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WHAT ARE YOU EATING TODAY?
- Thread starter Tudo
- Start date
moose eater
Well-known member
With the back and etc. I go out less and less. I once loved the first snow. Now it just means clearing the massive driveway, turn-around and parking areas with the snowblower, and clearing off the 3 trailers and 4 vehicles.
We've got more snow coming now, and but for the plowing I ordered in for the slush deluge (8-1/2" of snow followed by a day and a half of rain which my track-drive 9-hp Honda snowblower doesn't do well with; clogs it up and I end up using copious amounts of a food-grade silicone spray I have on-hand for my commercial meat grinder inside the auger bucket and chute), I've avoided having to use the snowblower this year Winter.
Not looking forward to it now, as my back's fucked up enough that I know in advance it's apt to be near catastrophic and will likely leave me more horizontal than not for at least 3-4 days. Mother Nature sometimes teams up with Murphy in my world.
But yeah, the chili is a good winter thing to have on-hand. That, and a good spicy chicken veggie soup.
moose eater
Well-known member
Mole' is done. Beans are almost done (though disappointingly finishing at different rates, meaning in order for some to be done properly, others might be a bit soft; OK for refried beans, but not so good for chili).
Next up is to heat up the giant cast iron skillet and get the 6.6-lbs of ground beef seasoned and onions and jalapeno peppers added to it.
Went ahead and added about 8 Arbol peppers (similar to a cayenne pepper) to the roasting process, then rehydrated them in the beef broth and added them to the mole' sauce. Don't think it made the chili inedible for my wife, whose pallet is fairly sensitive to spicy things since her stay in Korea 40+ years ago as an exchange student.
Mole' is currently sweet enough (likely due to the New Mexico and California chilis) that I can probably do without the monk fruit and erythritol extract granular shit that is now directly associated with heart complications.
I'll walk a couple dogs, feed one, and then into the ground meat rabbit hole we go. I think even our largest skillet might be too small for the beef, peppers and onion that still needs to go in there, and I loathe cooking the same ingredients in series, as it takes double the time for that addition. Maybe a second skillet is in order once the beans are pulled from the stove?
No pics today until maybe tonight as my wife's smart phone is the source of our digital pics. So, maybe this evening I can post some pics of chili, by which time she might have made a batch of awesome homemade corn bread (a sin for my glucose-sensitive diet) to ease any discomfort she experiences in the chili's seasoning.
"And so it goes...." (Kurt Vonnegut)
Next up is to heat up the giant cast iron skillet and get the 6.6-lbs of ground beef seasoned and onions and jalapeno peppers added to it.
Went ahead and added about 8 Arbol peppers (similar to a cayenne pepper) to the roasting process, then rehydrated them in the beef broth and added them to the mole' sauce. Don't think it made the chili inedible for my wife, whose pallet is fairly sensitive to spicy things since her stay in Korea 40+ years ago as an exchange student.
Mole' is currently sweet enough (likely due to the New Mexico and California chilis) that I can probably do without the monk fruit and erythritol extract granular shit that is now directly associated with heart complications.
I'll walk a couple dogs, feed one, and then into the ground meat rabbit hole we go. I think even our largest skillet might be too small for the beef, peppers and onion that still needs to go in there, and I loathe cooking the same ingredients in series, as it takes double the time for that addition. Maybe a second skillet is in order once the beans are pulled from the stove?
No pics today until maybe tonight as my wife's smart phone is the source of our digital pics. So, maybe this evening I can post some pics of chili, by which time she might have made a batch of awesome homemade corn bread (a sin for my glucose-sensitive diet) to ease any discomfort she experiences in the chili's seasoning.
"And so it goes...." (Kurt Vonnegut)
Every cast-iron pan tells a story Moose, go for the second...
My cast iron skillet goes back to the 90s, I use to season it after ever use, now it's every month or two..
If skillets could talk eh
Can't beat creating something from scratch, homemade chilli is proper comfort eating and fun building the layers of flavoring, I can't resist the urge of adding extra chillies, I do the same when making curries.
Mole I'm not familiar with, sounds like a good base layer for the task at hand...
Must resist temptation man of sending the scoville levels through the roof...
My cast iron skillet goes back to the 90s, I use to season it after ever use, now it's every month or two..
If skillets could talk eh
Can't beat creating something from scratch, homemade chilli is proper comfort eating and fun building the layers of flavoring, I can't resist the urge of adding extra chillies, I do the same when making curries.
Mole I'm not familiar with, sounds like a good base layer for the task at hand...
Must resist temptation man of sending the scoville levels through the roof...
moose eater
Well-known member
Turned out to be one of the milder chilis I've made. Still has some 'zip' to it, though. But my wife will find it edible for sure, though I suspect she'll still want to make her cornbread recipe; something I can't eat much more than a bit of if I'm not going to compromise my glucose levels.Every cast-iron pan tells a story Moose, go for the second...
My cast iron skillet goes back to the 90s, I use to season it after ever use, now it's every month or two..
If skillets could talk eh
Can't beat creating something from scratch, homemade chilli is proper comfort eating and fun building the layers of flavoring, I can't resist the urge of adding extra chillies, I do the same when making curries.
Mole I'm not familiar with, sounds like a good base layer for the task at hand...
Must resist temptation man of sending the scoville levels through the roof...
I swear by cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens. The even heating as it's distributed across the iron, even if the skillet or pan is notably larger than the burner being used. Excellent stuff.
I try to buy only good quality cast iron anymore, as I have one shallow 10" or 12" omelet skillet here that has a warped bottom from very high heat, which is most noticeable when melting butter, lard, etc. in the bottom and the center remains high and dry... and smoking.
We admittedly don't season them often enough, though.
The mole' involves roasting de-stemmed and de-seeded dried chilis of whatever variety at about 350 f for 3.5 to 5 minutes, maybe 6 minutes, and when opening the oven door, when the smell brings a mild tear to the eye from the pungency of the aroma, they're ready.
Then I whip up maybe 12 to 16 cups of good beef broth and pour it into a huge Pyrex glass bowl, and while it's still piping hot, I put all of the dried roasted chilis in the broth and let them hydrate.
When they're good and soft, I put them into my (deceased mother's) antique Osterizer blender filling it up to about the 2/3 to 3/4 level with each batch, adding several; cups of the broth mixture until they're submerged with maybe an inch or so of the liquid above the chilis and the chilis only slightly packed into the blender, but not tightly packed, and add maybe 5-6 fat cloves of garlic per blender full, about 2/3 to 3/4-cup of fresh sweet onion per blender, a couple tsp. of ground cumin per blender, and a bit over a tsp of sea salt per blender. Then I hit the highest speed until it turns into a beautiful thick red sauce.
Take a TBSP or so (my batch today used close to 2 TBSP, as it was large in volume as usual) of the whole wheat pastry flour and avocado oil or preferred oil in the bottom of the 5-quart French saucepan (I used to use a good extra-virgin olive oil, but don't anymore due to carcinogens or toxins put off by olive oil under high heat conditions) and whisk the oil and flour until the flour begins browning and is integrated into the oil.
(*I add a half-cup or so of good extra-virgin olive oil to the <4-gallons of chili once it's done, for the olive oil flavor).
Then turn your heat under that sauce pan down and pour your first blender full of mole' sauce into the flour and oil mixture, whisking until integrated and it begins thickening. If the oil and flour blend is too hot when you pour your mole' into it, it'll bubble as a thick sauce can and likely paint your kitchen/stove red like someone got stabbed to death in there!!
Today I poured in about 2-2/3+ blenders full of the mole' sauce, or almost 4 quarts of the mole' sauce when the sauce was finished, in order to have enough of the mole' for what turned out to be not quite 4 US gallons of pretty nice chili.
Turned out that all of the 6.6-lbs. of ground meat fit nicely into the LARGE skillet, and I added about 1-1/3 LARGE (HUGE!!!) sweet onions to that, as well as more seasonings. Definitely NOT Americanized chili.
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moose eater
Well-known member
Thanks.
It's the same mole' sauce I make for traditional Northern Mexican tamales. One of my more destructive addictions in recent years, and which I have to avoid now for the most part.
We used to make those out of chicken, pork, and moose. I found the moose tamales lasted better for long-term freezing as they had less fat in the meat, and over time things that have higher fat content are prone to going slightly rancid or changing for the worse in the freezer.
I had as poor a degree of self-control with good tamales as I did with clean coke back in the day. Once I started eating GOOD tamales, I'd consume until I was in pain, complain about it a bit, then get up and go get another one!
.The mole' was served on top of the tamales, as well as integrated into the meat that they were filled with.
