Giving the two-burner griddle a job. Onions and green peppers sit in oil as the griddle heats. I don’t worry about the veggies sticking but I want it to temp when the chorizo lands.
Success! The hot griddle was perfect for heating the corn tortillas. We assembled the tacos with crumbled queso fresco and some shredded jack and cheddar. The small bowl in back is filled with some of that good green sauce.
chorizo
Tidbits
I’ll start this off with a pie than should have been great but ended up only fair to poor. It’s a Brown Butter Apple Pie with a Cheddar Crust. Sound great! It turned out to be a lot of effort for a disappointing result. Mrs J swears that she will not try this one again.
This was a pretty good pie. Somehow I got the water/flour ratio wrong on the dough – it ended up too wet and sticky. I kneaded in more flour but gave up and poured it onto the pan. It got an Awesome Sauce base for the mozzarella, onions, mushrooms, sausage, and ham.
I broke out my slicer for that big sous vide tenderloin I did, and also sliced some ham. Most of it I vac-sealed and froze but kept some out for my midwestern version of the classic Cubano sammich.
More chili! This is about half chorizo and half ground beef. I don’t usually put sour cream on mine but many people do. I can take it or leave it. It does make for a pretty picture, so there’s that.
I used the slow cook feature on the toaster oven, they got 2 hours on high and some more time on the low setting because we weren’t quite ready to eat. I used a flat lid for the shallow pan and it touched the chicken quarter, that’s the black patch on the thigh. The rest was quite tender, the leg came off as I plated it.
Here’s another sammich made with the pork and ham I sliced. I need to make more slaw, bake more beans, and make another potato salad.
Classic spaghetti with meat sauce. When the pasta drained after cooking, instead of spooning some sauce into it I used half a stick of butter that I zapped in the microwave with several cloves of garlic. Add a little Parmesan and you can eat it just like that but I like a nice meat sauce. Mrs J isn’t fond of mushrooms so I sauteed a few to top my plate with as a garnish instead of mixing them into the sauce.
Friday Recipe Exchange: Chilly Enough for Chili
I’m having difficulty typing this because at the moment I’m sitting on the couch with a Great Dane draped over my shoulders like Grandma’s shawl. I’m not sure why, just where he landed this morning. And…now he’s snoring. I will do my best.
Sometimes JeffreyW and I have this odd blogging-psychic link and end up cooking similar meals days apart. I knew I was going to do a chili themed recipe exchange as soon as there was a chill in the air and football/baseball/hockey were in full swing (it’s like sports Christmas). So I wasn’t terribly surprised when I opened up the blog earlier this week to see he had created a chili themed post.
Chili is one of those recipes that appears to be capable of causing intense debate, so consider the following as our entries into that debate. Then you can discuss amongst yourselves the merits of your old family recipe for chili. Beans, no beans, fritos, no fritos, vegetarian, spicy or mild. And while your are at it, what’s else is on your plate for the weekend?
The recipes:
Super easy chili, recipe here.
JeffreyW’s Chorizo Chili here.
Even this week’s Dinner menu involved chili: Kid Friendly Chili-Mac, menu and recipes here.
For some great ideas to do with your leftover chili, see Jeffrey’s photos here.
For tonight’s featured recipe, a different take on chili:
White Chicken Chili. For JeffreyW’s version, picture above, click here.
White Chicken Chili
- 3 lbs chicken thighs, bone in, skin on
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 3 jalapeno peppers, chopped
- 3 poblano chiles, chopped
- 3 anaheim chiles, chopped
- 2 onions, chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, crushed
- Salt and Ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 1½ tsp ground coriander
- 3 (15-ounce) cans cannellini beans
- 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
- 2 limes, minced fresh cilantro leaves and sour cream for garnish
Dutch oven, blender
In the Dutch over, heat oil and brown chicken thighs, skin side down, until the skin is crisp. Remove to a plate. Pour off all but 1 tbsp of chicken fat, heat and add chiles and onion to the Dutch oven and sauté until soft, then add the garlic and sauté another 2-3 minutes. Remove half of the sautéed mixture to the blender.
Add 1 can of beans and the chicken broth to the blender. Puree beans and onion mixture until smooth. Add puree to the Dutch oven, along with remaining ingredients, except garnishes. Remove the skin from the chicken thighs and add those to the chili and let simmer, covered, at medium heat until the chicken is cooked through and pulls easily from the bone, about 30 to 45 minutes. Stirring occasionally.
Remove chicken to a plate and let cool enough to remove the meat from the bone and rough chop. Add the meat back to the chili and simmer until chicken is heated through, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately with fresh lime juice, cilantro and sour cream for each bowl.
That’s it for this week – hopefully I’ll have a Bixby update for you next week! – TaMara
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Variations on a (Chili) Theme
Mmm… chorizo chili. This one also has ground beef, an onion, a can of tomato bits, and pinto beans. It’s a basic chili made with a sauce of dried chilis that had been simmered and soaked then pureed in a blender with a few cloves of garlic. Push the puree through a strainer with a spatula and discard the last little bit. Plenty of chili leftovers, but I have a plan…
Mmm… chili dogs! I have these garnished with minced onions, green jalapenos, and red ripe Anaheim peppers – some of the last we will get from our container garden out on the front patio.
Mmm… not quite Cincinnati chili. This has everything that the five way chili has but isn’t distributed the same way. The Cincinnati chili is seasoned differently, too. Theirs has cinnamon, allspice, chocolate and other stuff I won’t try to replicate.
Mmm… chili cheese fries! This dish is finished with a couple dashes of hot sauce. Mrs J had tater tots instead of fries but she scarfed them down before I could get a picture. Here are a couple of puppies instead:
Chicken Gumbo with Chorizo Sausage
This starts as a basic gumbo – cook a dark roux with flour and oil, add the Cajun trinity of diced onions, celery, and green peppers. Let the veggies cook for a few minutes then add chicken broth. I browned chicken thighs and fresh chorizo in a separate pan then added those to the simmering broth. The fresh chorizo is where this veers off the normal path. Alas, I had no more Andouille and it really wanted sausage. The recipe uses a homemade seasoning from this recipe. That NOLA site is a goldmine for this style of cooking and you can do worse than spending a while looking over all the recipes.
When the sausage and chicken are cooked through remove them to cool, slice the sausage and strip the chicken meat from the bones and add it all back to the pot. This will take a couple of hours. I did the roux atop the stove on a medium high heat and stirred it constantly lest it burn, using a flat wooden spatula to keep the bottom scraped. That took 20 minutes or so.
Mmm… chili
We’ve had a few killing frosts so soups and stews are going to feature more so than usual. Mmm… it’s a good day for chili! This has chorizo and ground beef with the usual beans and tomato bits with green chilies. I added some semi dried red chilies from a plant the frost killed. I’ll be gathering all of them soon and will dry them for flakes and a few I’ll leave whole for those dishes where they are expected.
Chorizo Links and Nachos with Chili Beans
![DSC_6698 [1600x1060]](https://whats4dinnersolutions.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/dsc_6698-1600x1060.jpg)
Breakfast Pr0n – Chorizo and Eggs
![DSC_6599 [1600x1060]](https://whats4dinnersolutions.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/dsc_6599-1600x1060.jpg)
My local Kroger store surprised me the other day when they had chorizo sausage in one pound “fatties”. Surprised as much by the price as the fact that they had some. Ninety-nine cents apiece! I would have bought more than the half dozen I did but I didn’t want to be tagged as a hoarder. I left one out and froze the rest for later. I am not at all surprised that there are recipes out there for cooking these things whole.
What's 4 Dinner Solutions 