Return to Main Recipes Page/Return to Home Page
4 to 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
In a heavy gauge Dutch oven, sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil until lightly golden. Add meat chunks and continue to seize the meat (sauté to seal in the juices); there will be less shrinkage of the meat.
Add the cracked wheat which you will have checked for pebbles, etc. and rinsed in cold water and drained. Add spices, harissa, and chunks of carrots and celery and cover with water to about 2" above the contents of the pot.
Bring to a boil and simmer for at least 1 hour, until most of the water has evaporated.
Just before Shabbat, transfer to a crockpot, check the water level, add some more if needed and let it continue to cook overnight in the crockpot. By lunch on Shabbat morning, it will be a nice golden color and totally concentrated and ready to eat.
Poster's Notes:
The way my parents made it was as follows: by the way we call it harissa, because one of the kicks to it was harissa, the hot crushed red pepper sauce that was added as a spice.
With the cold weather upon us, I strongly recommend it. We have been eating this almost every Shabbat lunch for ever.
By the way, you can substitute chicken or veal for the beef. We prefer it to bean cholent, as it is not as heavy as all the beans, and much easier on the digestive system. :-)
Posted by Simone Greenbaum
Nutritional Info Per Serving: N/A
1 large onion sliced
1/2 head of garlic chopped
2 lbs. of chuck meat, preferably well marbled, cut in chunks
1 lb. of cracked wheat, which you can get in any Middle-Eastern store, kind of looks like brown rice but is is wheat
4 carrots peeled and cut in 2" to 3"pieces
3 to 4 stalks of celery cut in 2" pieces
1 teaspoon harissa (mild or hot, your choice, we prefer the hot)
1 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. ground caraway
1/4 tsp. black pepper
3/4 tsp. coarse salt
Water to cover
This used to be our Shabbat cholent in Tunisia.