Crock Pot Week - Day 1!

This week I am going to do 5 nights of recipes in the Crock Pot, or slow cooker. Winter here has been reasonably mild, but with a bit of a turn to the colder recently, it's nice to have some comforting meals for dinner. The Crock Pot is an awesome way to prepare a hearty winter meal with not too much effort, although it obviously requires you to be prepared in advance of the following morning. I'm hoping to get a decent variety across the 5 nights, although the temptation is obviously there to make variations on a stew every night! There are 4 of us in the flat, so usually I'll be cooking for 4, although most of the time there will be leftovers.

So the first night I'm making Chilli. Or some people call it Chilli Con Carne I suppose. Beef based, nice and spicy.

WHAT.

Prime beef mince - I used about 600g
250g Beef & Garlic Kransky (or similar smoked sausage)
Garlic
Onion
Capsicum
Tomato paste
2 x canned tomatoes
Jalapeño chillis (I used about 2 tblsp, these are the pickled kind)
1 x can of black beans
About 20-30g Dark chocolate (darker the better, I used 85% cocoa)
Smoked paprika
Cumin
Ground coriander
Chilli powder
Raw sugar
Sour cream & fresh coriander for garnish
Cooking oil, salt & pepper etc for seasoning (this stuff goes without saying obviously!)

HOW.

Make sure you pre-cut your fresh ingredients in advance - it makes working with a hot pan a lot easier. I also pre-sliced the kransky into about 1cm pieces (no pic sorry).

Fire up your pan - don't be afraid of the heat, especially with mince meat, otherwise it can tend to release too much liquid and start to stew the meat. You want it to brown really nicely. Get it cracking hot and brown off your beef. It doesn't need to be cooked thoroughly, you're just giving it a bit of colour and flavour. Make sure you season with salt and pepper whilst it's cooking. Then empty it into your crock pot.

In the same pan (don't clean it, but you might need to add some more oil), throw in your fresh ingredients and your sliced kransky. Again you don't really need to cook it thoroughly, so throw it in on high, soften up your veges and get some colour on your sausage. Then dump that in the pot too.

Once it's all in the cooker, you need to throw in your dry spices and canned ingredients. This is about personal preference really, I don't like to work to strict recipes or amounts of this kind of stuff. Smoked paprika is a really nice spice and adds a level of flavour that is sometimes missing from our cooking. I used about 1tsp each of smoked paprika & ground coriander, and about 2 heaped tsp of chilli powder & cumin. Don't forget to chop up your jalapeños and finely grate your dark chocolate (hat tip to Mr Towgood for finding this mystery ingredient). Throw these in with about a table spoon of raw sugar - the chocolate and sugar will offset a bit of the saltiness and enrich the tomato flavour. Then finally your canned ingredients & tomato paste. Give it a bit of a stir, then turn that sucker on LOW, and leave it!

I ended up cooking it for about 10hrs - if it's on low you really don't have to worry about it overcooking. There is plenty of moisture in there and it could easily go on for hours as long as you leave the lid on. I served it with some brown rice and garnished with sour cream and freshly chopped coriander.

I must say it was pretty delicious. Got all round praise from the flatties and thoroughly enjoyed myself also.

8/10.