Black Bean Chili Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

• 1 pound 90% lean ground beef
• 3 bell peppers
• 1 can black beans, drained
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup chili powder
• black pepper to taste
• 1 cup Mexican-blend shredded cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Cut tops off peppers and remove the seeds and white parts from inside. Cut peppers in half to form two cups each.
3. In a large, wide pot, bring about 4 quarts water to a boil
4. Boil pepper halves about 3 minutes until they begin to soften. Remove them from the water, drain, and place in large rectangle baking dish.
5. In a large skillet, brown the ground beef. Add onion and garlic and sauté until softened. Add the beans and corn.
6. Add chili powder and cook for about two minutes until fragrant.
7. Add tomato sauce, and stir well, cooking until the chili mixture is bubbly, about 2-4 minutes. Add black pepper to taste.
8. Fill the pepper halves with chili mixture and top with cheese. There may be extra chili mixture depending on the sizes of peppers. (Keep it warm and serve on the side in case anyone wants seconds)
9. Cover with foil.
10. Bake 25 minutes covered. Uncover and bake about 5 minutes more.

Birthday Dinner: Prime Rib

 We are a family of carnivores, so it is no surprise when my husband decided on prime rib for a big birthday dinner with our family.

The hunk of beef we bought at Sam's turned out to be not a traditional prime rib cut, but a 14-pound boneless ribeye roast. Boneless. 14 pounds of ribeye. Yum. But it doesn't quite fit in the roasting pan.

Hubby cut it into a 8-9ish pound roast, and sliced the rest into steaks for later. He was also in charge of the seasoning rub.

I wish I could share the recipe he uses for seasoning rubs, but the man doesn't measure, he just sniffs and dumps. And it's heavenly.

Prime Rib, or our boneless ribeye roast, sounds fancy but is really not difficult to make.

The first step was to salt and pepper the outside and sear it. The cutdown version of the roast fit in our roasting pan, but not into any of our skillets, so I had to do the searing right in the roasting pan. That is not really a problem, as the searing process creates some nice fond for the au jus at the end of the roasting. It does mean I had to do some manual balancing of heat across the big front burner and the tiny back burner.

I also had to hold the roast up to get all the various sized surfaces in contact with the bottom of the pan to sear it. Three words: Silicone oven mitts (ours are Orca brand, received from various gift-giving events). They washed up with soap and water afterwards.

After searing, my husband applied the rest of his seasoning rub and I added oxtails, onion, celery, and carrots to the bottom of the pan (more au jus flavoring).

We roasted the seared hunk o beef at 250 for about 4 hours, until a probe thermometer read 140 degrees inside (rare).  I used the roasting rack, though the combination oxtails and veggies might have been enough to keep the bottom from getting soggy.

Remove the roast from the oven, remove the rack from the roasting pan, and tent the meat with foil while making au jus in the roasting pan.

The au jus was not difficult to make either. First I removed all of the oxtails and veggies, then poured all of the drippings into my gravy separator. I then returned my roasting pan back to the same two burners I'd used to sear it earlier in the day, turning the heat to about medium. 

I poured about 2 cups of beef broth plus about 1/2 cup of red wine into the bottom of the pan and began sittring and scraping up all that yummy fond. Once the bottom was clean and the liquid was bubbly and thick, I poured the meat drippings (minus the fat) back into the pan, and cooked for another couple of minutes. I added a bit of salt and pepper and I was done.

Dinner was served with salad, sauteed green beans, sauteed mushrooms, balsamic glazed pearl onions, and buttermilk biscuits. And German Chocolate Cake, of course.

I do heartily apologize for not getting a snapshot of the plated dinner, but I think we were all too busy drooling to remember the camera.