Pinned: Beer chili recipe review

If you follow my Top Pin Tuesday posts, you may recognize this beer chili recipe from last week. The weather has cooled down finally (I live in the South, so this actually seems a little early to me for the type of weather we’ve been having), and Bobby and I have been in a chili state of mind.

We also both really like beer, so from the moment I saw the beer chili recipe on Pinterest I knew we would be making it soon. This may be the shortest pinned-to-kitchen time yet.

Here’s what I liked about the recipe:

• The instructions were fairly easy, and it made a huge pot. I think we’ve eaten at least six servings out of it and probably have two more left. Much better than making chili with a spice packet and scarfing most of it down on the first go-round.
• I really like that it has both ground beef and ground sausage. It made for a nice flavor combo.
• The smell in my kitchen when this stuff was on … OMG.
• Bobby and I like beer, so the addition of beer to chili was just perfect. I also liked that it had corn flour in it because it was almost like having a built-in Fritos or cornbread flavor.

Things I didn’t like so much about the recipe:

• It ended up having waaaaaaay too much liquid. It was more like soup than chili.
• It’s definitely a lot more time-consuming than just using a spice packet to make chili. Definitely don’t make this if you are in a hurry or starving.

I did make a few modifications to the recipe. It was a little unclear about what type of red pepper to get, so I got a red bell pepper, and it tasted really good, but I think the recipe probably meant a spicy pepper. The bell pepper was good for us, though, because all the other seasoning made it spicy aplenty for us.

I couldn’t find ancho chile powder, so I subbed regular chili powder. I also used ground beef instead of ground sirloin because the store I was at didn’t have sirloin, and I was too rushed to go by anywhere else. The beer we used was Yuengling, and I think it fit the recipe well.

The main changes I will make for next time would be to actually get ground sirloin and to get a higher-quality ground sausage (I got the cheapo stuff). I would also drain the kidney beans before putting them in the pot and also have a small can of tomato paste on hand to help thicken it. Oh, and I would season the meat with salt and pepper while it’s cooking, even though the recipe didn’t call for it. Bobby and I agreed that this is totally worth making again.

Want to make some beer chili for yourself? You can check out the original recipe at A Spicy Perspective.

ETA: Now linked with Kludgy Mom‘s Fall Food Recipes!

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Pinned: Four (count ’em, FOUR!) Pinterest recipes

Yes, that’s right folks. I went on a Pinterest-inspired cookingfest.

Bobby and I offered to host a birthday party for one of our close friends, Melissa, and I wanted to make something really good. I might have also used it as a good excuse to finally try a few of the hundreds of recipes I’ve pinned that I still hadn’t gotten around to trying.

For an appetizer, I picked out the hot bacon Swiss dip, which multiple repins claimed was “to die for.” And I have to say, it definitely went quickly once we put it out. The recipe itself was very easy: a block of cream cheese, a cup of shredded Swiss cheese, 1/2 cup of light mayo and 1/4 cup of finely chopped onion, all mixed together and topped with crumbled Ritz crackers and a package of real Bacon bits. Pop it in the oven for about 10 minutes, until the cheese starts bubbling a bit. I served it with Frito scoops and Mission tortilla chips.

As a sort of salad/side, I made cucumber and tomato salad with marinated garbanzo beans, feta and herbs. This recipe calls for the garbanzos to be marinated for about six hours in an olive oil-balsamic vinegar mixture. I only had about three hours, so that’s what I went with. I doubled the recipe that’s linked above, using two cans of garbanzoes, a whole cucumber and two tomatoes, plus a whole container of feta cheese. I also used dried oregano and basil and just sprinkled as much of those and salt that I thought would make it taste good. It turned out well, but I would like to see how it tastes when I actually have time to marinate the beans for the full time. This recipe was probably just as easy as the hot bacon Swiss dip, and it looked very pretty in the serving dish.

For the main side, I cooked Spanish roasted potatoes with tomato sauce. This recipe was the most intensive, but I will also definitely make it again. I roasted  a pan of potatoes with olive oil and salt for about 50 minutes. In the meantime, I made a sauce of sauteed onions and garlic, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, white wine, Tabasco sauce, paprika, salt and sugar. I added the sauce to the potatoes and baked for about 10-15 more minutes. It added a nice tomatoey glaze to the potatoes, and they were pretty delicious. I didn’t really think the recipe was super difficult, just a little on the time-consuming side.

The final thing I made was a super-easy punch that was inspired by this. I mixed it up a bit and used ginger ale and some sort of exotic fruit sherbet from Publix. I intended to do the fruit slices in the punch but forgot to pick them up (those are really mostly for decoration). I didn’t get a picture of the punch.

All in all it was a fun party, and I will probably use all four of these recipes again at some point!