Chew

I'm playing with my food today, y'all. And I'm pretty excited about it. In the crockpot, I have black beans that I soaked in a bowl with plain old tap water over night, and stew meat. You know, the big cubes of the tough beef that you find at the grocery store that's labeled, "beef for stew". The only way I have found to make this product tasty is to cook it all day in a liquid of choice. You can use water, beef broth, wine, beer, or really any liquid you have or want. Mix it up and use tomato juice if you want. Ooh... I bet that would be good because the acid in the tomatoes would help tenderize the meat cubes. I have to write that down... Oh... Wait... I just did. Now I just have to remember where I wrote it. 

Also in the pot, I have all the cloves from one very small bulb of garlic, dried rosemary, dried thyme, salt, fresh ground black pepper, 2 small dry bay leaves, and chili powder.

2 cups dry Black Beans, soaked over night in tap water

2lbs "beef for stew" cubes

8 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

2 t dry rosemary

3 t dry thyme

1 T kosher salt

1 T fresh black pepper

2 small dry bay leaves

2 T chili powder (you know, the blend that has cumin and garlic powder in it)

Freaked out about the quantity of the spices? Don't be. This is making A LOT of food. Both the beans and these huge meat chunks are naturally dense and kinda flavorless on their own, so I may even need to add more spices once it cooks for a while. 

My crock pot is FULL. I poured in enough water to cover the meat and put the cooker on high. I'll cook on high for only one hour, then turn it down to low. I would have done low all day, but I noticed when I put my meat chunks in, some weren't 100% thawed out, and I wanted the high cook time to get its attention. 

When I make a soup, stew, sauce, chili, etc, I like to make a ton so my Honey can take it to work for lunches and suppers when he's teaching or has staff duty. Plus, things like this just get more delicious the longer they sit, so each day will be better and better. AND, y'all know I love myself some left-over-throw-togethers, and a soup/stew/chili/sauce is a great start for a great new dish.

We love roasted veggies in our home, so I'm going to cut up red potatoes, onions, and baby carrot, roll them around in some olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast them on high heat (450) in the oven until they are tender, toasty, and naturally caramelized, sweet, slightly smoky, and heavenly.

I'm calling today's creation Chew. It's a chili and a stew. Yes, I could have named it a stili, but I thought "Chew" was quite apropos.  

Hope it's as tasty in real life as it is in my imagination. I'll report back. Stay tuned, stay hungry, and play with your food.