August 25, 2011: Chili with Beans Recipe

I’ve been doing a lot of canning lately and my husband suggested that I try my hand at canning some more substantial food items, like chili. I don’t have any cans of chili in my cupboard so this seemed like an ideal time to make up a big batch that we could eat for dinner one night, then can the rest for later.

My dad is the “Chili King” as far as I’m concerned so I took a few hints from his recipe and created this one.

Chili with Beans

½ pound dry pinto beans

1 t. salt

1 pound ground beef

½ onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ red bell pepper, diced

10 roasted, peeled tomatoes

1 15 ounce can kidney beans, drained

1/3 cup red chili powder

2 t. oregano

2 t. cumin
1 t. garlic salt

1 t. black pepper

Several shakes of Tabasco sauce

Sort and wash the pinto beans. Place them in a crock pot, cover with water and soak overnight. The next morning, drain the water and add enough fresh water to cover the beans by about an inch. Heat the crock pot to high, add the salt, and let the beans cook by themselves until almost soft, about 3 hours.

Meanwhile, brown the ground beef with onion, garlic and red bell pepper. Drain the fat and add to the beans. Roast and peel the tomatoes as instructed in my Miscellaneous Kitchen Tips post. Crush them with your hands, discarding the tough core, over the crock pot and add the crushed tomato pieces to the mixture. Add remaining ingredients, except Tabasco sauce (it will make the beans tough) and let cook for another 3 to 4 hours, until pinto beans are completely soft. Sprinkle with Tabasco sauce to taste. Serve with Southwestern Cornbread and a simple tossed salad for a complete, hearty meal.

Tip: If you need to head off to work in the morning and can't add the ground beef mixture later, toss all the ingredients in the crock pot at the same time and let it cook all day while you're gone.

August 24, 2011: Miscellaneous Kitchen Tips

Every now and then I run across a good idea that isn’t enough to make a recipe out of, yet it’s something I want to share with you. So I’ve compiled this short list of kitchen helps that I hope you’ll find worthwhile. As I come across more, I’ll share them in a future list.

Peeling Tomatoes

How often do you run across a recipe that calls for peeled tomatoes? There’s one I made for my mother-in-law last year that she particularly enjoyed for a corn tomato pie (kind of like a Bisquick impossible pie), yet it would have been much more tasty had the tomatoes been peeled of their tough skin. Usually this is a real chore, but not if you follow this recipe, which will come in handy as you harvest your bounty of garden tomatoes:

Cut an X in the bottom of each tomato. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the tomatoes, X side up, on the paper. Roast in a 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes, or until the skin starts to peel away from the Xes. Remove from the oven. When cool enough to handle, simply peel off the skin and core, if necessary. Voila! Easy peeling and much more efficient than blanching them in boiling water!

Draining Hamburger Meat

In all my years of cooking hamburger meat, I’ve yet to find an easy to drain the grease, other than using a colander (which doesn’t work too well since the holes are usually too big), until now. Use a splatter screen with a knob in the center. Place it over your pan, tilt the pan and screen, and let the grease pour through the screen holes into a container.

I cook hamburger in my cast iron skillet for the best browning and it’s heavy, especially for my wrists with arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome, but this was a breeze as far as draining it!

Creamed Corn

Wish to make a recipe calling for creamed corn (such as my Southwestern Cornbread recipe) but all you’ve got is a regular can of corn? Just pour the can, water and all, into your blender or food processor. Add a half teaspoon of sugar and pulse a few seconds.