Brown Eggs And Slow Cooking Stew

How annoying - I just finished writing a long and lovely post only to delete it with great gusto …

You know how sometimes something seems like a complete novelty to you, and then it turns out you had in fact previously run in to it under totally different circumstances.

I have just had one of those discoveries. After reading a very interesting post on cooking with tea and Smoked Egg Salad (using tea to brown the eggs), I was all a wonder at the fact that I had never heard of using tea in cooking, let alone  in this kind of eggy context. As I started writing the previous post that I later deleted by mistake, I realized that this was not the first time that I have heard of eggs done in tea.

courtesy of omerka

I have an Israeli friend who taught me how to make a slow Cooking, traditional stew called chamin which is made in several variations, usually using beef, potatoes, barley, beans and or rice. It is started on Friday evening, before the Sabbath, and cooked on a hotplate or in a very low heat oven, till Saturday lunchtime, this way allowing for a hot meal at mid day, without breaking the rules of Sabbath, and cooking.

Often, whole eggs in the shells are added to this, stew, and they turn into a rich brown over night. Because there could be a health hazard in eating slow cooked eggs, some people cook them regularly, in boiling water, with tea in it, thus browning them. once they are cooked, they are left in the tea and in the morning added to the stew.