We’ve had colder weather this week than we did last week. Fortunately, it hasn’t dropped down to freezing, so all of the blooming flowers and bushes are doing just fine. It has, however, been cold enough to warrant making some soups and general comfort foods.Chili is one of Nick’s absolute favorite foods, so it seemed like a good time to make a batch of chili. This recipe is based mostly on my usual recipe, which you can find here. On a side note, I posted the original recipe over six years ago. It’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging that long. Some of you have been visiting that entire time, or very close to it. Thank you to all of you who visit and comment. I enjoy your online company.
Anyway, back to the recipe.
The biggest modification I made to this recipe was with the meat. I’m not sure about where you are, but meat seems to be in very short supply here. We’re in the western part of the state, and my sister is in kind of the middle of the state, and she said it’s the same there. We have a chest freezer, and I tend to shop sales and stock up anyway, so we were actually in pretty good shape going into this, without panic buying. However, it does seem prudent to try and stretch things a bit more now. It seems like every time a new restriction goes into place there’s another round of panic buying, and I just don’t think we’ve reached the height of our social distancing yet. So, again, I think it’s prudent to go ahead and get a little creative now instead of being forced to get super creative later.
We had three leftover grilled hamburgers in the freezer, so I decided to use them instead of a package of ground beef.
I defrosted them and chopped them up into very small pieces, and used them in place of the usual ground beef.
I browned the onion (half a yellow onion and half a red onion that were in the fridge leftover from other meals) and pepper (from the freezer) in a small amount of avocado oil. We happen to have a large bottle of avocado oil at the moment, so that’s why I chose it. I really think whatever your usual oil of choice is will be perfectly fine.
I added everything to the Crock Pot, and just stirred in the taco seasoning, chili powder, and cumin since they weren’t cooked with the meat. I left it on low, and it was ready for dinner.
We ate it over macaroni noodles and topped it with shredded cheese and sour cream.
It was delicious! This turned out to be a very good recipe modification. The grilled meat really added a depth of flavor to the chili. Nick said it was the best chili he has ever had. I think I may try to keep some grilled hamburgers in the freezer for chili in the future.
I highly recommend giving this a try if you happen to have any grilled hamburgers on hand.
So what about you? Do you enjoy chili? Are you modifying any recipes due to lack of availability of certain items?
A little chili goes a long way for me, too much and my stomach isn't happy. Jenny on the other hand loves chili and pours extra chili flakes over just about everything!
ReplyDeleteThe grilled meat is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteThe recipe I use has cocoa powder. Delicious!
That's almost looking like Cincinnati Chili, which we love. It's the only thing I will eat with ground beef. We've had some meat shortages here, but it seems to come and go. I think people stopped hoarding it and moved on to cheese because I can't find that now!
ReplyDeleteWe were short meat that first week when the stay at home orders came out, but since then I haven't had any trouble finding meat. Toilet paper is gone, but not food. In fact, our local Trader Joe's had just about everything I wanted when I went this week.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness! I'm always reading blogs when I'm hungry and this looks delicious! Good for you for working the recipe to make it work for you! Meat off and on is a problem getting here. First its chicken you can't find and then it is ground beef.
ReplyDeletebetty
We're cooking creatively these days, aren't we? Me, too. It's kind of fun and the idea of the grilled burger is terrific. We have one left from dinner last night. I'll save it for chili. All your substitutions look great!
ReplyDeleteTHanks for coming to the blog. I get so behind on replying to comments but let me say that your visits and your comments always mean so very much. Thank you!
I don't eat chilli often, and don't make it with any kind of meat anyhow... Not even vegan friendly meat substitutes. Mine's always a beans only type chilli.
ReplyDeleteThe are shortages of a lot of things here right now because of hording. It's not quite so bad if you go to the smaller local shops, because everyone is raiding the supermarkets mostly, and restrictions on numbers of purchases of each item came in before people moved to raiding the local ones. But even with them some things aren't easy to find. Flour, for example. Which leads me to one of the things I've adapted:
I don't eat vegan sausages or burgers often, but sometimes I do, and when I want vegan sausages or burgers, I make my own. Partially because it's cheaper, and partially because I don't care for the taste of the ones you can buy in the shops as a rule, since they generally either taste too much like meat for my liking, are overly spicey, or are so bland tasting that it's like eating cardboard. So, like I said, I make my own. Anyway, I usually use the thing I'm making it out of (such as jackfruit, beans, etc) some flour, and some herbs and spices. But with the flour shortage I decided to make my own oat flour using some oatmeal, since that's easier to get hold of for some reason, so we have a lot of it. Anyway, it actually worked really well, and my garlic jackfruit sausages - consisting of shredded jackfruit, oatmeal, garlic, paprika, and sesame seeds, ground up together in a food processor, shaped in to sausages, and cooked in the oven on a baking sheet - were very tasty, if I do say so myself. I served them with mashed potatoes and minted peas.