Christina's Chili

I love chili on a cold day. The funny thing about Montana is that you get used to being in the mood for chili pretty much any time of year. Even in the spring it's still cool enough that chili isn't insane to eat. So far, since we've been in Texas, it didn't actually get cold enough to eat chili until after Christmas. Unfortunately, life has been crazy since the beginning of December, so I wasn't in any kind of mood to make a menu (or even think much past what I would do the next hour). But today was a chili kind of day.
Chili is easy and takes very few ingredients.
Last week I made hash brown tacos and had some leftover ground turkey, ground pork, and chorizo. So I tossed those in a skillet and cooked them up.
Back in Montana I did some label reading on cans of red kidney beans. I learned that there are basically 3 different types you can get- regular, no salt, and organic. Back then I didn't even look for organic items, so I compared the regular to the no-salt. I could not believe how much crap (including HFCS) is in no-salt beans. Really? Really!! Why can't it just be beans without salt? I have no idea. In the regular beans there are beans, water, and salt. I decided that I would take the extra salt over the HFCS and other ingredients I couldn't sound out (they cost the same!)

When we went grocery shopping this week, it was late at night- a few hours before closing time- so many shelves were empty. I guess because of the cold weather other people had the idea to also make chili, because most of the red kidney beans were gone. And name brand or not, I wasn't buying "no-salt".
So I found these organic ones!

Beans, water, salt. AND organic! Awesome. $1.50 per can, which is almost twice the price of the "Great Value" brand, but since I'm breaking my WalMart habit (only been once since Christmas and that was to do a return!) I decided that it was worth it.

Sometimes I drain the beans, sometimes I don't. Hubby likes his chili with a little more liquid, and since I bought organic, I felt safe about using the liquid in the can.
I also like to put the beans in the crock pot before I put the meat in. I stir them up, but since the beans are uncooked and the meat is cooked, I'd rather the bottom most layer be beans, not meat.

After the meat cooks, I drain it, then put it back in the pan. I add some spices - salt, pepper, chili powder, oregano, paprika- then let it cook more. I do this because firstly, ground meat lets off a lot of grease/juice/fat when you cook it anyway, but chorizo is like 10x worse. So any seasoning I put in initially is just going to cook off. So I add it afterward so it cooks on the meat.

So there's basic chili. 

Now to make it goooooood chili.

1/2 an onion-diced, a clove of garlic-minced, some grape tomatoes (cause that's what I have on hand), carrots and celery.

 

One trick I learned about cutting onions is to rinse them under cold water after you cut them. I do this after I cut it in half, then into quarters.

This keeps the juice from making you cry.

I cut the tips off the celery and carrots (tossed those ends into the blender for the dogs) and as I was working a little carrot thief came in and stole one, so I went to the other fridge and grabbed 2 purple carrots to replace it, and decided to grab a stalk of kale and a bag of spinach.




 Have you ever seen a purple carrot?
They're actually a yellowish color on the inside.
They don't taste like an orange carrot either. They still taste like a carrot, but a bit different flavor than an orange one.


I'm steaming the carrots, celery, and kale. After they soften up I put them in the food processor with the raw spinach and grape tomatoes. Once this mushes up to a pulp, I will pour it into the chili! Added nutrition with no added flavor!

 I also decided to dice up a bellpepper and throw in there. 

Cause I love bellpepper.

I grew up eating bellpeppers.

They are so yummy.

 

Another fun little tool I got when my mom moved- her garlic press!

I use it a lot!

I'm not actually sure if I'm using it completely properly, but it works way better than chop/dicing the garlic, so I keep using it.

I put the rougher stuff left in the press after I squish it in the blender for the dogs.

Garlic is very good for dogs.

 

 After I added the veggie puree, I decided I needed to split the chili into two slow cookers, as it was too much for 1.

And I know I should probably retire my mom's old Crock Pot (that lovely avacado green one on the right there) because it probably uses twice the wattage as my new one on the left, but it cooks the food, and that's what matters to me!

I noticed the puree made the chili kind of thick, so I decided to add my one little can of Beef Consomme to thin it out a bit. 

I bought this for some recipe that I can't remember cause I lost the menu sheet.

It worked well.

Don't that look perdy?

Tasted perdy darn good too!

I let them cook on high for 2-4 hours. It tastes better the next day though, no matter how long you cook it ;)

If I had some cornbread that wasn't moldy, or had time to make the bread bowls, it would have been the perfect consistency. But we were stuck using crackers, so it was a little bit runny. Mmmm... bread bowls....

I'll be putting every bit that's in the old Crock Pot in the freezer, so when I use it again I will make bread bowls since I won't have to cook the chili!

Oh and the water that's left from under the veggies after I steam them- I don't let that go to waste!

It's very hard to see in a photo, but it is tinted green from the kale and veggies.
When I put the veggie scraps in the blender for the dogs, I have to add water, so I just use THIS water to puree the veggies!

All blended up, it's pretty thin, so I just pour it over a bit of kibble and it's instantly healthier and tastier for my pups!