Cooking with Us: E4: Chili

Howdy gang!

Welcome to another vlog ;D  This time - instead of waxing in typeface about the past, and my mom's chili as I wrote on here last year, I decided to video tape it for posterity... or something ;)

It's getting close to late October here in Wisconsin, which means it's definitely chili weather.  For my family in Tejas, it may be another month yet before it is truly, as my cousin Karen said the other day, "caldo weather."

(Though caldo is not what we're talking about here.. Back to chili!)

But why don't you click the video below, or go to youtube, full screen that baby, and follow along for some truly awesome (and actually surprisingly, not super-spicy chili!)

^ You know you want to view me in high-res.

As usual, the transcript and recipe follow, but first, I am going to do a photo blog as well, for all you out there who don't want to view my cooking in all its 2 dimensional motion glory ;D

Via screen grabs again, of course!! :)

First, we started with 1.5 lbs of 90% lean ground beef.

You brown all your meat first...

Then rinse it with hot or boiling water to leach out as much grease and fat as you can.

Then you have your spouse chop up 2 medium sized white onions. 

Then add that, with the meat, into a large stew pot.

Chop up 3 jalapenos and 4 serranos. 

Add 3 regular sized cans (or one super large one if you can find it) of saltless tomatoes into your ninja (should Ninja not be sponsoring me by now!?) and get it all crushed up good!

Then season with about half a smallish jar of chili, a dash of paprika, a fair amount cumin, and garlic

 - to your taste, of course!

I like to add about half a cup of pickled jalapenos to my chili. 

(and show off my 'caviar' nail polish :) found at Wal-mart no less... some bit of irony in that!)

Then I added 1 can of ranch style beans and 2 cans of red beans.

  Use Van Camp's NoLa style red beans if you can find them :)

Let it all cook, stirring occasionally, and you have yourself some awesome, 

hearty chili for a chilly evening!

And hopefully lots of leftovers!! :)

Recipe:

- 1.5 lbs lean burger meat (brown, rinse with hot water)

- 2 medium white onions (diced)

- 3 jalapenos (diced)

- 4 serranos (diced)

- 1/2 cup pickled jalapenos (diced)

- 1 TBSP crushed red pepper

- 1/2 jar chili powder

- dash of Paprika

- 1/2 jar or so of cumin

- 1 TBSP garlic

- 2 cans red beans, drained

- 1 can ranch style beans

YUMMY YUMMY :)

Transcript:

Hi, and welcome to Cooking with Us. Despite the fact that I'm wearing a sundress, it's actually quite chili outside, so we're going to make chili!

So we're starting off with 1.5 pounds of 90% lean ground beef.

While I'm browning this, Theron is gonna start chopping up some onions for me.

"D'oh!"

Theron's chopping two medium sized white onions to go into our chili.

Wanna come up here?

Well this is done browning so now we're going to pour it into the colander and rinse it... because we want to get rid of all the grease.

We're adding two cans of saltless tomatoes. 

So now we're going to chop up some of these guys. I'm gonna start with three jalapenos and four serranos.

It's fall time!

So we're gonna mix this together, then we're gonna start adding our seasonings.

I'm gonna add half a small jar of chili powder, cause that's what I did last year.

Now it seems like a lot of chili powder, but we are making chili so that's OK.

Now I'm gonna add a dash of paprika, and, probably the rest of this jar of cumin.

So now I'm gonna add about half a cup of pickled jalapenos, cause that's what my mom always did when we were kids, and it actually makes it taste really unique and good.

This needs salt... badly.

So basically the point of this, before you add the beans, is to get the flavor right, because the beans are just gonna add awesomeness... because beans are awesome.

Crushed red pepper.

So we don't have the right kind of, uh, red beans.  My mom swears by New Orleans style ...Van Camp's red beans. 

Um well, we don't have those.

You're gonna try and get all the juice out because otherwise it's going to be really sweet and strange tasting. 

Looks really good, smells really good. 

Good.

I had it on low heat, but I just turned it onto medium low and we're just gonna cook all this stuff together.

Garlic powder because I forgot to put that in earlier.

Feeling like my beans to meat ratio is off I'm gonna add one more can of red beans, because I like them a lot.

heheh

It's awesome. I did a good job. Puppy, what do you think?

That's awesome. More!!!!!

It's cold outside, you guys wanna start making chili, here's an awesome chili recipe for you guys!  And I hope you enjoyed it, even though it wasn't super exciting.  

Thank you and, bon appetit!