The food thread

The only fry pans I buy anymore are Heritage - The Rock. For you Canadians, you get them at Canadian Tire. This weekend they are 75% off. 20, 25, 30 cm sizes. It's the very durable non-stick surface and heads and tails better than the supposed non stick ceramics.


I have seen those in Canadian Tire, do they work with induction? (I see the T-fal and All Clad units have a stainless steel disc so they work with induction. 75% off is no joke.
 
COLD weather snap here (been below 20-F for over a week) = "Chili Time":

What are the member favorite types around here?

Mine is different for this part of the country - I used cubed chuck instead of ground (it's worth the effort) and stew it in an enameled CI Dutch Oven with beer, onions, and a little tomato. Then add an almost "mole" type chili sludge made with at least 3 different dried chili types (pan-toasted and re-constituted in juice from the meat and ground-up with an immersion blender), several types of beans, and a little Mexican chocolate & LOTS of Penzey's Chili Powder. Serve over rice

I also cook some pretty mean Red Beans & Rice for a Yankee!


There really should be a Chili Thread...


Lots of onions, garlic, fresh sweet and hot peppers, cubed meat (I like a mix of pork and beef, sometimes add a little lamb, would use venison if I had it), salt, chili powder. Make your chili powder by toasting some oregano (preferably Mexican) in a dry pan, then toast dried chilis (New Mexico, Ancho, Guajillo, Arbol, etc) and cumin seed. I like to add a bit of cinnamon stick, black pepper, and a few allspice berries. Grind it all to a powder in a blender or spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Brown the meat in a bit of fat (neutral oil, or lard, or bacon drippings), take it out and add onions and garlic to the pan, add back the meat and the fresh peppers, cook a couple of minutes, add the chili powder, cook a minute stirring, add beer and/or water to cover plus a couple inches, add soaked beans (small red beans and/or pinto beans), bring to boil, simmer until the meat is falling apart. Add some salt and adjust seasoning. Don't add salt before beans are cooked, it makes them tough.


Sometimes I add some roasted sweet corn, I usually roast ears on the BBQ in summer and freeze the kernels.


NO tomatoes!
 
I still remember A. D. Livingston's chili recipe in Gray's Sporting Journal, which was basically this:


In a large pot, preferably cast iron, put some meat, preferably venison, preferably with bones. Add salt and a handful of crushed dried chili peppers. Add water to cover. Bring to boil, simmer until meat is falling off the bone. Chili con carne, nothing else.
 
do they work with induction?
Yes but make sure they are the Heritage version. Both are made by Starfrit but I undertand the Heritage ones are a step up in quality. Also make sure you get the black ones with the white speckle and not those coloured ceramic ones.
75% off is no joke.
Around here it's a twice yearly thing. We have four and I'll be getting three more on Friday.
There really should be a Chili Thread...
I kinda like keeping all food in one area. We get to see what everyone is cooking without having to navigate different threads.
sometimes add a little lamb,
An excellent choice IMO.
would use venison
Another good one. In fact any red meat goes well I think.
add soaked beans
Did you know that in Chili championships, beans are not allowed? Personally I think they play an important role so am no longer involved with that.
NO tomatoes!
Sacré bleu! Off with your head!
Chili con carne, nothing else.
Personally I can't call it chili con carne without cumin. It plays such a large role.
 
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Chili - Other Variations:

In addition to what I stated earlier - someone reminded me of this: I DO sometimes fry-up some THICK, Smoky bacon (Neuske's if you can get it) and then brown the meat in the bacon grease. And I DO sometimes (but not this most recent batch) add a little Casia Cinnamon and/or a handful of diced-up prunes for a little kiss of sweetness / thickening.

If you want to give some Red Beans & Rice a whirl
Sachmo sang about 'em for a reason ;-)- check out "Gumbopages.com" (you won't regret it....)
 
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Lots of supermarkets around here sell bags of whole dried chilis: either Guajillos, Anchos, or Pasillas .

Soak them in warm water for 2 hours, then move the chilis but not the water, to a blender. Blend until smooth and add to your normal chili recipe. A flavor turbocharger!

Warning: dried chilis after soaking, will stain cotton towels, cotton shirts, pants, and underwear permanently.
 
Here's what left of this years sauce, now bottled. Still a few more to give away but I do have to keep about 4 litres for myself.
 

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Lots of supermarkets around here sell bags of whole dried chilis: either Guajillos, Anchos, or Pasillas .

Soak them in warm water for 2 hours, then move the chilis but not the water, to a blender. Blend until smooth and add to your normal chili recipe. A flavor turbocharger!

Warning: dried chilis after soaking, will stain cotton towels, cotton shirts, pants, and underwear permanently.



A couple of years ago I bought a small bag of dried New Mexico chilis at the grocery store. "New Mexico" is a variety, these were actually grown in Peru! I saved some seeds and planted them and they grew, and I harvested and dried a dozen or so chilis. Planted some of the original seeds and some of the seeds from the ones I grew the next year, and again this year. This year was a bad year, everything was late and I only got a few chilis. You need to plant them in about February to harvest in Sept, but they are really nice when it works.
 
I grow peppers every year, mostly jalapeno, hatch and occasionally Habanero and other hot peppers.

This year I bought sets of generic jalapeno peppers.

I harvested the last of them on the first of November and dried them. I have never seen peppers grow in October, much less last until November.

I got about 60 peppers out of five plants.

We harvested an average of two per day up until them, with occasionally harvests of 20 peppers to stuff.


Are the "New Mexico" the same as a "Hatch" chili? I have heard the terms used interchangeably.

Maybe Hatch is a subset of New Mexico.

New Mexico chile - Wikipedia
 
That is a really good price! I rarely see them under $7,000.00.

The one my folks bought in 1957 is still going strong.

Actually restaurants go out of business regularly, Hobart stuff is often available at auction for very cheap. When I was in a planned community we picked one up for <$1000. I might have mentioned this before at a Boston home show I just offered the distributor cash to send the floor show kitchen to me at 50 cents on the dollar rather than packing it up.
 
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Are the "New Mexico" the same as a "Hatch" chili? I have heard the terms used interchangeably.

Maybe Hatch is a subset of New Mexico.

That is my understanding.

Funny you mentioned jalapenos this year. Last year, summer of 2018, I planted some seeds from jalapenos from the grocery store. It was just a lark, I didn't expect anything, but one seed sprouted, but it was almost July when it sprouted. The poor little plant did OK but was just flowering when the Fall frost hit. It was in a pot on my back deck so I brought it inside and put it in our sunniest window (not very sunny, especially in Nov/Dec/Jan). The plant thrived and continued to blossom, but by spring it seemed played out. I put it in the ground in late spring anyway just to see what would happen, and despite looking half dead it kept producing peppers right through October! Not a lot but more than I expected.

Similar thing happened with a poblano, planted a few seeds and exactly one sprouted but late, kept it alive over the winter and got a few peppers. I dried the best and ripest one, and hope to harvest seeds from that for future experiments. I am in completely the wrong climate zone for any of these. :)
 
Actually restaurants go out of business regularly, Hobart stuff is often available at auction for very cheap. When I was in a planned community we picked one up for <$1000. I might have mentioned this before at a Boston home show I just offered the distributor cash to send the floor show kitchen to me at 50 cents on the dollar rather than packing it up.

Cheap is a relative term. The dishwasher at my shop is another quite reputable brand we picked up locally for $100.00. It was a year old and being replaced in someone's kitchen remodel. Very handy for a bit of the cleanup after the 60" flooding in the shop after hurricane Ivan.

If you ever see a Hobart in working condition for $100.00 buy it immediately! But I suspect you know that.

I have found Chambers ranges offered for under $1,000.00, but pickup only from at least 3 states away!

Next we could talk about other legendary kitchen appliances.... Mixers, slicers, and even knives.

One of my favorites is why almost all old tools of any type are always so good. That is because the junky ones broke and got thrown out! ;)
 
When I grew peppers, I'd soaked the seeds in water for a day, this was around March for us, they take a good week or two to pop up, thin out after they get about an inch high. Best under some intense lamps, like a bank of T5HO 54W, it takes a while to get to a good size, ready for a spring planting in around may 24 around here. if you do it right they can be almost in flower stage at the time you put them out. A good head start.
A raised garden works best because the soil warms up faster, full sun, lots of compost, water, juice, even then by frost the plants are just rocking and it is over for us in the tundra, unless you have a green house, but even with that it will just buy you another month or two. Best one can do in our climate.
 
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Kinda pricey when we were in Belfast and Edinburgh... but smooth and complex

I would've thought that you were in the "Corn Squeezin's" part of the country...:rolleyes:

I'm no Scotch expert - but I DO know what I like when I taste it.
[Strictly for "medicinal purposes" once in a while...]
A friend of my Dad left 2/3 bottle of Balvenie Double Wood in Dad's booze cabinet which I stole when I helped Mom clean the cabinet out.
Dad's no longer with us, but I think of him when I'm enjoying some of the nice hooch that I "stole" ;-)
 
Actually restaurants go out of business regularly, Hobart stuff is often available at auction for very cheap. When I was in a planned community we picked one up for <$1000. I might have mentioned this before at a Boston home show I just offered the distributor cash to send the floor show kitchen to me at 50 cents on the dollar rather than packing it up.

The pity is getting any of the commercial appliances to work in a domestic environment is a huge hurdle. I'd love to get a commercial range whenever I can finally afford to buy* but the fire regs on them are justifiably high. Hadn't thought about a washer but I'm not averse to dropping a few extra 220 lines into a kitchen. I really want a commercial convection mini oven. It makes me wonder why even in the US we don't bring out a couple of 220 plugs given the power requirements of some kitchen gear, especially as we're trying to be more and more mindful about our power use.

*I'll be getting a full time big boy job in March after I close up my work here in Portland. (Will update my location then)