Recipe: "Crockpot Sloppy José Filling"

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today we went to the farmer's market and bought ingredients for two batches of freezer food. One is new, the other an old favorite. This afternoon I made Crockpot Sloppy José Filling. Tomorrow's project will be Venison Spaghetti Sauce.


"Crockpot Sloppy José Filling"


Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs. tomatillos
1 white onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 lime (zest and juice)
1/4 cup dried cilantro flakes
1/2 teaspoon pink salt
1/2 teaspoon smoked black pepper
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 lb. lamb chorizo
2 lb. ground beef
3 tablespoons tapioca starch


Directions:

Peel the husks off the tomatillos, wash the tomatillos and then chop them. Put them in the crockpot, cover, and turn it on Low.

Chop 1 white onion. Mince 2 cloves of garlic and add that. Scrape those into the crockpot.

Zest the lime, then juice it. Add to the crockpot. Cook for 2 hours, or until the vegetables start to get tender.

Add 1/4 cup dried cilantro flakes, 1/2 teaspoon pink salt, 1/2 teaspoon smoked black pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke to the crockpot.

Put the chorizo and ground beef into an electric skillet and turn it to low heat. Carefully break the meat into tiny pieces, mixing together as much as possible. Cook until browned. Chorizo tends to retain a reddish color even when cooked, so gauge from the beef. Scoop up the browned meat, allowing the grease to drain, then transfer the meat into the crockpot.

Cook for 2-3 more hours, until the meat and vegetables are well blended and the flavors have matured. Add tapioca starch as needed for thickening.

Makes about 10 servings. Filling may be divided into containers and frozen. The finished filling is flavorful but not hot. (No esta picante.) If you want to make it spicy-hot then consider adding salsa verde, jalapeno, or serrano peppers.


Notes:

Tomatillos are Mexican green tomatoes that have a papery husk. They provide one of the main flavors for the sloppy josé. If you can't find these, you may substitute ordinary green tomatoes.

Dried cilantro soaks up the moisture and helps bind the mix together, but you can try this with fresh cilantro if you wish. Parsley flakes should work if you don't have cilantro.

Pink salt is a gourmet salt with a moderate amount of trace minerals. Popular varieties include Himalayan and Australian. Another good salt for this recipe would be any kind of smoked salt. If you don't have the fancy kinds, then sea salt or plain table salt will work instead.

Smoked black pepper adds to the smoky flavor of the filling. If you don't have it, substitute ordinary black pepper.

Chorizo is a Spanish/Mexican sausage, usually very spicy and made from pork. We found a lamb version at a farmer's market, which is spicy and flavorful but not hot. It mixes marvelously with the beef here. Other alternatives would be to use a small amount of hot pork chorizo with some ground lamb, or the 1 1/2 pounds of hot pork chorizo for a much spicier sloppy josé.

In addition to making sandwiches, this could also be used as taco filling or tostito chip dip.  This recipe is gluten-free as made, and can be eaten with other things than wheat bread.

This is a recipe in active development. It's quite tasty but my partner Doug and I agree that it needs something more. We have discussed possibilities including hominy, sweet corn, and cheese.

Comments

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Next year you might start them from seed, I've had them volunteer in past years and reach maturity for pretty good harvest, so shouldn't be too hard to get them going inside. There are purple ones which I don't have personal experience of but am intrigued by.

[fred_mouse]

I've not seen the seeds anywhere. And we have very strict quarantine laws, so just ordering them in from elsewhere isn't easy - even places that do mai lorder plants to here don't always do that for all their catalogue. The one place I can think of requires an annual subscription to get the catalogue, and I haven't been doing enough gardening to justify that.

Legal to mail?

[dialecticdreamer]

If someone in the US bought a packet of commercial seed (not random seeds in an envelope, very clearly) and mailed that to you, would they be allowed? Or is the plant itself not allowed, like kudzu? (That stuff is the GODZILLA of the plant world, I tell you! Google pics, and you'll find houses, vehicles and more completely overrun by the stuff!)

Re: Legal to mail?

[fred_mouse]

I would guess that they would be seized by quarantine. I will look in to it though, if I remember when my current list of 'urgent, panic now!' Is dealt with (trying to get work and family stuff sorted before I go on holiday in another country for three weeks!)

Re: Legal to mail?

[dialecticdreamer]

Seeds are available year round. Drop me a private message when you are ready to think about it, and I'll check into how to ship from this end.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm frustrated by the growing tendency to charge for catalogs. Used to be, they were always free. Now a lot of them require you to spend money before you can spend money.

Re: Thoughts

[fred_mouse]

I think the mob I'm thinking of have always charged for the catalogs, because they are actually one of the main 'products' they sell - the mob are Digger's Garden Club, and I know that there is a core part of their members who just join to think about gardening, when they have time.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

yeah, that's steep. Maybe check in at stores that cater to more recent arrivals?

[fred_mouse]

That is going to take some thinking about/asking about. I can find a South African store, and there are lots of Indian/Sri Lankan/Pakastani grocers around us, and a recent influx of Korean grocers, but I'm not aware of any that cater to South and Central American groups (I've never been able to source jicama either).

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

good luck on that.