Hi. My name is Mark and this is my cooking blog.
I get asked a lot for my recipes, so I decided to start this cooking blog. What you’ll find here will be my recipes and my variations on others’ recipes, my cooking tips and who knows what else.
I should say up front that I’m lactose intolerant (check out my lactose intolerance site www.nowhey.org) and I also try to live a low-carb lifestyle. So the recipes you’ll find here will generally be devoid of milk and milk products and try, wherever possible, to be low in carbs.
I hope you enjoy the site and the recipes.
Mark
I had just got in some different chile powders and wanted to play with them. Chile Colorado has always been one of my favorites and it seemed well suited to one of my favorite cooking appliances: the slow cooker or crock pot. I’d never made Chile Colorado before so I did some research. It would appear the best Chile Colorado recipes use no tomatoes, but I wanted to use a lot in mine – so Chile Coloradical was born!
Ingredients (feeds 6)
1 14.5 oz can of Stewed Tomatoes
1 14.5 oz can of Tomato Sauce
2 tbs ancho chile powder
1 tsp chile de arbol powder
2 tbs dark brown sugar
3 tsp kosher or sea salt (divided)
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp cumin
1 large fresh garlic clove, minced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1.5 lbs cross rib roast, fat trimmed and cut into 1″ cubes
1/4 cup flour
1 tbs vegetable oil
Put the flour and 1 tsp of the salt in a 1 gal zip lock bag. Shake to combine. Add the beef and shake until all the flour coats the beef. Heat a large skillet with the oil. When it’s hot, brown the beef on all sides. Remove from heat and set aside.
In the slow cooker, add the tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, the remaining 2 tsp of salt, pepper, chile powders, brown sugar, cumin, garlic and onion. Stir well to combine. You can taste and adjust at this point, but if it seems just a little too hot for your taste, then it’s just right (cooking the beef will mellow it). See adjustment notes below. Add in the beef, stir well and cover. Cook on medium for 8 to 10 hours.
I served this with brown rice and it was perfect with it. You could also serve it with “spanish rice” but there’s no need – there will be plenty of sauce for the rice. Add a nice salad (with my vinaigrette recipe of course!) and you have a nice meal.
This recipe had just the right amount of chile flavor and just enough heat to be interesting but not be too hot. However I don’t like things too spicy. If you want more heat, increase the chile de arbol powder. If you want more chile flavor, use more ancho powder. If you try to substitute regular “chili powder” this will not taste the same. (If you are too lazy to seek out these powders and you must use regular chili powder, then I would use 2 tbs, add 1/4 tsp cayenne powder (or more, to taste) and leave out the cumin as this will already be in the chili powder.)
I use cross rib roast but you could use any inexpensive cut. After slow cooking it will be fork tender!
You can make this up the night before and put the crock in the fridge. In the morning, take it out and start heating. By dinner it will be ready!