Three on Three Chili

My work is having a potluck and the only thing I could figure out to bring that wasn’t already on the list was some chili.  Not exactly a side dish, but at least it will be something I won’t mind bringing back home and finishing off.

The great thing about chili is, it is very flexible as far as the ingredients go.  You can almost not go wrong in what you put in it and if you make some good choices, then you just might win a chili contest.  A few years back, the church group I was with had a chili cook-off contest.  We had about 6 different chili dishes presented and I won the taste contest.  My chili didn’t look the best, but it tasted great.  So great, that one of the other contestants lost the votes of his parents to my chili.  Anyway, one thing that made my chili stand apart was that I used multiple peppers.  I used a orange, red and yellow sweet pepper, which gave the chili an interesting look.  For this recipe, I bring back the three peppers and also use three different meats.

A while ago I bought a box of Carroll Shelby’s Chili Kit.  Yes, the Shelby who makes the very fast Cobra car.  Well, it sure makes cooking chili easy, because it provides a big bag of spices and some “Masa Flour for Thickness”.  The base spices can make or break a chili.  I’m sure at some point, I’ll figure out my own set of spices and just have them pre-mixed and ready to use.

Ingredients

• 1 chopped sweet yellow pepper
• 1 chopped sweet red pepper
• 1 chopped sweet orange pepper (at the Kroger, you can get all three in a single bag)
• 1 chopped whole sweet onion
• 4 Chef Bruce Aidells Cajun Style Andouille; sliced and quartered chunks
• 4 Chef Bruce Aidells Sun-dried Tomato with Mozzarella Cheese; sliced and quartered chunks
• 2 lbs ground beef
• Carroll Shelby’s Original Texas Brand Chili Kit
• 3 hot chili peppers
• 2 cans 14.5 0z Hunt’s Fire Roasted Dice Tomatoes
• 1 can 28 oz Hunt’s Whole Tomatoes
• 1 bottle of beer – New Belgium or your favorite pilsner

Directions

In a frying pan (I used my T-fal large frying pan), cook the sausage.  In a large frying pan, like our Cuisinart 12″ deep frying pan brown the 2 lbs of ground beef.  When the sausage has cooked for a few minutes, slice and chop and place into the pan with the beef.  When the beef is brown and sausage cooked, drain out the grease and add the tomatoes.  Add the spice package from the kit and the cayenne package for extra spice.  Add in the beer and mix well.  Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn down heat.  Add chopped peppers and onion.  Do not chop the chili peppers.  Cook on low for 20 or minutes, depending on how soon you want to eat the chili.

The thing about chili, as long as you don’t let the liquid escape, you can cook it for a long time.  Since I’m letting my chili simmer over night in my Hamilton Beach slow cooker, I also added a couple more cups of water and the extra can of diced tomatoes.

Saugedoullie Loaf (Meatloaf)

Well, the chili is pretty much gone, so it is time to use up the other 2 pounds of ground turkey from the beginning of the week.  I put the remaining turkey in the freezer when I made the chili, so I had to put it in the fridge this morning in order to thaw it out for tonight.  Well, it didn’t really thaw out.  Luckily for me, my microwave has a thaw option.  So, while the turkey was thawing out, I started getting some ingredients together.

I still had two links of Chef Bruce Aidells andoullie style sausage left, a half of onion, another can of Hunt’s Seasoned Tomato Sauce for Meatloaf and some Gwaltney Mild Premium Park Sausage.

For me, a basic meatloaf is made up of a few different types of meat and put into a loaf.  If you have the glue to put the meat together, tomato sauce, egg and breadcrumbs or crackers, then you are on your way to having a loaf.  If you like to flavor hamburgers, then use the same techniques to flavor meatloaf.  Be creative, but don’t get the mixture to liquid or it will fall apart on you when you try to eat it.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs ground turkey
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup Old London bread crumbs
• 1 can Hunt’s  Seasoned Tomato Sauce for Meatloaf

Directions

Cut the sausage links into small quarter chunks and mix sausage, turkey, eggs, onions and 1/2 can of Hunt’s in a bowl.  After everything is mixed together, mix in bread crumbs and any other spices that you like.  Pre-heat oven to 400.  Put meat mix into a loaf pan and cover top with remainder of Hunt’s can.  Place in oven for 1 hour.  Alternatively, you can put the 1/2 can of Hunt’s or any homemade sauce on after cooking for an hour and then cook again for another 15 minutes.

Tip: I used my Kitchen Aide to mix everything together.  Speed level 1 was fast enough

Tip: Put a cookie tray under the meatloaf pan while in the oven to catch any spill over of grease and juices

Beefcake (Meatloaf)

One of the first things I cooked for Lisa was some meatloaf.  Meatloaf is one of my family favorites; at least among the Logan men.  It isn’t something that is served up very often, but it is a very fulfilling meal.  As a bachelor, cooking simple meals for one, that I enjoyed, were high priority.  Trying to be a little healthy, I would make my meatloaf using ground turkey or other low fat meats.  The turkey loaves would end up being white, which made for an odd looking loaf.  The thing that would set my meatloaf apart would be the variety other meats used in the mix; not so for this meal.

Lisa picked out a highly rated recipe from AllRecipes.com called “Easy Meatloaf“, which is truley descriptive naming.  Since I asked Lisa not to prepare a meal we would have to each all week long, she set the servings size at half the 8 recommended amount.  This made for some interesting measurement amounts.

Ingredients

Loaf

• 3/4 pound groud beef
• 1/2 egg
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup dried bread crumbs

Sauce

• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon prepared mustard
• 2 tablespoon and 2 teaspoons ketchup

However, we altered the recipe a little by adding a green pepper.  But, by the time I added the onions to the 1/2 pound of beef, I decided that it was turning into an onion loaf, which means I needed to add the other 1/2 pound of beef we had.  At that point, I decided that since the recipe was missing tomatoes, I would add a 1/2 can of Hunt’s Seasoned Tomato Sauce for Meatloaf to the loaf mixture. I had used the sauce before and it really helps flavour up a loaf.  We also fudge upwards the measurements to get closer the required crumbs, milk and egg for a pound of beef.

After mixing all the loaf ingredients together, we put in a Pam sprayed loaf pan and put the sauce mixture on top.  With the oven pre-heated to 350, we slid it into the oven ontop of a cookie sheet to bake for 1 hour.  At close to finish, we took out the loaf, drained grease and added some of the left over Hunt’s sauce to the middle of the loaf ontop of the other sauce.  After cooking for another 15 minutes or so, we took it out to eat.