Salsa Chili - or - Salsa Saves The Day Yet Again

Salsa Chili, 2/23/12. Taken with my crap camera phone.

It's a regular occurrence in our house that I'm half way through cooking a meal and realize that I don't have all the ingredients on hand.

Oops.

Such is life for the sorta-organized, when you remember you bought those jars of tomato sauce but completely forgot about using them last night and the night before.

The vast majority of the time, however, I find a substitution of some sort and the dish comes out just fine, or better than fine. Sometimes, the mistakes are far better than the original recipes!

Such was the case this morning with my Salsa Chili (recipe below). I soaked the beans overnight, and had just finished cooking and draining them. The meat was browning up nicely in the pan. I put the crock-pot in place and started piling in ingredients, when every cook's nightmare came true. You see, I know I had some diced tomatoes, or at least some tomato sauce, lying about the cupboard. I'm sure I did.


Come to think of it... I never checked, I just assumed. And we were out. Again.

So, I did what comes naturally these days: I did a quick visual inventory of the cupboard and the fridge, and made do with whatever was on hand. Today it happened to be a vat of Wegmans medium heat salsa.

We call it "the vat". The vat is a gigantic family size jug of the spicy tomato-ey goodness. We use it on everything. No no - I mean Everything. Not quite the way my truck driving, chain smoking Uncle put Tabasco on his entire plate for every meal, but close enough. Why do we do this? Because salsa is magical! Salsa is the ultimate condiment for all occasions. Let me explain:

Salsa: The Magic Condiment

• Out of ketchup? Try salsa. Bunless burgers piled with salsa, sour cream and greenbeans are delicious.
• Bored of plain ol' eggs in the morning? Try made-to-order-eggs with salsa dropped on top. Start with a tbs. per egg, add more as desired.
• Too tired to chop up veggies for your homemade pasta sauce? Use salsa instead! It comes with pre-chopped green peppers, onions, garlic -- it's the perfect time saver for the weary cook. (Just make sure it's not too spicy for sensitive palates. Parmesan does a lot to help take the heat off the pasta, at least for some.)

Seriously, salsa is the secret to my success as a lazy homemaker. It fixes EVERYTHING.

Salsa Chili - serves 4, double for leftovers.

1. Soak 1C of kidney beans at least 12 hours or overnight. Add a tsp or 2 of lemon juice to the water for good measure. (More on that another day.) Drain and rinse.
2. Boil up the beans in a big pot with plenty of water. Reduce the boil to a light roll and leave it an hour or two, stirring occasionally. Drain, lightly rinse.
3. Brown up 1 lb of ground beef, chopping it into chili-sized bits as you do. Strive for organic beef, or at the minimum, pasture-raised. In case of grease, remove the beef to a bowl with a slotted spoon before adding to the crock-pot.
4. Put the beans, the beef, and everything below into the crock-pot, and give it a good stir:
• 1 TBS dried basil
• 1 tsp salt
• 4-5 TBS chili powder
• 2.5 to 3 C Salsa
• 1/4 cup water (less or more, to a consistency slightly more watery than you'd like the finished chili to be)
• pepper to taste.
5. Cook on HIGH for 3-4 hours, or LOW for 7-8 hours, or if you're like me, put it on high for a couple hours and then switch it down to low for another 5. Because nothing's worse than realizing your beans aren't soft enough an hour before dinnertime.

Let me tell you: I'm not going back to my old standby chili recipe again! Unless, of course, I'm out of salsa....