New Kreation - Turkey Chili

I don’t want to get sick of chicken stew and beef stew too early into the fall.  As it is, I was cooking stew every other week or two during the summer, and that was a bit strange for me.  So I resolved to either try different recipes in my crockpot or to switch up the normal ingredients I use.  It’s not that I’m too lazy and would rather stick with what I know; it’s more that I question how it would taste, and if I don’t end up liking it, I’m dumping out an entire crockpot full of wasted food. 

I started out looking for a recipe for chicken, because it was on sale at Stop & Shop.  I found a recipe for Chicken Burritos that I could make in a slow cooker, so I looked into the ingredients.  I then read it out loud to Caitrin, and somehow during that translation, I changed half of the ingredients the recipe called for.  It ended up like this:

1 pound of ground turkey
1 14.5-oz can of tomato sauce
1 14.5-oz can of Diced Tomatoes with Jalapenos, blended
1 15.5-oz can of dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 cloves minced garlic (or I used about ½ tablespoon of already minced garlic in a jar)
12 oz bag of frozen chopped onions (or just a chopped white onion)
2 tablespoons jalapenos, from a jar, chopped
Chili powder
Black pepper
¼ cup flour
Shredded cheese (I used a Mexican blend)

I put the ground turkey in the bottom of the crock pot, followed by the tomato sauce, the diced tomatoes with jalapenos (blended, because I don’t like chunks of tomatoes but I love the taste), kidney beans, garlic, onions, and jalapenos.  I sprinkled chili powder and black pepper on top and then popped the lid on the crockpot and let it go to work.  

About two hours in, I lifted the cover off to see how it was coming along, and it was actually much more watery than I would have liked.  I didn’t realize the tomato sauce and the tomatoes would have given off that much water.  I did a quick Google search and kept coming up with cornstarch – but I didn’t have any on hand, and I wasn’t in the mood to run out just to buy cornstarch.  So I added about ¼ cup of flour to thicken it up, and it pretty much did the job.  If I had to do this again, I might add a can of tomato paste to the mix instead of the tomato sauce to try to prevent it from happening, but it didn’t affect the taste one bit.

 

When it’s finished and cooled off (I made the overeager mistake of tasting it right out of the pot and I burned my tongue), sprinkle some shredded cheese over the top, mix, and enjoy!

I also brought it into work and put it over a salad, which was delicious!  I didn’t end up needing any dressing because the chili had such a strong flavor.