Gigot chops turn out remarkably well. Just remember to take the bone out the centre, and trim the fat mostly away.

Cheekyboy what award did you win? Best student food 1994? 🙂

Friends don’t let friends slow cooker.

My GF has some sort of strange fascination with hers. Every very occasional – once-every-six-months meal out of it just tastes bland and unloved.

Funny that, considering that everything has been effectively dumped and left unloved in it throughout the entire cooking process.

But yeah, it’s great – it will ‘cook’ for you while you are out at work… 🙄

Cheekyboy what award did you win? Best student food 1994?

`95 actually 😉

If I use standard kidney beans I wash that gloop off too – it’s revolting.

It’s water and calcium chloride – used as a firming agent to prevent the beans softening in the tin. It goes gloopy because pectin is precipitated out into the water. You can rinse them if you wish, as indeed I used to, but I just throw ’em in. Given all the flavourings in chilli it is, in my opinion, undetectable. It’s only slightly salty water.

so i bought shin.

how to chilli’ise my shin the best way then.

Slow cooker keeps too much moisture in. Reduce, flavour will get better. Certainly on day2. You always need some sort of stock too.

You’ve ideally got to do your onions and meat in a pan first.

Cheekyboy what award did you win? Best student food 1994?

Ha. I Don’t know about shin but I just spat coffee all over the monitor again.

We used to find that the slow cooker made everything to watery as we’d never have the time to remove the lid to allow meals to thicken slightly then the wife seen a tip about placing a clean dish towel over the pot before placing the lid on it. The towel soaks up the excess moisture created during cooking and allows the mixture to thicken. Much better chilies being created these days 🙂

I’ll try that tip – thanks!

Even better if you dump on the towel

Turns out my shin was slabs of spall

But Jesus that was one epic chilli.

Used the dish towel tip above and it really worked.

Stuck garlic 2chillis some oregano – smoked paprika some red wine vinegar , olive oil and some chili in the blender

Then marinated the meat for a few hrs

Chopped up 2 onions and fried them. Threw the meat in and all the marinade.

Fried till meat browned.

Threw it into the slow cooker pot along with a tin of tomato’s( whole not chopped) a couple TBS of puree and 200ml of beef stock (used to deglaze pan first)

Left on low all day

Came home and threw in cannellini beans , kidney beans and chick peas a bit of dark chocolate and about 150ml of water.

Noted all the meat had broke. Up and looked like pulled pork.

100% convert to not using mince. Very very tasty chilli.