Can this PAREVE CHOLENT taste as good as the real thing?

This is traditional Shabbos [music] cholent, slow-cooked, crock-pot cooked overnight. And the surprising thing about it, would you believe, is it has no meat. This is parve, and I'm going to show you how to make a parve cholent that ranks up there with the best of the meat cholents. >> [music] >> Yellow onions, russet potatoes, barley, barley, canned beans. Mendy. >> Hey, hey, what's up, Rabbi T? How are you? >> Baruch Hashem. Okay, listen, I don't ask questions. I'm making parve cholent. I know you sell incredible meat, but this is this recipe is a parve cholent, okay? You know what makes a parve cholent usually bland is that it lacks the fat, >> Right. Okay. >> I need margarine. >> You need margarine. >> I need good margarine. I need your best margarine. >> Okay, perfect. >> Thank you so much. >> All right. Now, here's another thing. >> Okay. >> A lot of stores don't carry it. I [music] need MSG, and I'm not talking about where the Knicks play. I'm a Bulls fan. Okay, I need monosodium glutamate. >> Let's go. When the Chinese find out you're putting MSG in your cholent, it's going to be next level. >> Perfect. Paprika. >> Smoked or regular? >> Regular. >> This is good. I'm just thinking, how do you spruce up a parve cholent? >> So, today we're going to be doing a classic Shabbos staple, cholent. Cholent is a stew that's left on overnight, basically because the prohibition of cooking on Shabbos. You can't cook on Shabbos, but what you can do is put something on the fire, or as it were, the crock-pot, before Shabbos. It gets to a certain point of cooking already, and then it just stays on the heat over Shabbos. That way, you have hot food, but you're not cooking on Shabbos, which is one of the 39 prohibited labors on Shabbos. This particular cholent is a parve cholent. Parve means neutral in the sense of, in Jewish dietary laws, if you want to keep it really, really basic, you have meat and you have dairy, and we don't eat them together. So, we keep the two separate. Parve is neither meat nor dairy. Now, you're going to say to me, "Why in the world would any self-respecting cholent eater want a parve cholent when you could easily just have a nice meat cholent, a fleishig cholent?" However, sometimes you want a parve cholent. I don't know, maybe it's a winter Shabbos, and Shabbos ends at 6:00 p.m. and you want to go out for pizza and ice cream after Shabbos, and you and it's not going to be 6 hours from your meal by that time. People wait 6 hours between the meat and the milk. Whatever your reasons, I'm not asking questions. If you want a parve cholent, I happen to have one just as delectable, if not more so, than your classic meat cholent. The ingredients on this cholent are very, very simple. Nothing fancy, nothing surprising, except for my one secret ingredient. What do we have? We have onions. We have potatoes. We have beans. We have barley. And our spices are just salt and pepper, paprika, not even smoked, just regular paprika, little ketchup, MSG, frozen kishke, and the secret ingredient, the margarine. That's it. That's the whole thing. Now, here's what I want to explain to you. Sometimes, it's not so much about the what, it's about the how. Because it's all about knowing where to put things. There's levels, you're building, it's a structure, okay? And according to which levels you want to get more heat, less heat, more water, less water, that's how you build it, and that's how it comes out perfect. The first ingredient I'm going to go with is my onions, and there's a very simple reason for that. With the onions, I'm building a base. I'm coating the bottom of the ceramic crock-pot with the onions because basically I want them to melt almost. The next layer is going to be the beans. The beans cuz they're hard, they need a lot of heat, they go on the bottom, but I don't want them on the very bottom cuz I don't want them sticking to the ceramic. The onions are basically creating coating on the bottom to keep the beans from burning even though the beans are on the bottom which is where they need to be. I'm going to put the onions in here. The crock-pot's already getting warm. I turned it on when we came in. It's already warming up. What I tell you is the next layer? The beans. I don't even like that many beans. I'm not even going to use the whole bag. That's enough. Now, the next layer is the potatoes. We use regular russet Idaho potatoes for the tone. Why? Cuz they're firm, they're classics, they have a nice straightforward flavor. Peel the potatoes. Chop potatoes. Like an inch thick. Basically like cubes. Okay. Okay, so like I said, I wanted the onions at the bottom so they dissolve. The The beans need a lot of heat because they're hard. Now, the next is the potatoes. So, I want the potatoes also, if they don't get heat, they'll be hard, but I don't need them to be as exposed to as much heat as as the beans. Some people, they mix it up before it even cooks. That's ill-advised. Okay? You want to keep everything on its own level. All right. Now, we're going to start with the spices. We need a lot of pepper. Don't be scared. This does have a kick. It is a recognizably spicy cholent. Now, we're going to paprika. You're going to be scared cuz this seems like a ridiculous amount of salt, but this is what's required to make it schmaltz. Okay? I'm going to put it in my hand. Okay, yeah. See that? However many tablespoons that is. MSG A lot of controversy about MSG. Some people don't like it. Some people are afraid of it. But it brings out flavor. And when you want a parve cholent that is savory and flavorful, you got to do something like you got to have a trick, okay? And one of the main reasons why a parve cholent never really compares even to a mediocre meat cholent is because of the fat, okay? Fat tastes good. With a meat cholent, I will put bones, marrow bones. They're very very fatty. That gives it a a texture, it holds it together, it gives it flavor. Parve, what I'm going to do, secret ingredient, I'm going to use margarine. This is OU dairy-free, parve, no dairy whatsoever in this. I'm going to take a whole stick of this and I'm just going to drop it right in. The last real layer is the barley. And the reason that barley goes on top is cuz I don't want it to dissolve. I want the barley to draw water cuz I want it to be expanded and soft. I also want the barley to draw water cuz it stabilizes the moisture of the entire cholent. How do you How are you going to maintain that? You don't have control. Remember, you're not cooking it, you're not tending to it, you're not opening it, you're not checking on it during Shabbos. How am I going to let this go and know that it's stable for 24 hours? The barley is the secret because it holds the water and it keeps the moisture level in the entire cholent steady and and stable. I'm going to put some ketchup on top again just to give it a little bit of flavor. And now I'm going to put the frozen kishkes on top. I'm loosening the paper because actually I want that some of the substance from the flour should get into the cholent. I want a thick cholent. The last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add the water, okay? And how much water? I want enough water that the water line should just cover the barley level. Like I told you, this is all about structure, okay? Someone else could take the exact same ingredients, but if you don't position it, if you don't layer it the right way, you're not going to get these results. We're going to let this cook the way that it would on a Shabbos, and we come back, everything is going to have absorbed just the right amount of heat and moisture to make it perfect. Alrighty. Parve cholent reveal. Crock-Pot has been on low all night. And let's open her up and see what we got. All right, first we're going to take out our kishke. Kishke reveal. I'm just going to cut them into individual slices. Now, we're going to scoop this up. We're going to go from the bottom. And you see my beans are fully cooked. In my house, cholent's served on a plate. Like I told you, my cholent's not a soup, it's not runny, it's not watery. So, we don't serve them in bowls, we serve them on plates. This is how I plate it. All right. So, this is very ambitious of me, but to test my parve cholent to see if it ranks up there with a Fleishigs cholent, I have my friend, Klein, from Fleishigs magazine. All right, I'm going to let you >> Okay, this is intimidating. >> I'm intimidated because this is a a parve cholent. We have our secret ingredient to uh >> It smells great. I came in before. It smells like a gishmaka cholent. >> And you wouldn't know that it's parve. You would assume it's >> Not from the smell, no. >> Okay. All right. So, I'm going to let you plate it yourself. Just take a scoop of cholent, a slice of kishke. >> All right. We're going to get a little bit of everything. Some of the potatoes. I see you got beans. You got barley. >> Yes. Barley holds it together, yeah. >> a slice of kishke. >> Yeah. Okay. >> It's all right. >> I I make two separate brochos. I make a brocha on the kishke and the mazoinos and the ha'adama on the on the rest of the cholent. >> Boruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha'olam hamotzi lechem min >> Okay. That's that's a and b. Okay. The kishke's a and b. All right. Now, let's try the cholent. >> Boruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha'olam borei pri >> Amen. Would this be worthy of a shul kiddush, let's say? >> Definitely worthy. Full of flavor. It's very gishmak. And the good thing is that listen, you could have ice cream after. It's milky ice cream. >> Exactly. You can have real ice cream after it. >> [clears throat] >> But yeah, this is definitely this is very good. >> You wouldn't know that it's parve unless somebody told you. >> I would know it's parve. >> You wouldn't. >> I would know it's parve. >> You're fleishig. >> I would know it's parve, but that doesn't mean it's not a good cholent. >> Uh-huh. >> It's very No, no. It's very good. Thank you. >> Amazing. >> I'm going to go off camera. I'm going to finish it. >> Okay. >> Very very good. >> All right.