Thursdays Are For Cooking
Bell peppers
This week’s effort is for those days when the wind is howling outside around the eaves of the house, and snow blows right into your face when you’re shoveling the sidewalk or front steps.
Also, since Aysel likes to use the slow cooker or Crockpot, this can be done in the slow cooker for the convenience of it.
Chili, an ancient and honored food species, is usually made with beef, tomato sauce and various spices, onions, and beans.
However, if you do not like the effect beans have on your friends after you’ve consumed them, you can, of course, leave them out of the mix.
Slow cooker chili:
1 lb ground beef
¾ cup diced onion
¾ cup diced celery
¾ cup diced bell pepper (optional)
2 cloves of minced garlic (or abt. 1 tablespoon from the jar)
2 10 oz. cans of tomato sauce
1 small can tomato paste
2 cans 15 oz. chili beans, w/ liquid
1 can 15 ix cannellinis w/ liquid
½ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon each of oregano and basil
¼ teaspoon of black pepper
1/8 teaspoon hot sauce (optional)
Place the beef in a skillet over medium heat and cook until it is an even brown. Drain grease. (Hint: you can cook the beef the night before, to save some time.)
Place the beef in a slow cooker, and mix in onion, celery, green bell pepper, garlic, tomato puree, kidney beans, and cannellini beans. Season with chili powder, parsley, salt, basil, oregano, black pepper, and hot pepper sauce.
Cover, and cook 8 (eight) hours on Low. And tell people to leave it alone because the flavor will escape to The Wild if they take the lid off, and you’ll never get it back.
Make some cornbread to go with the chili. Add celery sticks and radishes and (yes) cucumbers or zucchinis cut into quarter sections, plus pickles and a good dessert like that Rum Raisin Apple Brown Betty I posted awhile back, and you have a nice, hearty, tasty meal that will probably have you snoozing all night long.
That ought to keep the Hungry Hoard happy for a while, too.
Category: Economy
No MRE’s with little bottles of Tabasco? Good.
I’d add cumin and some dark chocolate to the recipe.
Great, now I’m hungry for chili, and it’s all your fault, Ex.
*grin*
Remember the corn chips and cornbread, and sprinkle some shredded cheese on the top!
Bad Ex. Bad!
Oh, you’re right!
I forgot about scattering the chopped onions on top and THEN the shredded cheese!!! My bad!!!!
Loves me some chili. Just finished off the last of the pot full I started last Friday. Used this same basic recipe that you had posted awhile back. Did have to make up a fresh batch of cornbread. Cornbread is baked with cheese and cheese is liberally sprinkled on/in the chili.
Some folks say that the best way to ruin a pot of good chili is to put beans in it. I like it both ways. With or without the beans. I have added some smoked sausage to the mix in the crock pot. When I make it without beans, there is always some fresh hot fried taters to make chili cheese fries.
Last week’s Thursdays are for cooking just made me want pound cake w peaches. And a bowl of chili. One of my other crock pots was getting intimate with a beef brisket. It blowed up real good too. But that’s a menu for another day.
If you go the no beans route the best way to eat it is on top of either a decent hot dog or some grilled kielbasa with some dark brown mustard…
^this^ BTDT
Added to our Ex-PH2 crockpot recipes. ..
If I get snowbound over the weekend, the freezer needs a bit of ferreting out. You never know what might turn up in the crockpot.
There’s a beef roast lost in the freezer somewhere that is crying for some crockpot time. Got some onions, carrots, celery and little red potatoes last week for same.
But first, it’s meatloaf time. Don’t know why but get hungry for it occasionally. No idea really how to make it, but some onions and bell pepper are chopped, with some eggs at the ready. Add some tomato sauce, maybe, plenty of cracked black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and some herbage. Mix up a wash pan full of it and freeze in loaves for cooking later. Mom always added rolled oats as filler, so will do that, too.
Chili in the freezer but only a couple of jars left. If we see some stew meat on sale, will get that to use instead of ground beef for another round of chili. No beans, although adding them later is OK. Chili doesn’t have all that extra veg. But, there is nothing wrong with “chili soup,” as some of my family members call so-called chili when it has anything besides meat and chiles in it.
“And tell people to leave it alone because the flavor will escape to The Wild if they take the lid off, and you’ll never get it back.”
Amen Sister! Why oh why do people remove crock pot lids half way through an all day slow cook and stick there face over it to smell. I told a relative one day “You just stole 4 hours off this 8 hour cook – don’t complain if it isn’t tender.”
An interesting alternative to using ground beef is that if you have a sous vide cooker you can cook some lean boneless beef to the point where it can easily be pulled apart and added to the crockpot. If cooking with beans, I usually start with dried red or black ones. I’d agree with AW1Ed that chili also needs cumin, and would considerably bump the amount of chili powder to roughly two tablespoons per three quarts.
To-bean or not-to-bean is not a small matter. I remember being in parts of Texas where if you serve chili with beans it might earn you a challenge to drawn down in the street at high noon…
I have made chili with and without beans. The canned beans seem to produce less of a personal supply of hydrogen sulfide than the dry beans, although the dry beans, if soaked overnight, do quite well. Also, I prefer cumin over chili powder, myself, so I’d better go back into that and add cumin to the mix.
Yummmm Ex… this is good chili weather. I’ve started adding smoked salt to my chili pot. Adds an extra note.
Glad you’re back.
I have some mesquite smoked salt to use for stuff like this, too. I seem to be collecting such exotic things for current and future use. I love this job!
I’ll try this in my new Instant Pot my kids got me for Christmas.
have some ground venison in the freezer….venison chili this weekend