Seven C’s Beef Roast

Seven C’s (seven spices starting with the letter C) Beef Roast is an attempt at a chili-like Mexican flavored beef roast in the mold of Jewish Cholent (a sort of lentil-chickpea-barley baked beans), with a bit of southwest pulled beef inspiration.

You will need a large oven-safe pot like a 6-qt braising pan (or dutch oven).

Beef and onions

Brown both sides of

• 1-2 lb of chuck roast

in

• bacon lard
• Worcestershire sauce
• garlic powder
• salt

topped with

• crushed fresh black peppercorns
• chipotle Tabasco sauce

Chop and salt

• 1-2 chopped (inch pieces) large onion (we made this with too small of pieces—you want to eat the onions more like in a regular beef roast)

and saute until brown and sweet.

Spices

Cholent and this recipe include

• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp coriander
• 1 Mexican cinnamon stick

Whereas cholent has paprika, we use

• 1 tbsp chili powder (pasilla molido or pasilla ancho) (and below, we add chipotle)

instead of ginger, as is called for in cholent, we use (much less)

• 1/4 tsp cocoa
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (ground)

Saute the above spices in olive oil and/or lard with the onions.

Veggies, beans and barley

Chop

• 4 carrots (medium-ish)

into 1-inch-ish pieces.

(Optional) Add

• 1 can crushed or diced tomatoes and juices (1 can stewed tomatoes crushed between fingers)

(We want to try this again with no tomatoes—they are pretty strong.)

Add

• 1 tbsp chopped golden raisins

Instead of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) as cholent uses, we use

• 1 can canellini (white) beans

with 1/3 of the can of liquid.

As with cholent, this dish includes

• 1/2 cup cereal (pearl barley— rice would be good but it would fall apart; add late in the game)

Remove seeds, chop and add

• 1 chipotle pepper in 1 tsp adobo sauce

Add

• 1 tbsp molasses

Since the spices (especially cocoa) are bitter.

Water, boil, simmer

(To be removed: Add

• 1 tbsp (?cider) vinegar (maybe we don’t want this?)

We thought it was too sour/zippy... We’ll try again with no vinegar)

Cover with water (4-8 cups), bring to boil, reduce heat, remove any scum that rises to the surface, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Oven

Preheat oven to 300 F. Transfer and cook uncovered for an hour or two. If the liquid has evaporated and the texture is thick and the meat exposed, cover with lid, and return to oven and cook a few more hours. (Total time: 3-5 hours.) At this time, it might be a good idea to remove the cinnamon stick before it breaks up and leaves chunks of bark floating around. Perhaps add more cumin and chile powder as the flavor weakens over time.

When the meat is ready, if bones are present, meat should fall off the bones. Shred beef with two forks (if you can’t, it’s not soft enough; cook longer.)

Garnish

(Optional, not crucial) Add

• slivered almonds

in the bowl.

Serve on homemade tortillas and/or corn bread. Great with saltines.