Baked Chili
1 pound of ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 15 oz can Kidney Beans, rinsed and drained
1 15 1/4 oz. can of Whole Kernel Corn, drained
1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 4 oz. can of chopped green chilies
2 tsp Chili Powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Corn Bread Biscuits:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
Brown the ground beef with the onion and the green pepper. Drain. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour Chili into a 13 by 9 pan.
For the Biscuits: Whisk the dry ingredients together. In a separate container, whisk the wet ingredients together thoroughly. Add to the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Do not over mix.
Drop the biscuit dough by large spoonfuls onto the chili and bake at 400 degrees until the biscuits are browned. (15-17 minutes).
Taken from Light and Tasty’s Website. www.lightandtasty.com. Recipe originally published in A Taste of Home.
Baked Chili Recipes like the one above exist to produce mouthwatering, biscuit-topped chili. I really believe in recipes. I do. Heck, I’m obsessed with them. Why I refuse to believe their instructions when the rubber meets the road is a mystery. When putting this Chili together I did change a few things. Some of the things I changed are safe and completely doable. For instance: I changed the milk to skim milk and the sour cream to fat free sour cream. These are worthwhile “tweaks”. But then I started mixing everything up, and I started to doubt.
“Simmer for ten minutes? There’s nothing to SIMMER! It’s too thick!” (Doubting Thomas dumps in water.) Simmering begins and ends after 10 minutes. The Chili is soupy. Baked chili is not supposed to be soupy. Simmering resumes and continues for 10 minutes longer. Soup. Soup. Soup. (Doubting Thomas gives up in frustration, takes a break to put baby down for a nap, pours soupy chili into pan anyway.) Illegal “tweak” number 1.
“Oh shoot. I don’t have cornmeal. No matter! I have cornbread mix.” (Doubting Thomas substitutes 1 cup cornbread mix for the cornmeal, and since she reads “Self-Rising” on the package, omits the baking powder and salt except for a scant amount that is too small to be mentioned here.) Illegal “tweak” number 2.
As you have probably already guessed, the end result was a delicious, soupy, baked chili with Chinese Fighting biscuits on top. Honestly – if I had dropped any of them, they would have “plunked”.
For those of you who still want to make this recipe after reading this disturbing experience, by all means do so. I plan to make it again, because the chili was actually really good. All that corn was especially lovely. I will never again be able to make the biscuits though. Even though I know it was my fault. This is the consequence of “monkeying” with a perfectly good recipe. It’s like the food you threw up after, as a kid. You can never eat it again without bad memories.
