Texas Crockpot Chili

Crockpot Thursday – Texas Crockpot Chili over Ditalini Pasta (no beans)

This Chili is a very smokey dish, but not much bite. If you like heat, you may need to modify the recipe a bit. We really enjoyed this over the Ditalini pasta. It was also a welcome change to have Chili without beans.

In my opinion, this was a heavy prep meal. I always thought that Crockpot meals were supposed to be virtually, throw everything in the pot and go…but not in this case. I spent about 20 minutes prepping a little bit the night before by roasting and chopping up peppers and onions. Roasting the peppers on my gas stove turned out to be a real chore…so I stopped after I did one of them and left the other 2 raw. Apparently I didn’t read the directions fully because I ended up throwing the chopped Jalapeno pepper in the baggie with the other peppers. In the morning when I had to sauté the Jalapeno pepper in the skillet I had to try to dig out some from the baggie…so I’m sure I didn’t get it all and some other peppers were mixed in. Oh, well. I also boiled the Ditalini pasta and put in a airtight container the night before.

Even with the pre-prep that I did the night before, it still took me about 20 more minutes of prep the morning of. The sautéing of the cubed stew meat was tedious, but necessary. I cooked my Chili on low for 9 hours. My husband got home before me and by the time he got there the Chili was on the warm setting for a little less than 2 hours. He had to get the pasta out the fridge, reheat it for a minute and top it with the Chili. There was also medium Cheddar Cheese and sour cream to top the Chili with.

If I make this again in the future, I will use hotter Chili's to add more heat, then use 1/2 Fire Roasted tomatoes and 1/2 regular diced tomatoes (as is, it's a little too smokey for my taste). Also possibly use ground Sirloin instead since my husband prefers ground meat.


My changes:
~I couldn’t find packages of stew meat that equaled 3 pounds, it was either 2.5 lbs or 4.5 lbs…I went with the lesser. The meat was already cubed, it look to be a little smaller than 1 in cubes. I also used a less flour.
~I ended up not finding Poblano peppers in good condition, so I took a chance and went with some other peppers. I found Cubanelle and Serrano, which seemed to be good substitutions.
~I only roasted 1 of the 3 peppers.
~Because my hubby doesn’t like to “see” onions in his food, I used less and chopped it much smaller.
~I couldn’t find 29 oz cans of Fire Roasted Tomatoes, so I went with 4, 14.5 oz cans instead (totals to the same amount).
~At the last minute I realized I didn’t have Chili Powder, so I Googled a Chili Powder Recipe (found here) and then sprinkled (eyeballed) some of all these ingredients in…it smelled good, so at that point I just hoped the end results would be good. Which of course, is was!


Texas Crockpot Chili (modified from Jamie Cooks )

Ingredients
2.5 lbs Pre Cubed Stew Beef
3 Tbsp of flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp freshly ground pepper
¼ cup of EVOO, divided
½ large yellow onion, finely chopped
1 Jalapeno pepper, stemmed, quartered and chopped
2 tsp preminced garlic from the jar
4, 14.5 oz cans of Diced Fire Roasted Tomatoes
1 cup of Low Sodium Beef Broth
2 Cubanelle Peppers (1 roasted and peeled), roughly chopped
1 Serrano Pepper, roughly chopped
1 Tbsp Cumin
2 tsp dried Oregano
½ tsp Chipotle Powder
Dash of the following: Paprika, Garlic Powder, Red Cayenne Pepper

Instructions
1. Using a Ziploc bag, combine beef, flour, salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Heat 1 Tbsp of oil in a skillet over medium heat until hot. Add 1/3 of beef and sear for about 2 minutes on each side, stirring once or twice. Repeat two more times with remaining beef. Transfer each batch of beef to the Crockpot as finished.

2. Using the same skillet, add remaining Tbsp of oil and sauté onions for about 5 minutes, stirring only once or twice. Let them slightly brown. Add in Jalapeño and garlic. Sauté for an additional 2 minutes until peppers start giving off their heat. Add to Crockpot.

3. Add seasonings and remaining peppers to the Crockpot, stir to combined. Add broth and tomatoes to the Crockpot, stir to combined.

4. Cook on high for 4 ½ hours or low for 9 hours.

Source: Texas Crockpot Chili
Rating: 3 forks