canned - because if you cook canned for so many hours, they’ll turn into mush)
1cupbarley
1 1/2cupeinkorn berries (Optional but recommended TFD change, original was wheat berries - TFD ONLY ENDORSES GRAND TETON ANCIENT GRAINS BRAND!)
10 cloves garlic, pounded (the pre-peeled garlic in quantity is recommended - Asian markets have the best quality!)
bottled water or beef stock, as needed (stock should be homemade or low-salt - this is TFD's strong preference!)
1/8cupKitchen Bouquet
2 tsp. tomato paste
3 tsp. Elixir Végétal de la Grande-Chatreuse (WILDLY optional TFD addition, omit for original)
A bouquet garni - a large sprig of flat leaf parsley, a large sprig of fresh thyme, a large sprig of tarragon and the leaves from the top of a leafy bunch of celery, all tied together with kitchen twine)
2 fresh bay leaves
***
Cucumber Salad:
1lb. English or seedless cucumbers (1 1/2 to 2 medium)
Heat up 2 Tbsp. oil and fry the diced onions in a large pan (I use cast iron) until translucent, approximately five minutes. Add 10 pounded garlic cloves and cook another five minutes. Add rinsed beans, barley, and einkorn and combine well, add a few big pinches of pepper.
Season the meat with the remaining 10 cloves of crushed garlic combined with the harissa (if using), hawaiij (if using), Accent (if using), salt and pepper – rub it in well and leave for at least 30 minutes minimum, or up to overnight if you’re bold!
Into the biggest dutch oven or pot with a cover you have, put in: beans, einkorn berries and barley, potatoes, the crumbled dried porcini (you can crumble them in a food processor), the quartered onion, leek, carrot, bay leaves, eggs (unpeeled), marrow bones, short ribs, sausage and oxtails. I like to put a thin layer of the bean mixture in the bottom and then add the rest on top. Try to get the eggs buried under other things so they don’t get overdone. Put the meat towards the top and make sure there’s a layer of beans/barley/einkorn on top surrounding everything.
Then add as much water or stock (plus the Kitchen Bouquet and tomato paste) as you need to cover the whole mixture, so there’s approximately ¼” of liquid over everything. Then drizzle remaining oil across the top of the cholent, along with a generous sprinkling of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. The more oil you add, the crunchier the top and richer it will be.
Put the cholent in the pre-heated oven for 45 minutes, until the water on top comes to a boil. Then turn down the heat to 325 degrees F and cook for two hours. Take it out and check it. Stick a spoon to the bottom and see if there’s liquid left, if there’s not much, add more stock or water, perhaps a few cups to once again submerge everything. (The liquid is what will cook the dry beans and grains and make everything amazing) You never want to let the cholent get dry!
Cook for an additional three hours, adding the bouquet garni at this time as well as the Elixir Végétal, so altogether about 6-7 hours. Or 7-8 hours, if you prefer – you really can’t screw this up. If there’s too much liquid, keep cooking. If the beans on top aren’t cooked enough, add more stock or water until they’re covered and cooked. You’ll know your cholent is ready when the beans are tender and the top of your cholent is caramelized to a golden brown.
Turn the heat back up to 450 for 15 minutes or until it has achieved a crispy crown before serving!
Take your cholent out of the oven and serve the perfect combo — a little bit of everything plus a marrow bone for toast. I always serve cholent with cucumber salad on the side and a good bottle of red wine – TFD strongly prefers Georgian Kindzamarauli or Khvanchkara.
Pro tip: On the second night of eating cholent (and beyond), scoop the cholent out onto a cooking sheet into a thin layer and reheat at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, until everything turns amazingly crispy. We eat from it all week and then freeze some for another Cholent Party another time.
For the cucumber salad:
Prepare the following, adding each to the same medium bowl as you complete it: Using a mandoline or a knife (you can also use the slice blade on a food processor), thinly slice 1 pound English or seedless cucumbers crosswise (4 to 5 cups). Halve and thinly slice 1 small red onion (about 1/2 cup). Sprinkle with 1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt and toss to combine. Let sit for 20 minutes.
Pour off any liquid from the cucumber mixture. Add vinegar and granulated sugar, and toss until the sugar is dissolved. Taste and season with black pepper as needed. Add dill and toss to combine.
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