Colorado Green Chili, Beans and Rice

I've been working my way through a number of pork chili recipes, both green and red. I ran across a recipe in Cook's Country that looked interesting. It has a can of diced tomatoes in it so I figured it wouldn't be totally green; more like Christmas: green with hints of red. If I'm making Mexican food, I figure I might as well make some beans and Spanish rice as well.

You can see the Cook's Country recipe from October/November 2013 here or my version here.

I bought a 3½ pound boneless pork butt hoping to get 3 pounds of meat; I ended up with only 2½ pounds.

The line up; 2 pounds of chiles, a 3+ pound pork butt and home made chicken stock are the stars

 The pork is cubed, the onion chopped, garlic pressed, and chiles stemmed, cut in half lengthwise and seeded. The recipe calls for 2 pounds of Anaheim chiles; I cleaned out New Seasons and didn't have enough so I added a couple of Poblanos to get the quantity I needed. Chiles go under the broiler for 15-20 minutes then sealed in a glass bowl for a few minutes before peeling.

Ingredients ready to be put together 

While the chiles broil, I cooked the pork in a little bit of water, then sautéd it after the water was gone. Meanwhile, chop ½ the chiles into small pieces and spin the other half and tomatoes in the food processor. Finally, take out the  pork and sauté the onions before adding everything back into the pot. Bring to a simmer and put in a 325° oven for an hour.

After a long simmer in the oven; notice how much the liquid has reduced. 

As you can see, this is a red and green chili; not a green chili.

While the chili is simmering it's time to turn our attention to Spanish rice. I recently bought a new Zojirushi rice cooker and have been looking for ways to use it.  I found a recipe on Simply Recipes that served as a starting point. But I totally went rogue; my take on it is here. I

Sauté some long grain rice and onion in some olive oil.

Sauté the rice

Add the garlic, then everything else and transfer to the rice cooker. Use a combination of chicken stock and water. n my research I discovered that Rotel tomatoes and diced chiles is the favorite brand for Spanish rice; I found some at Fred Meyer; it's interesting that the cans are 10 ounces rather than the typical 15.5 ounces. I used a can and a half; I probably could have used 2.

Ready to eat

I also made some pinto beans in the pressure cooker. You can read my latest blog entry on them here or look at my recipe here.


Dinner is served.

Dinner is served

We had the Watsons and Elaine over for dinner so we had to have dessert; Carla picked up a Marionberry pie at New Seasons.

Marionberry pie; whipped cream left over from Thanksgiving.

The chili and rice were total experiments; it looked good in Cook's Country magazine but it turned out rather bland. I rate it at 3 stars and will go back trying to finding a great red pork recipe that will take me back to the days of having pork and bean burritos at Bob Newlon's house growing up. The rice was good; I'll build off that recipe in the future.

Let me know what you think; I love comments.