Easy Recipes for Stay-at-Home-Dads: Slow Cooker Turkey Chili

With the arrival of 2012 (and the first really cold weather to hit Chicago since last winter) I figured it was as good a time as any to drag out the slow cooker and make chili for New Year’s Day. When I made the announcement, sometime during New Year’s Eve dinner, I awaited my son’s usual request for mac and cheese as his next-day meal selection. Hearing nothing from his side of the table I mentally calculated how early I would have to get up the next morning.

Since taking over the laboring kitchen oar several years ago, I have experimented with several different chili recipes. Like Goldilocks, I have found some too salty, some too spicy, most too soupy with only a few just right. The chili problem is further compounded by our son’s sole exposure to the dish as a school cafeteria staple which, to my recollection, more closely resembled and tasted like soup.

The below recipe has served me well over the years. It incorporates ground turkey meat to cut down on the fat (you can use an equal amount of ground beef as a substitute) with a resultant consistency that is more solid and less soupy than other recipes. As it takes about 10 hours of cooking and roughly 15 minutes of prep I was, of course, the first one up on New Year’s morning.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground turkey

32 oz. can red kidney beans

30 oz. can diced tomatoes

1 green pepper, chopped

2 medium-sized onions, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, minced

3 tbsp. chili powder (more or less depending on how spicy you like it)

1 tsp. ground cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Brown the meat in a skillet then add to the slow cooker.

2. Stir in the rest of the ingredients.

3. Cover and cook on low for 10 hours.

(The recipe makes about six full servings.)

We usually serve the above topped with chopped onions, shredded cheddar cheese and a dollop of either low-fat sour cream or yogurt. We also use it as an excuse to finish any champagne from the night before.