I love pot roast. Like, really love it. John, my husband, does not so much. I guess you could say he tolerates it. So I am always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to make what is essentially pot roast. This dish really qualifies more as a stew due to the amount of liquid present, but at the end of the day braised chuck roast is braised chuck roast—and by that I mean it is delicious.
I immediately flagged Lamb Shank Soup with Yellow Split Peas and Meat Paste as looking like a promising recipe to try with a beef chuck. The author recommends trying the recipe with beef, and even if she hadn’t, I tend to freely substitute beef for lamb. We like the taste better and it is cheaper and easier to find—both locally (our beef comes from a farm north of t I still think my final results were pretty close to the intended result. Especially after braising all day so that everything kind of fell apart and thickened the soup anyway. Speaking of falling apart—I did learn not to put the split peas in at the beginning of the cooking, as they basically totally disintegrated and I would have preferred to be able taste them separately.
Everyone really liked this meal. I served it with salad (John is in charge of salad—I am always so caught up with whatever I am cooking that I forget to make one and then I bemoan the lack of fresh leafy greens in our diet) and next time I might also serve it with bread. Maybe I will make some tomorrow with our leftovers–I can tell already this will make excellent leftovers. The girls really cleaned their plates—Alex went so far as to drink her bowl! I have found that braised meat dishes are always a big hit with toddlers as the meat is so easy to chew.
Persian Shredded Beef Stew with Yellow Split Peas and Potatoes
Adapted from: Lamb Shank Soup with Yellow Split Peas and Meat Paste, Food Of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies
6-8 servings
3 ½ lbs bone-in beef chuck
2 large onions, quartered
6-8 cups vegetable stock
1 cup yellow split peas
1 t ground turmeric
Salt and pepper to taste
8-10 baby potatoes (any color would be fine)
1 28 oz can of whole, peeled tomatoes, juice drained
1 T tomato paste
2 t ground cinnamon
1 t allspice
Juice of one lime (use 2 if not juicy)
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Start by browning a bone-in piece of chuck roast in a large dutch oven. I prefer bone-in, as does the author, but I know it can be a pain to find, in which case don’t worry about it. Remove the browned meat and throw in 2 large onions, quartered. Cover that with about 60 oz of vegetable stock (she called for water but I prefer the more intense flavor from stock) and bring it to a boil. Put the meat, with its juices, back into the pot, as well as the turmeric. Cover the pot securely, either with a lid or foil, and place the dutch oven into the preheated oven and leave for 2 hours.
After the meat has been cooking for 2 hours, pull the dutch oven out and add in the split peas, potatoes, tomatoes, tomato paste, cinnamon, allspice and lime juice. Gently stir to disperse the paste and spices and return to the oven. Let cook another 3 hours or until the meat has fallen off of the bone, the potatoes are tender and the meat easily shreds.
I served this dish by roughly chopping the cooked potatoes and shredding the beef in the bottom of each bowl. I then ladled the soup, with split peas, onion and tomatoes, on top of it. You could also mash the potatoes and meat or you could serve the potatoes and meat in large chunks.
shockingly this recipe sounds really good to me… man have my tastes changed 🙂
WOW! This looks great! I’m going to have to check out that cookbook – I loooove Persian food!
-Ashley (SheRa on the CLBB)
Josie: your tastes are ever fickly. I too am a little shocked this sounds good to you, but I can confirm it is quite tasty.
Ashley: (I actually knew it was you–I recognized your picture 🙂 ) yeah we are really excited about this book also. I will say though that the recipe is very rich–we froze it after 2 nights. I would plan to either feed a crowd, freeze some, or halve the recipe and use a much smaller dutch oven or crock pot.
Fickle, not fickly! Where the heck is the edit button on this? 🙂