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mmmmmm – good!
Well, we’re back in the kitchen with Aunt Toby(which works out pretty well, since we’re talking about food) and your first assignment(because I’m all about the assignments and all about doing it ‘right now’) is this:
Take out your wallet and take out a $10.00 bill. Put that bill in an envelope with your coupons or shopping list for the week and hold onto it. We’ll talk about that $10 bill a little bit later, but trust me on this one: You will want to do this every single week for a while. It WILL save you money.
The whole point of this series (which will be on-going..at least until the economy gets it’s s**t together) is to share ideas on how to nourish ourselves and our families with stuff that is a) good, b) cheap and c) good for you. There are a lot of things that are cheap and good, but from a nutrition standpoint, are not particularly good for you. The point here is to hit the Nutritional Trifecta: Good, Good for you and gives you ultimate bank for your nutritional buck.
For our last discussion of Nutritional Bang for the Dollar, see:
What’s It Worth To You?
Our first week’s topic is the old and new favorite: chili.
I’m going to assume that everyone knows the difference between Chile and chilis so we won’t go there. There is no mystery (despite the Terlingua contests) to making a great pot of chili: If there had been, cowboys would have been starving on those long cattle drives. I’m not going to discuss the other deal about chili that is supposedly ‘real’, ‘genuine’, ‘authentic’ or whatever.
The basic formula for chili is this (commit this to memory and save yourself a lot of grief):
Beans
Some sort of liquid
Meat if you’ve got it (we’ll talk about vegetarian chili later)
Onions, lots
Garlic, lots
Pepper
Time
After that, it’s all in the seasonings.
The picture above is our favorite chili at home, made in a crockpot. I take out a pound of ground meat the night before. Any ground meat will do: chicken, turkey, beef, whatever you have.
That morning, brown the meat and throw the whole thing, grease included into the crock pot.
Throw in a handful of garlic(that usually works out to 5-6 cloves)
Coarsely chop an onion – keep the pieces pretty big (if the onion’s been in the fridge a while and has sprouted, throw in the green sprouts too)
Choose your liquid and throw that in. If you like it tomato-y, then the big can (26 ounce can) or a quart jar of canned tomatoes in sauce or juice is your weapon of choice. If you don’t want it tomato-y, then two cans of low salt beef broth is your ticket.
Put in your Beans: We happen to like having more than one type of beans in our chili – one can each of black beans and pinto beans, rinsed, with the rest of this will fill up a good sized (2.5 qts) crock pot. You can always use less meat and more beans – it’s up to you. I like canned beans because I hate to go through the washing-sorting-washing-soaking-cooking, etc. thing with dried beans. If you want to do that, you’ll need to start this process the day before so that they soak overnight.
Spices: All of this depends on how adventurous your family is:
Oregano and basil will make your chili taste like Mexican Spaghetti Sauce, which is very nice, but not authentic.
Taco Seasoning Mix: I admit that sometimes, I just am not in the mood to try to think of combining spices, etc. and I just reach into the cupboard for a package of low salt taco seasoning mix, throw a tablespoon of that into the meat when I’m browning it. Not the most authentic, but can pass muster with teenagers. If you use that, then all you need is a little pepper.
Cumin – Very authentic and can be overdone – throw in a teaspoon and taste again later.
Pepper – 1/2 teaspoon and taste again later
Cilantro – very authentic; throw in a tablespoon of the dried stuff
Fresh Green(or red or orange or yellow)Peppers – very yum – chop coarsely and throw those in; the more colorful the better
Dried Hot Peppers – here is where the whole thing can end up with the fire department – if I am doing this, I put in a really small one like a jalapeño, chopped up with the seeds and taste again later.
Anything else? Well, if I am down to the last half a jar of medium salsa, esp if it’s got corn in it, I’ll throw that in too.
There you have it – red chili.
If you are a vegetarian, here is all you need to know:
Leave out the meat and make sure you eat this with a whole grain bread. That will complete your protein from the beans and you are good to go. I know there are a lot of folks out there who like to throw tofu into their chili as their protein source – go for it. I don’t eat soy products as they interfere with my thyroid hormone replacement.
White Chili:
I’m sort of at a loss as to the attraction of white chili, just the way I feel a tremendous level of ambivalence about ‘white chocolate’. That’s like saying, “Kosher Bacon”. But, I happen to like eating white chili a lot and it IS different.
Again, to go back to our basic formula:
Beans – use Great Northerns or navy beans…they are white!
Meat – use chicken or turkey (I suppose you could use pork too, but I have never had white pork chili) – cooked if you have around(yay, Thanksgiving); if not, brown up cut up chicken parts that are meaty, cut off the meat and throw that in, skin included.
Liquid – Ah, here is where we get different – use a couple of cans of chicken broth. Do NOT use chicken bouillon cubes.
All the rest for spices follows the same as for red chili.
Put your crockpot on low and leave it for the day – when you get home, you will have chili all made for dinner. Serve with some fresh veggies or a salad, bread or rolls. In our house, a favorite accompaniment is cornbread, which I will save for another time.
Now, let’s say that you don’t have this sort of planning or time available to YOU. Let’s say that you get the call when you get home from work from the DS or DD that they are bringing home their friends from school for dinner…and they are going to be home in an hour. Should you just pick up the phone and order a pizza? Nope – as long as you have things at hand, you will be able to do this and still have time to set the table, clean up a little bit and take out the dog.
But the key is: having things ‘at hand’, which brings us back to …the $10 bill.
Cooking Good and Cheap requires one thing and one thing only: having basics on the shelf (under the bed, in the pantry, in a cardboard box…whatever). How many times have we ended up ‘eating by Pizza Hut™’ because we got home, stared into the fridge and shelves and seen…pickles, a half-eaten sandwich, a couple of onions that looked past their best and nothing defrosted? The entire US restaurant industry is based on this problem. Take that $10 bill and turn it into an opportunity for you and your family to eat cheap.
This weekend, check the circular from your usual grocery store. Chasing the best price on one item is just nuts. You will save money going to one place to do all of your shopping. If another store does the best buy on fish or meat, then do that there but basically, don’t chase around.
Look at specials on the following items:
Chicken Broth(low salt if possible)
Beef Broth(low salt if possible)
Canned tomatoes (low salt if possible and whatever your family uses most – crushed, whole, diced or whatever)
You will hardly ever find a special on dried milk, but buy a box anyway – unless you are allergic to milk. If you are going to buy it, the reason is that you’ll need it for another one of these postings, when we cover breads and Holiday yummies).
Take that $10 bill with you and that circular and figure out and buy the most of a couple of those items above so that you stock up on them. Once you have them, then you can do anything you want in terms of cooking cheap and nutritiously.
Next posting: Chowder!!(or, more correctly, “Chow-dah!!”)
13 Comments
Rec’d and Dugg!
Chowdah: I assume we’re talking New England.
All kinds of chowder – fish, clam and corn…mostly white…but I’ll pander to the red folks, too…
Thanks, Toby, this sounds good even though I had leftover taco salad fixin’s for dinner tonight.
The only pre-packaged chili seasoning I have enjoyed is this one. It is easy to mimic the effect that makes this chili so distinctive. There is beer in the liquid and the chili is served with a garnish of a generous splash of fresh lime juice and grated Monterrey Jack cheese.
Aunt Toby strikes again. .)
Money-saving tip: If you are going strictly on a “dollars and cents into the pot basis”and wish to reduce the cost of this, reduce the amount of meat by half and replace with a couple of cans of beans – use a third kind, like kidney to mix it up a little bit. Or, if you have some cheddar cheese in the fridge (even if it is getting a bit hard), take out the meat entirely and grate up one ounce per person into the bowl before ladling in the chili. That will replace the protein AND the fat from the meat.
I hope so; ”Manhattan” tomato-based chowder is like white chili: why bother?
As for chili, I understand that Texicans nauseate at the idea of beans in theirs. Meat, peppers and spices are the only sanctified ingredients for real chili. I prefer it with beans. Gazpacho beans and corn make a nice complement to black beans and pinto beans. Available in low salt canned versions, they add color and texture. If you’re on a tight or ”no” budget, a chili like that provides the calories you’ll need for a day, and a little comfort, too.
I like Toby’s choices in spices, and the comment that oregano and basil turn the chili into Mexican spaghetti sauce.
If you like meats, try ground buffalo, available frozen east of the Mississippi. Richer, heartier, sweeter and less fatty than beef. Enjoy, especially on game day, if you have the luxury, and any time if you need a full meal for a long day.
Ah, any ‘non-traditional’ red meat(including goat, buffalo, domesticated and wild deer, elk, and the “Sarah Palin Blue Plate Special”) are all candidates for chili. Under control/grass fed will be slightly different than wild but basically, my experience with game, goat and venison is the same as with grass-fed, which is ‘low and slow’ (low temps and long cooking), which works very well with the slow cooker and with chili and other wet cooking methods. The original name for what we know as ‘chili’ is “chili con carne” – peppers with meat. Not Peppers, beans and meat. Personally, I think that beans, which were already part of the Mexican/Texican diet culture became mixed in with the rest of the dish, especially in areas where meat was more expensive – as we are noting here, they were using them to stretch the dish and frankly make it more filling.
LOL Toby, you are a piece of work!
Fun thread!
Also, if you leave out the meat, you should probably have oil of some kind in the pan before you throw in the onion. /obvious
I’ve never made chili per se, but I’ve made a lot of bean/lentil dishes in the same general family. My recommendation for broth (backup) is to get some Better Than Bouillon (it comes in vegetable, chicken, and beef, of which I’ve only had the first two). It’s like a concentrated broth paste in a jar. It has more salt than I’d optimally prefer, but it’s very useful for times when you don’t have broth in the house, it stores a lot more compactly than broth, and it yields a lot more genuine broth than cubes or granules. (It may seem expensive, but there are a lot of servings in a little jar. And unlike some bouillon cubes, its first two ingredients aren’t salt and partially hydrogenated oil.)
It’s well worth dedicating an afternoon every few weeks to stock the frezer. I buy whole chickens, 2 to a package for about .89/pound. Put them in a big pot and cook. That gives me about 3 quarts of chicken broth to freeze for soups/gravies, chicken meat to place in zip-lock bags for soups, chicken salad sandwiches, chicken/pasta salad, soft chicken tacos…
While I’m cooking the chicken, I’ll also make a big pot of scratch black-bean chili (using only about a pound of really cheap ground beef, you want the fat in there, for 7 quarts of delicious chili) or marinara sauce – also to freeze and use later – and a couple of meatloafs, one to eat, one to freeze.
Great post.
I have something similar in price and easy fixins..I try to use meat as a condiment. Most of my vegetables are from my freezer and a result of my farm share from this summer
http://seasonalpantry.blogspot…..e-box.html
Annie..people can use that $10 bill to do that, too. The point is to actually take the bill out of your wallet and put it someplace where you won’t fritter it away on something during the week. We all tend to waste a whole lot of money and then not think about stocking up or don’t feel we can buy the extra to do it. You are very forward thinking to make chicken stock; that is fantastic. A lot of people get intimidated by recipes that start “three days before you want to make xxx” to do that sort of thing, which is why I did this with canned broths. But definitely, making your own broth beats buying the canned stuff in terms of quality and if you have some room in the freezer, it’s a terrific idea. I was once invited for dinner to a doctor’s house when I was in grad school and he carried this to almost ridiculous extremes – he had a separate pantry off his kitchen which had two stand up freezers in it: one for beef stock; one for chicken. He used to set aside a couple of weekends a month to keep the thing stocked and he and his wife used to entertain extensively. But the rest of us can do that on a much smaller scale also. I once got a terrific buy on chickens during a time when we did not have a freezer, but we did have a pressure canner and I canned the chicken(cut it up into pieces small enough to get into the jars, covered it in boiling water, sealed it and pressure canned the jars). It was good for fillings, chicken salad, chicken soup, chicken and biscuits..that sort of thing.