Fasting for Ramadan 2013 starts tomorrow and my daughter and I have been doing food prep this past week. Yesterday we filled about 250 samboosas and then froze them. So we are good to go for a few weeks, InshaAllah (God Willing).
A daily Ramadan staple is Harees. I only ever cook it during Ramadan. It is tasty and filling and a great thing to have for suhoor. The original recipe uses wheatberries which is locally called “harees”. It is a thick porridge made with a few simple ingredients: wheatberries, choice of meat, water, salt, pepper, and cinnamon.
I met a lady, originally from Iran, now living here in the UAE who once told me that she made Harees using Quaker oatmeal and nobody knew the better of it. I was intrigued because when I make it, it takes forever and her way sounded much easier. I never followed through with her suggestion until about 3 weeks ago when another lady on a Facebook group that I am on, shared her recipe for Harees and it included oatmeal…so I had to try it! It was so easy and tasty to make…even my husband liked it and could not tell the difference until I told him!
So here it is…easy peasy:
Harees Using Quaker Oatmeal
1 kg (2 pounds of meat of your choice) you can use lamb, beef, or chicken. Note: if you use beef, I suggest it be 1/2 kg or one pound. When I first made this recipe I used 1kg of beef and the harees came out a darker color than usually…it was still very tasty but not so good looking.
3 cups of Quaker oatmeal
1 small onion, chopped
1 small stick of cinnamon
1.5 liters (6 cups of water)
1 tablespoon of salt
1/4 tsp of black pepper
1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder
1/4 to 1/2 cup of melted butter
Directions:
In a large pot, add the meat of your choice, the chopped onion, cinnamon stick, and water. Bring to a boil and cook until very tender.
Remove meat/chicken…debone if you have to…and then place into a food process and blitz for a few seconds until shredded. Or you can finely chop the meat/chicken.
Using a strainer, drain the stock into a large pot. Add the shredded meat/chicken, the 3 cups of Quaker oats, salt, pepper, and cinnamon. Stir using a whisk. Add more water if necessary by the cupful. Bring to a boil and check every 5 to 10 minutes. Stir each time you check on it. Add more boiling water if necessary. Cook for about 40 minutes. Add the melted butter, stir and then serve.
(Note: Make sure you stir the Harees every few minutes because it will stick to the pot and become an awful burned mess!)
Thank you Fatema for sharing the recipe 🙂