Slow-Cooker Green Chili (aka Carne Guisada)

Last Friday, The Hubs & I took the day off from work & headed to the lake house for a long weekend of rest & relaxation. And aside from the 4 very intense hours while watching our beloved Ags look sloppy while getting beat by Arkansas, we had a very relaxing 3 days.

Before we left, I had to put together a menu & make sure that I had all the food items necessary for our meals because, as I have said before, there is nowhere to buy groceries within 25 minutes of our house. So, I flipped through my latest magazines looking for easy recipes that could be thrown together without much effort.

I found a recipe from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food called "Slow-Cooker Green Chili." I thought the name sounded a bit odd, but I kept reading & found that it was basically a recipe for stewed meat, peppers, potatoes & carrots in broth. Ummm... in Texas we call that Carne Guisada. It looked easy & sounded tasty, so I purchased the necessary ingredients.

After lunch on Friday, I tossed everything in the Crock Pot & let it simmer all afternoon. It smelled amazing and tasted just as good! We had plenty for dinner that night & leftovers for lunch the next day.

Below is Martha's recipe. Below that are my changes, as always.

Ingredients:

* 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
* 3 lbs. boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1.5-inch cubes
* salt & pepper
* 1 3/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth
* 1 medium yellow onion, diced medium
* 2 garlic cloves, chopped
* 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
* 5 carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
* 3 poblano chiles, stemmed, seeded & cut into 1-inch pieces
* 1 1/2 lbs. small red potatoes
* fresh cilantro, chopped
* flour tortillas
* lime wedges



Directions:

1. In a large skillet, heat 1 Tbsp. oil over high heat. Season pork with salt & pepper. In three batches, cook pork until browned on all sides, about 15 minutes total (add up to 1 Tbsp oil as needed). Transfer pork to a 6-quart slow cooker.


2. Add broth to skillet, stirring and scraping up browned bits with a wooden spoon. Pour broth into slow cooker, then add the onion, garlic & cumin...


Add the carrots, chiles & potatoes.


3. Cover & cook on high until meat is fork-tender, 6 hours.

4. Skim excess fat from top of chili. Serve chili with cilantro, warmed flour tortillas & lime wedges.


My Tid-Bits:

* For the meat, I used "Pork for Carnitas" from HEB. That is literally how it was labeled. 3 lbs of it cost me a whopping $5.45. I trimmed off the excess fat as a cubed the meat.

* As you can tell, I also used baby carrots instead of whole ones. It was easier & I already had some in the refrigerator.

* I double the amount of cumin & used 1 heaping teaspoon.

* I bought larger red potatoes & cut them into pieces, but next time I'll just buy the small ones & keep them whole. The pieces fell apart too much.

* By the time the "chili" had stewed for 4.5 hours, the meat was already falling apart it was SO tender. Six hours would have been too much. Just keep an eye on it and when the meat falls apart easily, turn the Crock Pot down to the warm setting until you're ready to serve.

* We started off eating these like fajitas by wrapping the meat & veggies in a tortilla and topping with lime juice and cilantro. By the end of dinner we were eating straight out of the serving dish with a fork. Sometimes manners don't matter.