Chili con Carne

This was another one from my Cooking Light Magazine. I love chili and have my own tried and true recipe, but thought it'd be fun to mix it up a bit. I like that this uses chunks of beef. I modified my version a bit and have posted it on here, but click the title and it'll take you to the original. The original recipe is a stove top one, I turned this into a crockpot recipe and just threw everything in.


(photo from Cooking Light)

Chili con Carne

Ingredients

4 poblano chiles (cut down from 8 only because the poblanos I bought were crazy hot. Love poblanos, but have never met one that packed as much heat as these did)
3 pounds boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup chopped onion
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups peeled seeded chopped plum tomato (about 10 medium - I used 2 cans of diced tomatoes. I'm lazy like that)
1 can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon ground cumin
chili spice to taste
1 chipotle chile, canned in adobo sauce

Preparation

Rise, remove seeds and chop poblano peppers. Rinse and remove seeds from one of the chipotle peppers (those suckers were hot!) Chop onion and throw into crockpot.

Trim roast and cut into 1 inch cubes. Throw into crockpot (you can brown beforehand if you'd like, again, I'm lazy)

Add spices, garlic, 2 cans of diced tomatoes and 1 can of tomato sauce.

Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Makes 10 1 cup servings at 8 WW points.

The verdict - John and I both really liked this. It was a little more stew like than regular chili. I added the can of tomato sauce, because I actually didn't think there would be enough liquid to it - especially since I was making it in the crockpot. I may add a small can of tomato paste to thicken it up some next time (this will probably be the recipe I use for Super Bowl Sunday at our house). It wasn't overly spicy either. I actually threw in a couple of the chipolte peppers before I tasted a piece and decided to pull them out. One was enough for us! The adobo sauce gives this chili a nice smokey flavor. Halfway through I tasted it and decided to add the chili spice. It didn't taste like chili to me without it. It probably won't replace my regular chili recipe, but it'll be a nice way to mix things up every now and then.