Football games and pots of chili are a universal combination. Half-time Taco Soup offers a fresh spin on an old favorite, and is sure to keep your crowd cheering. Enjoy the Super Bowl!
Ingredients (Makes one big pot) Continue reading
football
World’s Easiest Chicken Chili
How easy is this chicken chili?
It’s so easy, you’ll be eating chicken chili faster than you’d be eating if you picked up dinner at a fast food drive-thru. Don’t believe me? Set your stopwatch, and let’s get started!
Ingredients (Serves 4 – 6)
2 cups cooked, shredded chicken (you can buy this frozen or even canned if you’d like) Continue reading
Microwave Potato Chips
Our garden produced a nice crop of lovely little purple potatoes this year. The insides are ringed with beautiful shades of violet, but the small size of these potatoes makes them impractical to peel. Voila! Potato chips! What a simple way to show off the color of these heirloom veggies!
On our Kitchen Gadgets page, we’ve provided a link to an affordable gadget which makes potato chips (oil free) in the microwave. It works really well, but makes small batches. We have a LOT of potatoes, and needed to find a way to process larger batches of chips. Aha! This worked like a charm:
Emson Bacon Wave, Microwave Bacon Cooker
Yes, friends, an “As Seen On TV” microwave bacon maker, no joke! We used a mandolin to slice potatoes really thin, sprinkled them with a bit of sea salt, and arranged them in the bacon maker as shown:
We microwaved our chips for approximately 6 minutes (until the chips started to brown). Done! So simple! What a great way to enjoy the high fiber goodness of garden fresh potatoes, without adding fat.
PS – this same technique works for vegetable chips made from yams, beets, carrots, and parsnips. Stay tuned!
Cranberry Cheese Ball
It’s football season, and this Cranberry Cheese Ball would make a perfect halftime snack! This recipe is easy to make, easy to transport to your next party, and a guaranteed crowd pleaser. You can even make a Cranberry Cheese Ball ahead of time. This will keep in your refrigerator for several days. Alternatively, you can freeze it for several weeks. It will thaw nicely if left in the fridge for 24 hours.
Ingredients (Makes 1 large Cranberry Cheese Ball)
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup finely chopped scallions
1/3 cup finely chopped fennel (or substitute celery)
1/3 cup chopped nuts (hazelnuts and walnuts work well)
Directions
Combine all ingredients except chopped nuts; mix well. Shape into a ball (or a log shape, if you prefer). Roll in chopped nuts. Wrap Cranberry Cheese Ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate until serving. To serve, allow Cranberry Cheese Ball to come to room temperature. Serve on a platter surrounded by crackers.
Six Ingredient Chili
Too often, chili is a food of unfortunate extremes. At one end are recipes which profess that only expensive cuts of meat and rare chili peppers grown in obscure South American locations can be used – at Crowded Earth Kitchen, we think that’s silly. At the other end, there’s ready-to-eat chili in a can. Unless you are hiking through the Alaskan wilderness, have gotten lost, and are using canned chili to stay alive, please put the can down. 😉
Today’s chili recipe is perfect for a lazy weekend afternoon or a quick weeknight dinner. I like to double this recipe and freeze individual portions for fast lunches. A word to the wise: we’re cheating a bit on the six ingredients. Don’t worry – you only need six items from the market. One of those items, salsa, actually contains a whole list of typical chili ingredients including tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and salt. By using salsa, we save ourselves the time of slicing and dicing several other ingredients, but we still capture all of the chili flavor! Let’s get started.
Ingredients (Makes 8 cups)
1 pound lean ground meat (turkey or beef will work equally well)
4 cups of salsa (any variety and spice level you prefer)
2 cups of corn kernels (fresh, frozen, or canned)
1 small can tomato paste
2 tablespoons ground chili powder (mild, medium, or hot)
2 cans (15 oz each) kidney beans
Directions
Step 1) Brown meat over medium heat, stirring frequently, until meat is fully cooked.
Step 2) Drain meat. If you want your chili to be as low-fat as possible, add some water to the meat and drain it a second time.
Step 3) Add salsa, corn kernels, tomato paste, and chili powder to the meat. If chili mixture is too thick, add water (1 cup at a time) until desired consistency is reached.
Step 4) Simmer chili for 30 minutes, covered. Add kidney beans and heat through. Serve hot.
Step 5) Want fancy chili? Feel free to offer sides of cheddar cheese, sour cream, macaroni noodles, and/or oyster crackers alongside bowls of Six Ingredient Chili. Enjoy!
