Thursday, January 12, 2012

Chili

I had been craving chili & cheese nachos for weeks. Instead of going out to dinner and getting a plate of them for $9-$10, I made my own batch of chili!
I had trouble finding a recipe I wanted to use. I knew I didn’t want any beans in it, but other than that I wasn’t sure because I’ve never made it before. I ended up combining two recipes and what I came up with was pretty good!
Here’s what I used:
1.22 lbs of ground beef -  $4.87
2  10 oz. cans of Rotel tomatoes & green chiles-  $1.00 each
¾ of a jar of tomato sauce
2 cloves of garlic - $.50 for the whole bulb
1 small yellow onion - $.59
1 tablespoon of Texas Pete’s hot sauce - $.49 for the whole bottle after coupon
Salt
Pepper
Cumin
Chili powder
Red pepper flakes
Tortilla chips
Shredded Cheese $2.49
Sour cream $1.45
I browned the meat in a frying pan and then threw everything  (minus the chips, cheese & sour cream) into the crock pot for a few hours.
When I made up a batch of nachos, I spread out a layer of chips on some tin foil, covered them with cheese and chili and popped them into the toaster over for a few minutes until the cheese was melted.
I already had all of the spices, a jar of tomato sauce and a bag of tortilla chips on hand. The remaining ingredients cost me $12.45 and I still have plenty of sour cream, hot sauce and garlic left over for other recipes.
Mid-week I was sick of chili (and out of chips!), so I froze the leftovers.
Even though most of my ingredients weren’t on sale, I still made out better than going to a restaurant. I got more meals out the $12 I spent and at least I know exactly what went into my meal.

1 comment:

  1. It sounds delicious. I freeze my lefotver chili in some small batches too so that I can pull one out to put on hotdogs.

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