Cholent (Yiddish: ???????, tsholnt or tshoolnt) or Hamin (Hebrew: ?????) is a tr aditional Jewish stew.

It is usually simmered overnight for 12 hours or more, an d eaten for lunch on Shabbat (the Sabbath). Cholent was developed over the centu ries to conform with Jewish laws that prohibit cooking on the Sabbath. The pot i s brought to boil on Friday before the Sabbath begins, and kept on a blech or ho tplate, or placed in a slow oven or electric slow cooker until the following day .

There are many variations of the dish, which is standard in both the Ashkenazi a nd Sephardi kitchens.[1] The basic ingredients of cholent are meat, potatoes, be ans and barley. Sephardi-style hamin uses rice instead of beans and barley, and chicken instead of beef. A traditional Sephardi addition is whole eggs in the sh ell (huevos haminados), which turn brown overnight. Ashkenazi cholent often cont ains kishke (a sausage casing) or helzel (a chicken neck skin stuffed with a flo ur-based mixture). Slow overnight cooking allows the flavors of the various ingr edients to permeate and produces the characteristic taste of cholent.

Contents [hide] 1 Etymology 2 Traditional Shabbat food 3 History 4 Variations 5 Ashkenazi cholent recipes 6 Sephardi hamin recipes 7 Haminados 8 Literary references 9 See also 10 References 11 Bibliography Etymology[edit] Max Weinreich traces the etymology of cholent to the Latin present participle ca lentem, meaning "that which is hot" (as in calorie), via Old French chalant (pre sent participle of chalt, from the verb chaloir, "to warm").[2][3] One widely qu oted folk etymology, relying on the French pronunciation of cholent or the Centr al and Western European variants shalent or shalet, derives the word from French chaud ("hot") and lent ("slow"). Another folk etymology derives cholent (or sho len) from the Hebrew she lan, which means "that rested [overnight]". This refers t o the old time cooking process of Jewish families placing their individual pots of cholent into the town baker's ovens that always stayed hot and slow-cooked th e food overnight. The generally accepted etymology is Old French chaudes lentes hot lentils. Traditional Shabbat food[edit]

Vegetable cholent assembled in a slow cooker before Shabbat

In traditional Jewish families, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, cholent or hamin is the hot main course of the midday Shabbat meal served on Saturdays after the mo rning synagogue services. Secular Jewish families in Israel also serve cholent. The dish is more popular in the winter. Cholent may be served on Shabbat in syna gogues at a kiddush celebration after the conclusion of the Shabbat services, at the celebratory reception following an aufruf (when a Jewish groom is called up to the Torah reading on the Shabbat prior to the wedding) or at bar and bat mit zvah receptions held on Shabbat morning. Lighting a fire and cooking food are among the activities prohibited on Shabbat by the written Torah. Therefore, cooked Shabbat food, such as cholent or hamin, must be prepared before the onset of the Jewish Shabbat by some as early as Thur sdays and certainly not later than Friday afternoon. The pre-cooked food may the n be kept hot for the Shabbat meal by the provision in the Rabbinical oral law, which explains that one may use a fire that was lit before Shabbat to keep warm food that was already cooked before Shabbat.[4][5] It is interesting to note that Rabbi Zerachiah ben Isaac Ha-Levi Gerondi (Hebrew : ????? ????? ????); the Baal Ha-Maor (author of the book Ha-Maor), went as far as to write that "he who does not eat warm food (on Shabbos) should be checked o ut to see if he is not a Min (a heretic)".[6] The reasoning beyond such austerit y is that the Karaites interpreted the Torah verse, "You shall not [burn] (Heb: bi er the pi el form of ba ar) a fire in any of your dwellings on the day of Shabbat" to indicate that fire should not be left burning in a Jewish home on Shabbat, re gardless of whether it was lit prior to, or during the Sabbath. In Rabbinic Juda ism however, the qal verb form ba ar is understood to mean "burn", whereas the pi` el form (present here) is understood to be, not intensive as usual but causative . (The rule being that the pi'el of a stative verb will be causative, instead of the usual hif'il.) Hence bi`er means "kindle", which is why Rabbinic Judaism pr ohibits only starting a fire on Shabbat.