As I discussed in this space last week, we’ve been trying to incorporate a number of meatless dishes into our weekly meal plan. Recently, Manwich asked me to come up with an original recipe using their products for their Case of the Mandays campaign to help promote family meal time, so I decided to see if I could create a Meatless Manday.
It was definitely a risk, as one does not typically associate a meatless dish with Manwich, but it definitely worked out great. Craving chili I went with my gut and decided to see how I could transform it into a meatless dish using Manwich Thick and Chunky as a base ingredient.
For the longest time I’ve been making my wife a curried lentil stew for her to take to work for lunch. And the first thing I did when learning to prepare meatless dishes was to expand my lentil repertoire, as they are hearty and chocked full of protein. So, working from lentils as a substitute for the standard ground beef, I set out to make what would become my lentil and kale chili.
It came out rich, hearty, and flavorful. I garnished the bowl of chili with some shredded cheddar cheese and some thinly sliced scallions to add both a different color to the plate and texture to the meal. Surprisingly, it was even a moderate hit with our children.
To encourage consumption by our two children under the age of five, I did tone down the level of spice in this chili to make it a little more family friendly. So if your kids are older, or more accustomed to spicier fare, you’ll probably want to make some adjustments to suit your families’ taste.
Overall, this lentil and kale chili was a crowd pleaser and will become part of the regular rotation at our family dinner table. As if that wasn’t enough, there are three other reasons why this dish makes for a great weeknight meal:
First, it is a one pot deal, so clean up is a cinch. Even though I do the cooking while my wife does the cleaning, I do whatever I can to limit the mess I make. This way we have more time between dinner and the bath time struggle to spend together as a family.
Second, a single batch makes roughly eight to ten servings, so depending on how big your family is you can scale it to make more, or be ready with several meals in advance. You could have dinner for multiple nights already prepared, or, since it freezes well, have a single meal you can grab whenever you need a lunch in a pinch.
Finally, it was very economical. All of the ingredients to make a single batch cost me less than $15, or $1.88 per serving based on eight servings.
Manwich would like to help you get over your Case of the Mandays and get your family together at the dinner table. After the recipe below you can enter to win a Manwich Manday Survival Kit, which includes:
- 1 Calphalon skillet ($80 value)
- 4 Manwich bibs
- 1 wooden spoon
- 1 mini canister of handiwipes
- $50 grocery gift card
- Manwich product
This great prize pack is worth more than $150, so enter from now through March 25, 2013. And, for even more Manwich Mandays ideas, be sure to check out all the entries in the Case of the Mandays campaign.
Lentil and Kale Chili with Manwich
Software
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 3 bell peppers, finely chopped
- 4-6 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1 6oz can Hunt’s tomato paste
- 2 cups brown lentils
- 2 15oz cans Manwich Thick and Chunky
- 1 10oz can Rotel Diced Tomatoes & Green Chiles
- 4 cups veggie stock
- 2 cups water
- 1 bunch kale, sliced into ribbons
- salt and pepper, to taste
- scallions, thinly sliced (for garnish)
- shredded cheddar cheese (for garnish)
Assemblage
- In a large saucepan or dutch oven heat the olive oil, then add the chopped onion and a pinch of salt and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until translucent
- Stir in the garlic, cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, then add the chopped green bell peppers
- Add the chili power, cumin, oregano, and paprika, then stir to coat the vegetables
- Mix in the tomato paste and cook for three or four minutes until the paste turns a deeper shade of red
- Add the lentils and stir to combine, then add the can of Rotel and both cans of Manwich
- Lightly season with salt and pepper, then cover the mixture with the vegetable stock and water and bring to a boil
- Once boiling reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the lentils are at the desired tenderness
- Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, if necessary
- Ladle the chili out into a bowl, garnish with cheese and thinly sliced scallions, serve and enjoy
Disclosure: I am a compensated Weeknight Meal Expert for Manwich. Also, I was provided Manwich products to develop my recipe, as well as a prize pack similar to the one being given away. The recipe, ideas and opinions expressed in this blog post are my own.
Pin It
Things have been a little quiet here on the food front here at Digital Dads so far this year. The biggest reason has been that I’ve been trying to figure some things out. 2012 was a stressful year for me and I didn’t do a very good job of taking care of my health. As we rolled into the new year I finally decided it was time to get my act together. Fortunately, my wife’s work has a living well program that rewards her with discounts on our health insurance premiums for meeting specific health metrics. And for 2013 they’ve also included metrics on spouses covered by the plan as a way to increase the discount. One of the challenges was to incorporate more meatless dishes into the weekly meal plan. For the first week we have to refrain from red meat. The second week we skip pork, the third poultry. By the fourth week we have to have a certain number of days where we are completely meat free. Preparing for this has been difficult because I am an avowed carnivore who has never had the best history with vegetables. In the last few years I’ve gotten better at eating them in order to set a good example for my kids. Still, the idea of making the jump to a meatless diet, even if only a few times a week, was something I never could imagine. Over the past two months I’ve done a lot of research and made a number of different dishes with varying degrees of success. One of the best, in my opinion, has been this roasted cauliflower coconut bisque that I made based off a recipe I found over on PBS’ Fresh Tastes blog. Cauliflower has been one of the things I’ve really come to enjoy in my efforts to incorporate more vegetables in my diet, and soups are always a great thing to have pre made for the nights you don’t have the time to (or, don’t really feel like) cooking. From the original recipe I decided to add a few more elements to the soup by adding some heat with ginger and jalapeño and some acidity with a splash of rice wine vinegar. Then I topped it off with some chopped chili spiced cashews, thinly sliced scallions, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and a pinch of Malden sea salt. Throw in a chunk of crusty bread and this hearty soup is a great way to add some meatless meals into the mix. Do you have a favorite meatless meal?
The shoe cables a repent reward near the visible.
Avoid the Slime
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012That picture looks awfully appealing, no?
Awful by itself is probably a more apt description. That right there is pink slime, a seemingly unnatural combination of lean beef trimmings that have been separated from the fat and are passed through a centrifuge, then commonly exposed to an ammonia gas to kill bacteria such as e coli. You might have heard of it, as it has been in the news quite a bit over the past week.
If you have a package of ground beef in your refrigerator, then there is about a 70% chance that your meat contains this filler product. Some times called boneless lean beef trimmings or finely textured lean beef, pink slime is an industrial product created by those in the beef industry in the interest of not wasting any bits of meat that travel along the production line. The USDA has declared pink slime to be a safe source of nutrition and does not require companies using it as filler in their ground meat products to specifically label its presence or the quantity thereof because they consider it beef.
ABC News recently published an article titled “Where you can get ‘pink-slime’ free beef” where they sent out inquiries to a number of grocery store chains to determine whether or not their ground beef contained any of this filler product. One of the most disturbing parts of this article was from an interview with Kit Foshee, a former corporate quality assurance manager with Beef Products, Inc., the creator of pink slime, who stated that it “kind of looks like Play-Doh. It’s pink and frozen. It’s not what the typical person would consider meat.”
Foshee went on to say that “pink slime comes from a low grade of beef trimmings unlike what they called real ground beef…The low grade trimmings come from parts of the cow most susceptible to contamination, often close to the hide, which is highly exposed to fecal matter. But, because of BPI’s treatment of the trimmings – simmering them in low heat, separating the fat and tissue using a centrifuge and spraying them with ammonia gas to kill germs – the USDA says it’s safe to eat.”
It was also recently reported that the USDA had purchased millions of dollars of pink slime for use in ground beef that is intended to be sold to schools. And while the USDA has gone on record saying they are leaving it up the individual schools to decide whether they want to purchase beef either with or without the so called lean finely textured beef, it is still unsettling that some schools will serve meat containing up to 25% pink slime to children across the country.
Now I rarely get on my soap box about food matters, mostly because what you eat or don’t eat really should be a personal decision. For my family I do my best to keep processed foods out of my home, I ensure the labels of whatever I do buy show that there is no high fructose corn syrup, and I work hard to do most of my shopping around the perimeter of the store, specifically in the produce, meat and dairy departments. But that is what works for us and I wouldn’t pass judgment on anyone that doesn’t think this way. However, I can’t bare to stand silent on the matter of the slime.
I don’t care what the USDA says, what BPI’s “pink slime is a myth” website purports to explain away, or what any “expert” might say to defend this practice. Pink slime isn’t food and shouldn’t be consumed, especially when you consider that it’s original use was as an additive to dog food. Anything that has to be cooked at low heat and then sprayed with ammonia (regardless of the fact that it is considered a naturally occurring substance and can be found in some quantities in beef itself) in order for it to be edible shouldn’t be considered a food product.
The ABC News article does a nice job breaking down the response from the various supermarket chains and provides good information for consumers to make a educated choice about where they can purchase pink slime free ground beef. However, if you’ve read any of my columns with any regularity, you know there is only one true way to avoid the slime.
Grind it yourself!
Now you might be saying to yourself that grinding your own meat takes time and possibly an investment in some equipment. Sure, it does. Anything worth doing, or in this case avoiding, takes time and money. To be perfectly clear, I’m not advocating for anyone to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a professional grade grinder. In fact, some the best grinders for home use that money can buy are less than fifty dollars.
I have been grinding my own meat whether it is beef, pork, chicken or lamb for the better part of five years. It is very rare that I ever purchase pre-ground meat and it is usually poultry from a source that I trust. I own a heavy duty electric grinder with a one horsepower motor that can churn out upwards of four hundred pounds of a meat an hour. It was pricey, but it is fantastic for big jobs like when I make fifty pounds or more of sausage. However, I don’t use that it all that often.
My favorite is actually a simple cast iron manual grinder that can attach to my countertop. It is easy to clean and great for when I have less than ten pounds of meat to grind. When I finish the island I’m building in the kitchen of our new house I have another manual cast iron grinder that I’m going to bolt onto the countertop so I always have a grinder at the ready.
It doesn’t take much to get started and you can really get creative in the meat blends you make. Whether it is a custom burger blend or a meatball mix there are so many possibilities when you are grinding the meat yourself from whole roasts, loins or shoulders. Some time ago I wrote an article about demystifying homemade sausage that gives a little more insight to how I approach grinding meat at home.
So, go get your grind on and avoid the slime. While it will take a little extra effort the higher quality meat you will have and the half inch you’ll add to your biceps will make it all worthwhile.
Photo credit: jamieoliver.com
Tags: commentary, Cooking, Food & Drink, jamie oliver, pink slime
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