As Sukkot is a harvest festival, Sukkot menus typically include dishes with plenty of fruits and vegetables. Since the Feast of Tabernacles takes place during the beginning of the Fall season, it’s a perfect time to utilize the bounty of the season into this all-in-one-pot richly aromatic rice dish.
This soft, fruity rice, with its lovely, fragrance and flavor, is a modern adaptation of traditional Bukharian Sabbath rice that is typically served every Saturday lunch. Traditionally this rice dish was cooked in a linen bag (called a khalti) immersed in a soup stock and cooked slowly overnight. This method significantly enhances the flavor, as the vegetables and fruits melt into a thick brown sweet risotto. Osh Sovo was always made with pieces of meat; however, this meatless version is substituted with beans. Fusing European influence into this dish, you will find root vegetables typically found in the Ashkenazi cholent (another dish cooked by Jews of Eastern European descent for the Sabbath). Cooking this dish in a slow cooker not only allows observance of the no-cook rule on Sukkot, but it will form a dark crust at the bottom of the pot that can be enjoyed as a delicacy on its own.
Osh Sovo: Bukharian Slow-Cooked Rice with Dried Fruit
Servings
Ingredients
- 1 cup 200 g dried red kidney beans, soaked 12 hours in advance
- 2 cups 450 g short-grain brown rice, soaked 4 hours in advance
- ½ cup 115 ml oil
- 1 large onion coarsely chopped
- 3 carrots cut into thin matchsticks
- 3 large tomatoes chopped
- 3 potatoes peeled and quartered
- 2 apples peeled, cored and quartered
- 1 sweet potato peeled and quartered
- 5 pitted prunes chopped
- 5 dried apricots chopped
- 2 tablespoons raisins
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 5 1/2 cups 1.3 liters water
- 2 teaspoons sea salt
Instructions
- Soak the dried kidney beans (12 hours in advance).
- Wash and soak the rice (4 hours in advance).
- When you are ready to cook, add the beans, rice, oil, onion, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, apples, sweet potato, prunes, apricots, raisins, turmeric and ginger to the slow cooker and cover with water.
- Turn the slow cooker to the lowest setting. Cover and cook for 12 to 18 hours. Periodically check the pot to make sure that the water has not dried up. If it has, add ½ cup (125 ml) at a time. The minimum amount of time required to cook Osh Sovo is 12 hours, upwards of 18 hours. Cooking time is very forgiving, since the longer it cooks, the more the flavors meld. Season with salt at the end.
- Spoon onto a large platter and top with the crust from the bottom of the pot, if you can. Serve hot.
Whatever this stew is, it is not osh savo! Highly misleading…
I have seen that also, but also found that if you cook them long enough there isn’t a problem.
Don’t kidney beans have to be soaked and boiled for at least ten minutes because of the toxin in kidney beans?
A slow cooker on low might not be hot enough.
Here is a link:
http://www.foodreference.com/html/artredkidneybeanpoisoning.html
This would work best in a 6 qt. slow cooker
What size slow cooker/crockpot is the recipe designed for?
This is my version of the Bukharian Osh Sovo. The flavors and texture mimic the meat version. Try and let me know.
Wrong recipe. We don’t use beans at all in our “cholent”
Plus bukharians don’t use beans only rice/barley.
Lol I am Bukharian and there’s different ways to do it! Plus it a sepadic dish called chulent!