Sunday, October 27, 2013

Chili Making Time!

Since it was rainy and a little cool yesterday I thought it was time to make some chili. I don't make just a little pot of chili and to be honest if I had bigger pots I would make more than I do!

I got a little curious about how much this batch of chili weighs so I sat down and figured it out. Below is the list of ingredients and some of the weights are approximate.
 6lbs of cooked hambuger
2 large diced onions
6 packets of McCormick Chili Seasoning
4 cans (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
2 cans diced tomatoes and green chili's
6 cans (16 oz) of chili beans

This worked out to be about 344 ounces of chili, which is a whooping 21.5 pounds of chili! Now you would think this would last a person a long time, maybe through the winter, but not at my house. Shiane and Chuck love my chili as does Shiane's friend Alicia. Anytime Alicia knows I make chili she comes over, heck she has even just shown up when I was making it and I ask her "how did you know I was making chili" and she laughed and said "I could smell it!".

One thing I do like to do is get out my loaf pans and put chili in them. I have two large loaf pans I use and then 6 small loaf pans. The smaller ones are just the right size for a bowl of chili. After getting the loaf pans filled with the chili and wrapped with plastic wrap I put the pans on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. I like to use cookie sheets so that I can stack the pans and not have to worry about them falling over and such. This process usually takes about a day for the chili to freeze well. Once it is frozen I drop the pan in some hot water to loosen up the chili out of the pans and then pop the frozen blocks in freezer bags. I use to vacuum seal the bags so they would stay fresher longer but the kids generally eat it fast enough that I don't have to worry about freezer burn. Oh, another reason I like the loaf pans is because the chili stacks nicely in the freezer.

3 comments:

  1. Good idea about cooking in bulk and also the rectangular storage for stacking :) I wish I was a wee bit more ambitious like that...

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  2. Smart thinking! I've got to try freezing chili like that. I'm the only one in this household to eat chili, so I don't get to make it that often without getting tired of it before it's gone. Thanks for the tips.

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  3. What a Cool idea ! I love it. I will have to do this ! I try to make up meals ahead of time when I can since I homeschool and work from home and life gets very hectic. I don't know a lot of foods I can really freeze well. I have frozen chili before but the containers take up a LOT of space ! Thanks for the great help !!!
    Anna N.

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