Slow Cooker Nihari

I said that if all the recipes I tried from Anupy Singla's The Indian Slow Cooker were good I would become a slow cooker devotee. It's official now. Go buy the book and dust off your slow cooker. The Nihari was great, the split peas with spinach were great, the garlic ginger eggplant was fantastic, and I'm trying the carrot halwa tonight. I might be tempted to cook through the book from cover to cover this month, but then all I could post would be adaptations of recipes from Mrs. Singla's cookbook, and while I'm not a copyright expert, I'm pretty sure that would be violating the spirit of the law if not the letter. 

Nihari is a meat stew traditionally made in India and Pakistan. I've never made Nihari the traditional way, so I can't compare the two versions, but this was good and so easy I felt guilty serving it. (I've got to work on that!) The list of spices is long, but you don't have to actually do anything with them other than dump them in. 

The only spice I was unfamiliar with was black salt powder. It isn't black at all, but a light pink color, and it smells lightly of sulfur. It tasted like salty egg yolk. Not bad, but a little odd. I felt sure that something this stinky must have amazing health benefits, and sure enough, the supposed health benefits range from aiding indigestion to hysteria. However, the world won't end if you use regular salt instead. 

All this contains is the meat, onions, garlic, ginger, and lots and lots of spices. If you're missing one or two of them I would just make this anyway. Also, I prefer not to cook with vegetable oil, so while I guess I could have used olive oil, I used coconut oil. This calls for a really big slow cooker to fit your beef, but if you only have one of the smaller ones you could halve the recipe. This would be great with naan, but I served it with basmati rice. A salad would be good with this too. 

Ingredients:
(1) 2-3 pound chuck roast or beef brisket
2 onions, chopped
1- 2 inch piece of ginger
10 cloves of garlic
1 generous teaspoon ground ginger
4 cardamom pods
3 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon garam masala
2 tablespoons ground fennel
1/2-1 tablespoon red chili powder (I used 1/2 tablespoon but the original recipe called for 1)
2 pinches ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon white salt
1 teaspoon black salt
1/2 cup oil

Directions:
1. Blend the ginger and garlic together in a food processor or chop it by hand. 
2. Into the slow cooker put the onions, then the beef, and then the ginger and garlic. Layer in the spices and drizzle the oil over the whole thing if the oil you're using is liquid, cover, and cook on low for 9 hours. 
3. Stir it up to break apart the meat and remove the bones, bay leaves, and cinnamon stick.