Bad Bad Boy

Whelp I have not just dropped this blog, I have just been swamped with school stuff! Now that the semester is over I can go back to a semblance of normal life--after my three days of nothing but sleep--and write up a few cookingventions. Without keeping you waiting with bated breath I will post THREE stunning new things that I made, while hungry, from stuff I had in my cupboards.

Part I - Chili

I really only have the vaguest sense of what Chili is; alas my upbringing had only chili served directly from a can. Anyone who has had chili from a can, will attest to it's startling similarity to a can of dog or cat food. I can take this one step further and say that there is in fact quite a taste difference between the two...
What!? I was hungry and it was right there, don't try and tell me you haven't ever wondered just what it was like...

ANYWAY, I decided that chili really can't be that hard to make. You have some meat substance, chili's, beans, onion, garlic, and well that's it right? Well let us go down this path.

Step 1 - Gather your ingredients


That would be a bit of ground beef, two halves of onion (one sweet, one Spanish), a can of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, a can of tomato sauce, a can of kidney beans, and a few cloves of garlic. I was feeling like I had neglected my food processor at this point, so I put the garlic and onion in there and let it work its magic for a few seconds.

Step 2 - Select a pan which is entirely too small.


One thing I repeatedly tell myself when I cook is "make sure this pan will be big enough for what you intend," I then repeatedly ignore this advice and select a pan that is just too small...

Step 3 - Oblivious to the fact that your pan is too small, begin to cook things!


I started out by throwing the onion and garlic in some nice hot oil. After the onion just started to turn translucent I threw in the ground beef.



I stirred it all up into a yummy meat-onion mess and then decided that I should probably put spices in this food at some point.

There is a nice dark photo of some spices on my counter. I figure if all my pictures are dark you will just have to take my word about what is happening. The spices here are ground black pepper, parsley, oregano, salt, ground cumin, red pepper flakes, chili powder, Cheyenne powder, and chipotle powder. I went and dumped varying amounts of these into the pan of meat-onion mess and stirred it up. (mostly around a tablespoon each, less for salt, more for chili powder and oregano).

Once it was all nice and mixed I let it finish cooking down a bit. If you don't use the cheapest ground beef money can buy (beaf-product) it probably won't be as soupy. I however think the top of the food pyramid is the most essential, so this is life giving grease.



Step 4 - Decide that my chili is boring and it needs other stuff.. So I dumped in some noodles (no I don't know why, I just did)


In retrospect, the noodles are a great way to spread out your chili meal and add something to absorb that life giving grease. I would add it much later than this step though to prevent the noodles from becoming little more than starch mush.

Step 5 - realize your pan is too small while holding the rest of the ingredients.
I switched over to a bigger dutch oven style pan at this point, with a simple dumping maneuver. This will get approximately 80% of the food into the new pan, the rest will go on the floor and stove.

Having solved two problems at once (too much food and too small of a pan) I figure its time to add the rest of the ingredients.


In went the tomato paste, sauce, and diced tomatoes. And hey, what is this, beer? Why shouldn't my chili have some beer too, since I am enjoying a cold one? So I cracked open another bottle and poured that in too. Oh and I don't normally drink beer of that quality, it was a gift from a friend.

Step 6 - Wonder how long this is supposed to cook.
I settled on half an hour (i.e. when I ran out of beer). It looked like this


Since it looks exactly the same in a bowl as it does in a pan I neglected to take pictures of the final product. The rest of the batch got frozen to provide me with a good week of eatings. The week taught me that many things can make chili better, like grated cheese, sour cream, take-out, and alcohol...

As I stated at the beginning I really know nothing about chili so you should check other places for recipes before starting. Whatever I made--chili or not--was fairly tasty, and certainly not the worst thing I have ever made (there have been some truly horrifying dishes).

Recipe

prep time ~ 5 minutes
cook time ~ 45 minutes

1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
1 can red kidney beans (drained)
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
2 Tablespoons parsley
2 Teaspoons oregano
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon chipotle powder
1/2 sweet onion, chopped
1/2 Spanish onion, chopped
a bunch of twisty egg noodles
1 to 1 1/2 pound(s) ground beef
1 six pack of beer (one bottle for the chili)