ONION-FREE CROCKPOT CHILI
Needed:
2-3 lbs ground beef, lower fat. 2 tbs virgin olive oil or other shortening to prevent burning.
Salt, Black pepper, Cayenne pepper, or red pepper flake; Cinnamon; Clove powder; thyme powder, ground cumin; Allspice; dark red hot chili powder; paprika if not allergic. Mole sauce, if used.
Can black, kidney, or pinto beans
Can of tomato paste or of diced tomato, as you prefer.
Sear, and salt, start cooking; water added as needed. Add tomato, add pepper 1 tsp each; add cinnamon, clove powder, thyme, cumin, paprika (if used)1 tbs each; 1/3 cup basil leaf (dry); ½ cup chili powder; ½ cup mole (if used). Cook a couple of hours; add beans 1-2 hours before serving, continue cooking; continually taste the dish to be sure the flavors you like are to the fore: if you don’t taste enough of something you like, add more.
This chili has a sort of Middle Eastern flavor. Good on rice, over nachos, spaghetti, and of course by itself. We add a dollop of sour cream, a few sliced jalapenos, and a lot of shredded cheddar.
We’re allergic to the whole lily family: onion, garlic, chives—and to the preservative used in onion powder, garlic powder, etc. So are many other people. So I offer a new mode of spicing that can give you plenty of bite without the troublesome lilies.
That looks good, save for the fact that pepper is pretty much wasted on me. If I put pepper on something, I can’t taste anything else. Annoying.
My variation on the above is basically vegetarian, built for one, and microwaveable. Anyone who wants gourmet should stop reading NOW.
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Still here? Okay. You can add meat if you like, and I sometimes do, if there are leftovers.
One can beans (I like Heinz’ Chili Style for this, but a can of kidney beans works, too. And chickpeas are fun!) Chili powder in your preferred heat rating, cumin powder, and coriander powder, in ratios about 2-1-1/4 teaspoons, give or take as you like (and yes, I like that much spice. Hush.) Add the meat; you don’t have to adjust the spices if you don’t want to.
Stir well. Microwave on high for about 2 1/2 minutes, covered (because beans go BOOM!) Stir again. Serve with or without sour cream.
This is a big lunch/dinner. You can do it by halves and make two lighter meals of it.
Try poblano for a not overpowering pepper taste. When dried, I believe that they are called ancho.
“because beans go BOOM!” — and, of course, I immediately thought of that one scene around the campfire in Blazing Saddles. . . .
My local supermarket carries poblano and ancho. I’ve never tried either. I’ll give it a whirl — the worst that can happen is it’ll overwhelm me like all other peppers do.
CJ mentions paprika. Hmm. I might try that, one of these times, just to see what the effect is.
Note, too, you can get these peppers canned. That mutes the fire considerably. A straight jalapeno slice raw—pretty ouchy, even to me: almost eye-wateringly inedible. A canned jalapeno slice, zingy, but definitely I can eat 3-4 of those straight and just feel a comfy warmth.
If you’re REALLY ouchy with pepper, you might try substituting bell pepper flake, maybe in combo with paprika.
My black pepper is actually a mix of black, white, pink, green peppercorns AND allspice berries.
If you’re hypersensitive, you might try just a green peppercorn/allspice berry mix in a grinder.
I’ve tried pepper flake — it’s too much, if used in the proportions suggested by recipes. A quarter or less is about right, but seriously? I just don’t bother, most times.
I should mention that if I eat something too peppery anyway, just to try it out, my ears ache. This isn’t an allergy; this is my eustachian tubes complaining about chemical assault.
Cayenne is like pepper flakes or black pepper. White pepper is better, but there’s not much call for it. I do like allspice, but it doesn’t taste peppery to me. A bit sweet, a bit full, a bit flat… not hot at all. Bitter? Maybe… but since I don’t have the genes for tasting bitter, I don’t actually know.
How do I explain a flavor to you, who has the physical ability to taste things the way I can’t?
Hmm, even BELL pepper flake? To me that has a taste reminiscent of celery.
Allspice has a very mild heat, but coupled with black pepper at a ratio of mostly allspice in the grinder might tame the black pepper.
BELL pepper? You mean sweet peppers? Bah, humbug. That’s like eating wet cardboard. Ditto celery, except celery acts like a topical anesthetic to boot.
I’ll agree about no sugar on cereal, though. And a tablespoon or so of vinegar (especially a cider vinegar or other flavored vinegar) in a glass of water is very nice on a hot day. Or any day, for that matter.
How did such a pepper wimp as I am manage to get born and raised in Texas? Just don’t care for the hot stuff. I have friends that eat them straight til they’re sweating and red in the face, and reach for another one. Tell you what, CJ, I’ll trade you my share of the world’s peppers, hot and otherwise, for your share of the world’s onions, garlic and chives. I love onions! That reminds me, I’ve got a can of beets in the cupboard, and it’s been a while since I made beet salad. . . .
Texan here and I don’t do the hot pepper thing, either. I like my heat in horse radish, wasabi and light chili powder.
Kraft does a wonderful mayo+horseradish which is divine for beef sammies, and wasabi peas are the most yum!
I love horseradish and wasabi—Jane…see ‘olives. ‘ Lol!
I might also mention that I have had very good luck with putting everything in a covered pot, (though I use dried beans), and leaving it in the oven overnight at 225F. If you are going for a veggie dish, a little water and oil will tend to keep it from scorching, if you don’t like that flavor. Of course, this is very like the original form of the crock pot, which was buried in the fireplace when you banked the fire at night.
Taste is such a curious thing. I don’t really like sugar. To me, it and dusty limestone rock have a lot in common. (Yes, I’ve tasted rock: I took geology. 😉 ) As a kid, I ate cereal without sugar and drank iced tea with no sugar. In cake, I’d scrape off the frosting and only eat the cakey frosting between the layers, if it was butter cream. If it was the sticky stuff, I’d scrape it all off. As a child I’d raid the semi-sweet baking chocolate—but I was allergic to it. Once I outgrew that allergy, I found I really don’t like milk chocolate at all, and chocolate cake is pretty tasteless to me. I don’t like sweetened milk. Most ice cream is kind of meh! to me, and I won’t eat it if it’s squishy. There are a few exceptions, like buttered pecan, but not many.
Pepper, however, makes food satisfying. In fact, if I’m seriously dieting and have trouble, I’ll go have a slice of jalapeno and that will turn off the hunger trigger for as long as it takes my mouth to forget I had it.
I love olives. Jane can’t stand the taste. That lets out a lot of Mediterranean dishes.
I love artichokes. See ‘olives.’
I love pimento. See ‘olives.’
I can even drink vinegar: as a kid, I used to raid the olive jar. Jane reacts to a very small smidge.
I’m a coffee addict. Jane’s seriously allergic and doesn’t like the smell, either.
Thank goodness we both equally like peppers, or we’d be up a creek!
Sorry that Jane despises olives; one of the good things I have discovered is Costco’s pint jar of tapenade. I had thought that a small amount (<1 clove) of fresh garlic was tolerable to you, or has even that gone by the wayside? Possibly you could eat hummus, where cumin is the main spice. Costco also carries an incredible spinach-artichoke-Parmesan dip, although I would doublecheck the label to make sure they didn't sneak in any allium family seasoning. Smear that on French bread and pop it under the broiler.
Licking a rock to see the color is an accepted practice! There are meteorite community people who do amateur brewing, and for giggles, have been known to put a few grains of Martian or Lunar meteorite into their beer, just so they can say they drank the Moon 🙂
Lol—I can tolerate a very little real and fresh garlic now and again, but not as a regular course, maybe a third of a typical clove. I survived Italy and Greece—but that’s because most Italian and Greek cooks have the kindness not to use both onion and garlic together.
Yep, on the rock-licking. Our geology final had a time limit and a series of suggested tests for mineral id. That rascal prof had the hardest and pinkest sample of halite ever spawned, and I think I was the only one who didn’t think it was an easy pink quartz. I taste-tested every sample, taking no appearance for granted.
I eat olives and drink the jar juice. It’s my snack of choice for my diet. I can go through a jar a night if I’m not careful.
As I’ve gotten older I want savory and salty. Sugar doesn’t excite me unless it’s fresh fruit or the sweetness in bacon.
As a child of about 5-going-on-six, on a fishing trip, I discovered my favorite food among the supplies, an unopened and fairly hefty jar of pimento stuffed olives. Left alone in camp, because parents were visible down by the lake edge, through the trees, I had cover enough to take the jar, get it open (I was a strong little beggar) and eat a few olives. And a few more. And a few more. Fishing was good and my parents were busy. More olives. At this point the attractively stacked olives began to float. That would look pretty obvious when parents returned. I decided to get rid of the liquid so they’d stay arranged. So I drank part of it. But that left the top olives high and dry and all disarranged. So I ate those. That got down to a pretty respectable lot of olives, neatly stacked. But I wanted a few more. Which recreated the original problem.
So I ate them all and drank the juice, and went over to the camp trash can and disposed of the jar. If you think kids are all sweetness and light, well, you were a better soldier than I was, Gunga Din.
Later on, come a fish supper, my mother started searching the supplies, swearing she had brought a jar of olives.
I really wasn’t too hungry for fish that night.
I am eldest. My ‘best brother’ is less than a year younger than I am. When we were about that age, food was not easily come by, though Daddy was holding two jobs and plowed up the back yard to grow food. He also hunted squirrel, rabbit, and pheasant. Mama canned just about everything, braided onions into wreaths to dry, and made various preserves from fallen fruit we were allowed to glean. Among these was her legendary Strawberry-Apple Jelly-Jam.
One day there was just a little left in the bottom of the quart jar we were using, so Jeff and I ate that and asked Mama if we could have some more. She got out another quart and opened it for us, then went out to the garden and the fruit trees. Each of us had a spoon, and after that quart jar was empty too, we weren’t hungry at all! It was the same year that we went through the garden playing ‘Adam and Eve’ and each took a bite out of every piece of produce in the garden. Gunga Din.
One of Mom’s stories is taking me on a shopping trip around age 3. I was in the cart (the seat in the front), and there was a display of tomatoes within reach. I apparently grabbed one and had it half consumed by the time she got back. I finished it, too; none of this ‘3 bites and I’m done.’ Probably felt no need for lunch that day, though.
We were NOT lil’ angels, not us! 😉
I have habanero oil. A drop or two might be sufficiently spicy for wimps. (One is enough for one serving of salsa.)
(I will admit that my bottle of habanero oil is something like five habaneros to a quarter-liter of olive oil…)
We found a wonderful chopped-cherries-habanero barbecue sauce at Costco. The habanero use is delicate and a wonderful kick.
Might the problem with the lilies be a selenium sensitivity?
Curious thought. I take a vitamin that I think has selenium in it somewhere, but I’ll have to look.
Quite off topic but I thought you all might get a kick out of this.
http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/2013/03/miss-sanderson-and-the-womanly-art-of-parasol-self-defence/
Lol—Amelia Peabody would approve.
During my year at Hopkins, there was an elderly Baltimore lady accosted by a purse snatcher. When the police arrived (there were beat cops in our neighborhood) the villain was on the ground pleading for help. The lady had one of those metal rod-capped umbrellas and she was applying it with considerable vigor.
A good substitute for onions and garlic is asafoetida, also known as hing. This is often used in Indian cooking. It gives something of a similar flavor to a dish, but it comes from a completely different kind of plant to either garlic or onions, so it shouldn’t activate the same allergies.
Cooked apple also provides a flavor much like that of cooked onion, and can be substituted measure for measure in most recipes.
I mentioned the selenium, since I have a son who is sensitive to iodine, and cannot easily eat seafood, but can eat river fish…
That chili recipe looks seriously good, though I may use less hot spices. I’ll have to check my spices to see if I have enough.
I also like a Browncoat recipe: Cargo Bay Rice and Beans, which I tweaked for spices and meat versus veggie-only versions.
http://www.shinyfiction.com/recipes/chapSideDish/cargo-bay-rice-and-beans.htm
Poblano peppers are fairly mild to me, at least stuffed Mexican style. Very nice.
I’m Texan, but not a chili head. Mild to moderate heat, please… Though my tolerance is better than it was.
No problems with onions here, though garlic seems strong to me.
I recently discovered kettle cooked potato chips with vinegar and sea salt. I think I’m craving the salt and vinegar.
Chocolate’s great, though I like dark or semi-sweet better. Sugar is not too big a deal for me, at least, I think I do less than most people.
Chili sounds good. Think I’ll do that this week.
That sounds a little like Boston Baked Beans with a left turn toward India…sounds good!
As a Texan, beans in chili is sacrilege. 🙂 We just throw in more meat.
That being said, a friend’s mom has a simple and good chili and beans recipe.
One can of Ranch Style Beans with the juice
One pound ground beef
One medium can tomato paste
Chili powder to taste
Cook the beef and drain.
Add the beans with its juice and tomato sauce and stir.
Stir in chili powder to taste and heat.
Let it simmer for a few minutes.
Garnish as you wish. (lots of Mexican Blend cheese)
Eat.
It’s one of those recipes you can add whatever you want or change the beans and spices.
Cranberry-horseradish Sauce with Roast Beef. Yum!