Not Just Meatballs

A couple of months ago, my son #1 and husband told me not to make chulent ever again.

Nobody likes your chulent! It's horrible!

Chulent is a slow-cooking stew, specially developed to suit the Jewish Laws of Shabbat (Sabbath) which forbids cooking. It's first cooked before Shabbat and then it stays on a very low burner, hotplate or crockpot until served either late morning or early afternoon.

Now, I've tried various chulent methods--don't call them "recipes"

#1 Take any left-over cooked meat or poultry and cook it up with potatoes and water.
optional-add any of the following:
onions, carrots, garlic, beans etc. Then leave it on low heat "forever," until the next day.
#2 Braise some chunks of beef; add potatoes, water and any of the following:
onions, garlic cloves, barley, root vegetables, cooked or canned beans, tomato paste...

Ok, I agreed to stop cooking it. No big deal, since I'm not a chulent-eater myself, but what should I do with the goulash beef bought specially for it, sitting in my freezer? That's how I came up with "Not Just Meatballs."

• I took the cubes of beef and braised them in vegetable oil,
• added some cloves of garlic and chunks of onion.
• Then I added tomato paste, water and some red wine.
• While it was cooking up I made the meatballs out of ground turkey
• for about a pound (500 grams) I added: an egg, a diced onion, spices and matza meal (you can use bread crumbs or flour)
• I mixed it until it was evenly distributed
• by then the beef and sauce were boiling
• so I "double-spoon" (for health reasons I avoid touching raw meat whenever possible) dropped the "balls" into the broth
• then I lowered the flame to simmer and let it all cook for about an hour

It was a great hit! You can add vegetable to the "stew," but since I was serving three vegetable dishes, I didn't.

*hint--make sure your pot is large enough, or you'll have a real mess.