This recipe for cholent used to be top secret. My husband made it for Shabbat every week and he never divulged the details, even to me! Then one Friday he wasn’t feeling well and rather than give up his weekly cholent, he let me take over. I was so nervous.
It wasn’t a success the first time, but I’ve practiced and now we’re neck and neck. It was his father’s recipe, passed on to his older brother, then passed on to him. It was supposed to go straight to our son but I got it first! I guess you could say I am now an honorary member of the men’s club.
Note: You can substitute the 3 tablespoons chicken consommé mix + 3 cups water with 3 cups chicken broth.
Family Heirloom Cholent
This cholent recipe used to be my hubby’s secret, but I finally got it out of him and now you too can make the best cholent ever.
Servings
8 Servings
Ingredients
- 2 medium potatoes peeled and cut into bite-sized chunks
- 2 medium onions peeled, cut into bite-sized chunks
- 1 2-pound piece of flanken, cut into 4 to 6 pieces
- ½ tablespoon coarse black pepper
- ¾ cup barley
- 1 cup dried light red kidney beans
- 3 tablespoons chicken consommé mix
- 2 tablespoons paprika
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 1-pound kishka loaf
- 3 cups water
Instructions
- Line bottom of slow cooker with potatoes and onions.
- Rinse flanken and pat dry. Place pieces around sides of crock pot, with bones on the outside.
- Generously pepper meat.
- Add barley and beans. Shake the pot a bit so some of the barley and beans fall into the spaces between the potatoes and onions.
- Season with consommé mix, paprika, and honey.
- Place kishka on top.
- Pour in water, adding more if necessary, to completely cover all ingredients.
- Cook on low heat overnight, at least 8 hours.
Hello Mark – never apologize for Qs – here are my As.
1. The foil lining is due to the prohibitions regarding cooking on the Sabbath.
2. No need to bring it to a boil first – just cooking on low the entire time is sufficient.
3. I have never had the oil separate like that…. all I can say is when you mix it all together should be great! And again on low for 8 hrs (or even up to 20 hours) is perfect no need to play with the temp.
Can’t wait to hear how it came out!
YAY YAY YAY!!!!!!!! A++ is the BEST grade ever! For chulent meat you really must use a cut with fat and bones – flanken being one of the best. Thanks SO very much for commenting!!!!
Lining that acts as a “Blech” b/c of prohibitions re: cooking on Shabbos – but as always I recommend you ask your LOR (Local Orthodox Rabbi) for more details.
Hey Sam! You make me laugh – BTW my mom and sister call me “J” so it’s totally cool! How did you end up in Oregon (all the way from NY)? I would love to know. The kishka recipe is from one of our contributors but people seem to really like it. I hope it satisfies the craving and lives up to your memories: http://www.joyofkosher.com/recipes/kishka/
Love, J (aka a Woman called Jamie)
No you did nothing wrong! 🙂 It really depends n the size of the crockpot and how much water you’ve added. SO next time you can either add more consomme mix or salt OR what I like to do is add chicken or beef broth instead of water for extra flavor if I have some in the house. Hope you are able to perfect our recipe. regards to your wife and daughter!
Thanks for the tip. Chag kosher v’same’ach!
I’ve spent many years trying to perfect my chulent. For almost a year now I’ve used a recipe that I made up which is good. However, this past Shabbos I tried your recipe but used a full pack of barley instead of beans since my wife and daughter prefer chulent without beans. My family and I really enjoyed your recipe. However, I thought it needed some salt. Did I do something wrong?
I made this cholent last Shabbat and it came out EXCELLENT!! I used what our kosher store here in Rockville called cholent meat, but I think I’ll use the chuck steak or flanken like you suggested next time. The meat was a little dry… I think it just needed some fat. Anyhow… THANK YOU!!! My father in law gave it an A++ 🙂
Hi Joy,
A few questions sorry:
1) Why was there foil in your crockpot before you lowered the ceramic pot in?
2) We were planning on cooking and boiling on high for it to boil before turning it to low but due to time constraints, we waited for an hour and didn’t see any boil – so turned it to low and went to bed.
3) In the morning, around 8 hours later, we see a half inch layer of oil on top. Now, not sure what to do… remove the oil, and continue cooking on low for a few more hours, or turn it up to high and continue cooking?
Please help! Thanks!
What’s the foil for I ur crock pot?
oops, sorry – Jamie
HI J,
I live in the Hinterland of Oregon- 30 miles from a market and 7 h ours from anything ethnic, ANY ethnicity! That said, will you share your recipe for kishka and also if you know any on line sources? I haven’t had a good kishke since I let NY 35 years ago!!! Thanks
Hey there again! and so cool! When did you make aliyah? And sadly… NO (and I say that really sadly with a heavy heart). We miss both the kishka and hot dogs like crazy and bring them back from our US trips — both products are tops on our list. Thankfully our kiddies love the Israeli hot dogs but we have had a harder time transitioning to them.
we also made alliyah, and am wondering if you have found any supermarket kishke that compares to A-H from NJ? we miss their kishke and hot dogs so much! have you found anything close?
THANK YOU!!
WHOA BABY lots of Qs. Ok let me try to answer them. (And yes we agree about a simple chulent shabbos lunch although I LOVE my chulent with a fresh green leafy salad!)
1. Meat – unfortunately we are having the same issue here to the point that my intensely meat loving husband doesn’t even want chulent meat and therefore chulent. SO what did I do? Started making my Somewhat Sephardi Chicken Chulent from my NEW BOOK: JOY OF KOSHER Fast, Fresh, Family Recipes (available at local book stores). So you can substitute chicken (dark meat: legs and thighs) for the red meat. I find the chicken hear to be amazing quality! The next best option is visiting Alon my butcher at BEST Market in RBS Aleph and asking for the shin meat or going to Benny’s and requesting the Assado/Flanken.
2. Osem Cosomme is the Chicken soup mix in the yellow plastic containers. I buy the pareve one OR use chicken OR beef soup broth in place of water and soup mix.
3. The homemade Kishka recipe is from one of our community members and is not mine so I can’t vouch for it but we also like half the kishka mixed in and half served sliced on the side SO whichever recipe you use you must keep it wrapped if you don’t want it to just fall apart and melt into the chulent.
4. There is no garlic in the recipe bc it’s my husband’s recipe and he doesn’t love garlic the way I love garlic. My Sephardic Style Chulent in the new book calls for 4 cloves of garlic chopped. You can certainly add that here.
5. And yes we love sweet potato – again the Sephardic chulent I keep mentioning calls for all sweet potato and I just made it this shabbos and we all agreed that while we love sweet potato we don’t love only sweet potato and instead now like to do half and half, half sweet ad half white. So that’s what we’ll be doing for the next little while moving forward.
6. My friend uses wheat berries and I like it too!
7. We put it up right before shabbos but I understand wanting to be over and done with the prep early on in the day so what we do is make the chulent by placing ALL the contents in the slow cooker’s removable ceramic “crock” EXCEPT for the water/broth and put it in the fridge. Right before Shabbos we add the water/broth and place the crock into the slow cooker, cover, turn on, and you are good to go – NO MESS! Your soupy issue is you ratio of wet ingredients to dry. Try this recipe and let us know how you enJOY it!
No the taste is not affected you just have to be sure it doesn’t burn when left over Shabbos. Often if there isn’t enough “stuff” in the slow cooker the long cooking time can start to burn the contents.
One more question… Is the taste of the chulent affected when we make a small chulent on the occasional “quiet” shabbos, filling the slow cooker 1/2 way?
For shabbos lunch I’m content with a plate of chulent and kishka and that’s it! (maybe an entree of fish or liver with a little salad as well) However, we’ve been experimenting and bottom line, struggling, with the chulent for over 25 years. I’m determined to finally have a good chulent every week and can’t wait to try your recipe! Here in Israel we haven’t found the meat nearly as tasty or “fall off the bone/melt in your mouth” soft (not just an issue for chulent)[Of course being used to Romanian meats and kishka from Chicago will spoil anyone! Their chopped liver, hot dogs and cold cuts are to die for!] Where is your RBS butcher located and if I ask for the chulent meat the Gellers order will they know what I’m talking about? (Maybe he should package it under “Geller’s chulent meat”? LOL!) (What is the hechsher?) Which frozen Hackers do you use? They have 2 cubed meats- Do you use the short rib cubes? You can also go to Hackers store in Sanhedria and they’ll cut the frozen meat any way you want. If so, which # cut would you recommend? The frozen South American imports are always without the bone so you’d have to buy bones separately.
Is Osem Consomme the same as the Chicken soup mix in the yellow plastic containers? If so, the Pareve or fleishing one?
Our homemade kishka doesn’t stay firm. I don’t mind it mixed into the chulent but I want it to remain in chunks (identifiable) and not become totally disintegrated. Does your kishka recipe stay that way? Would it need to be wrapped? What about baking it or par-baking it beforehand?
Why don’t you add any fresh or powdered garlic?
Have you ever added sweet potato? I find it adds a nice natural sweet flavor.
You can substitute wheat (berries?) for barley. It looks, cooks and tastes the same.
How long before shabbos do you put up the chulent? It needs to either be 1/3-1/2 cooked or raw before shabbos starts. We like to put it up by 10am, meaning it would cook for over 25 hours. Even so, our chulent is always soupy 🙁 We’d rather be done with all food prep by mid morning. With your recipe is this too long?
WOW that’s horrible – I can’t say that I have had that happen – I too remove the large bones from which the meat has separated and thankfully haven’t had to contend with shards… but now in Israel I often use boneless cubed beef and it’s still great!
I’m glad that you haven’t had this happen to you. It has also happened to me when I’ve used flanken for cabbage soup. Although I know that the bones provide flavor, I will stay away from flanken from now one and use boneless cubed beef. I love your website Jamie and am so grateful to have found it.
Thank you for including a substitution for the flanken. I find that after a long cooking process, flanken meat separates from the bone, (I just remove the bare bones), but little pieces of bone shards fall into the dish and can be chewed on and swallowed, resulting in a very unpleasant reaction.
Hi Benita – if you use too lean of a cut your meat will dry out — in Israel we use flanken or asado fresh from the butcher which is close to the flanken in the states or from the freezer section we use Hacker’s Cubed Beef (not the one designated for cholent). Please scroll up in the comments for instructions on how to make cholent in a pot on the stove top. Great luck and let me know how it turns out, enJOY!
Hey there, so no we don’t wrap it – just lay it on top and then when serving break it up with the spoon and mix it in. You can replace the barley with brown rice or you can make an all bean cholent but of course it’s not quite the same. (If you’d like you can also add some chickpeas just to add more interest). If you do an all bean cholent you won’t need as much water – just enough to cover.
its so hard for me to say definitively bc each crockpot is different but we cook ours on low for about 20 hours (we set it right before shabbos which now is around 4p and then eat it around 12 noon the next day) hope you enJOY it!
HI, so not sure if it has been asked1 (skimmed through the comments!) 2 questions, do I wrap the kishke in tin foil before putting in the cholent? (never made cholent with it) and also my hubby cant have barley, is there a substitute or can I just use regular cholent beans and skip the barley? thanks tons x
Looks awesome- looking forward to trying this!
My crockpot has settings warm, low and high- should i cook on low or high? My cholents have been a little watery lately so I’m concerned about how high to cook it and for how long
Hi Jamie, I loved your easy recipe and watched your video on Youtube. I also live in Israel and would like to know if you could recommend a leaner cut of beef that would suit the chollent. I don’t mind adding some bones separately, it’s just that my family doesn’t like meat with much fat on it. Another question: I don’t own a crock pot, I have prepared chollent before in the oven (with not so much success; always too much water left in it..); how would you recommend doing it and in what temperature to cook it? I love chollent and would like to prepare it for the coming weekend. Please help! 🙂
Thank you in advance!
Hey Dale: OK so I like when the kishka breaks up into a mush in my chulent so I take off the wrapper. This way as you prepare to serve it and transfer the chulent from the slow cooker to your serving dish it’s super easy to mix in the soft broken down kishka. And yes the water level should cover the kishka. enJOY!
Hi, do you leave the kishka in the wrap or do you remove all of the covering. Also, do you add the water level to cover the kishka as well? Thanks, Dale
Hi Nuriye from London! So ideally this recipe is best made in a 5 liter slow cooker (or something close to that size). If you have something significantly larger like a 7 liter than 1 1/2 times the recipe for optimum flavor.
This recipe is best made in a 5 liter slow cooker (or something close to that size). If you have something significantly larger like a 7 liter than 1 1/2 times the recipe for optimum flavor.
your welcome :-)!
yay so happy!
OY – ok – that’ all the flavoring/seasoning. Try beef broth or chicken broth in place of water. I don’t know what spices to suggest bc I am not sure what you are allergic too.
Loved your video of making cholent.Please wash the beans before you put them into the slow cooker. One does not know how the beans were stored or how clean the area was that stored the beans. Thank you, Shima from Hollywood.Florida 11/6/2013
Looks like a great recipe. Want to try it, however I would have to substitute for the pepper, paprika & soup mix, due to allergies. Any good ideas ?
Hi Jaime,
How large is the crock pot you used to make the cholent? I would like to get a similar one in London.
Thanks
cool thanks it is!
Beans will cook faster if they’ve been soaked first. But with this recipe, they cook for so long anyway (8 hours!) that it doesn’t matter. I’ve tried this recipe with both dry and canned beans, and Jamie’s right, the canned beans just got mushy. I’ve also tried a variation of this in a pressure cooker, which cuts down the cooking time considerably.
Hi Ethan – I love to read the words “Jamie’s right” :-)! But all joking aside – thanks for your feedback.
your food looks good and tasty
Hi Judy! Shana Tova – you haven’t bored me. I also could skip the meat (and the potatoes LOL) and do a vegetarian bean and barley cholent. I find that I can get lots of great stuff here and am hanging in quite well. So happy you have such wonderful children who carry the load of the cooking! Wishing you a Chag Sameach!
I’ve just watched your cholent video. I do soak my beans and chickpeas if I’m using them and kidney beans. I love the potatoes and the barley and beans more than the meat. I can quite easilu skip the meat. I noticed you don’t use salt. I must have my salt. 50 yrs or so ago when my mum made cholent she’d put carrots in for me. They come out delicious. You don’t put eggs in either. Now that you are here, do you? I used to just stick a whole onion in but now I will do as your husband did. What sort of meat were you using? It looked like Jolly good meat. Not from Israel that’s for sure. Did you bring chipotle? With you? I don’t even know what it is. I lef England in 1968 age 23. All I could make, for my dad, was worsht and eggs in schmaltz. I had to teach myself. I became very good. Cooking. Baking. Making jams and granola. Everything and I worked full time. Until they went off to the army we all sat together to eat at night. When they came for weekends we did then too. While son and daughter were in the army my ex and I had a very amicable divorce. Well I was alone so I wasn’t going to cook for myself and I stopped. When they all came home and my son married his one and only girlfriend and they lived with me I hsf no confidence to go back into the kitchen. Friday nights were awful. My ex came. My son and d.in law and now 3 kids. My daughter and s.in law and their 3 kids. It got too much for me. I was tense. Weepy. Nervous. Anxious. So now my daughter cooks and my d.in law sometimes joins in but always helps. But I feel myself itching to cook something. I have made some chicken curries. Doesn’t sound much but it’s a start. Jamie what do you do now as you can’t get the good stuff you could get in America. It drives me mad. I’m looking at all sorts of cookery blogs and half the ingredients can’t be got in Israel. Such a bummer. Well it’s nearly 3am and I’ve got 2 cats sleeping on my foot so I’ll say good night. I hope I’ll hear from you and that I haven’t bored you to tears. Happy New Year. An easy fast and גמר חתימה טובה. Judy.
Hi Jean — what recipe is this Q referring to?
it it crazy not normal delish! lol funny Q – actual cooking time is at least 8 hours
Looks delish…is it really 20 hrs? Whats the cooking time
wish to join for free
Ok, what did I do wrong? I mixed everything in the blender except the flour as my blades never have taken the punishment of breads. The mix came out looking like very wet biscuit dough, and I couldn’t even begin to do a loaf until I added twice as much flour as listed :S
An incredibly helpful comment – that fishy sounding “no added MSG” phrase can really throw a person off. I now love to use Manischewitz All Natural Chicken Broth with NO MSG 🙂 in place of consomme and water. Of course one can always use homemade broth as well.
yes it absolutely will cook faster on high heat.
Will it cook faster on high heat?
Hi Denise – I am SO sorry I haven’t made it this way so I can’t properly advise you. I can however give you some pointers if you want to do this on the stove top, hope this helps: saute the onions in olive oil in a 6qt stock pot, pepper the meat and add to pot to sear. Then add in everything else… your potatoes, beans, barley, seasonings, kishka etc… and enough water to cover, bring to a boil and then allow it to simmer, covered, for at least 6 hours. Check on it periodically and add water if necessary. You have to be more vigilant bc a pot on the stove top can burn your chulent faster than a slow cooker.
Jaime,
How large is the crock pot you used to make the cholent?
I can’t wait till try it for this Shabbos.