The Great American Slow Cooker Book (31 page)

2
To make the stuffing, mix the ground beef, onion, rice, raisins, garlic, thyme, caraway seeds, pepper, and salt in a large bowl.

3
Cut out and discard the tough center stem from the bottom of each cabbage leaf. Fill each leaf with approximately ¼ cup meat stuffing. Roll them up, tucking the ends underneath. Place the rolls seam side down in the slow cooker, layering them as necessary but making sure those seams stay closed.

4
To make the sauce, whisk the crushed tomatoes, vinegar, brown sugar, tomato paste, dill,
salt, and pepper in a large bowl until the brown sugar dissolves. Pour over the rolls in the cooker.

5
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until the rice is tender in the rolls and the ground beef has cooked through. Serve by scooping the stuffed cabbage rolls out of the cooker with a large spoon and drizzling the sauce around them in the serving bowls.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Here’s an Old World dish that’s pretty foolproof in the slow cooker. The only real task is cutting the veins out of the cabbage leaves: take out the thick, triangular section at the base of each leaf, as well as a bit up the center vein itself, just until the leaf is pliable enough to be rolled up. Don’t cut out too much or the leaf won’t roll correctly. It may be best to have a couple of extra leaves, just to guard against mistakes. Why don’t you cut the vein from the leaves before you boil them? Because those woody centers hold the leaves together in the pot.

•
There’s really no way to tell if the rolls are cooked through except to take one out, cut it open, and peek inside. That said, failing some malfunction in your cooker, they will indeed be done after 8 hours.

Stir all the ingredients in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until the beef is quite tender.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Exceptionally clear-cut in its preparation, this chili is a great way to start experimenting with what a slow cooker can do for cuts of beef beyond ground.

•
No ground beef in this chili? Nope. Call us purists (of a sort, since there are indeed beans in the mix). We feel the bottom round gives the chili better texture, a little chewiness to stand up to the spices.

•
By the way,
chile
is the word for the pepper;
chili
, the stew.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Beef round is a primal butcher cut, taken from the top of the back leg. The area gets a workout during a cow’s life; so the meat is lean but also tough. It tenderizes with moist, long cooking (hello, slow cookers!) or with quick, high-heat searing. Here are some common cuts from the round that are used in the next several recipes. Although from the same part of the cow, they’re not interchangeable, given cooking times and liquid levels in the dishes.

•
Bottom round.
A fairly tough but flavorful cut, often braised or roasted. It’s sometimes left whole as a bottom round roast or even a rump roast (in which it comes to a pointy tip).

•
Eye of round
. A boneless roast often from the bottom round. It’s fairly tough, often cut into small sections to be pounded even thinner.

•
Round steak
. A very lean cut, not quite as tender as bottom round.

•
Top round
. A lean cut, often used in braises and stews.

Serve It Up!
The success of this simple chili lies partly in the garnishes: shredded Cheddar cheese, jarred jalapeño rings, sour cream, minced red onion, and diced avocado.

1
Bring a small pan of water to a boil over high heat. Stem the chiles, then open them up and scrape out the seeds and the pale membranes. Tear the chiles into small bits, place them in a large bowl, and cover with boiling water. Soak for 20 minutes.

2
Drain the chiles in a colander set over a bowl, reserving the soaking liquid. Place the softened chiles in a large blender; add the raisins, cocoa powder, cumin, cinnamon, garlic, and salt, as well as 1 tablespoon of the soaking liquid. Blend into a coarse paste, adding more soaking liquid as necessary to grind the chiles and raisins, scraping down the inside of the canister occasionally to make sure the paste has no chunks in it.

3
Scrape every drop of paste into the slow cooker. Stir in the beef, broth, apple juice, and cornmeal.

4
Cover and cook on low for 6 hours, or until the beef is quite tender and the sauce has thickened somewhat.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Although mole is a traditional Oaxacan sauce, there are thousands of variations. This one is modeled on one version of
mole negro
(black mole). The sauce makes a great braising medium for the slightly fattier beef bottom round.

•
Cocoa powder may seem an odd ingredient, but it’s a common addition in some forms of mole—a bit of bitter sophistication in an otherwise sweet and spicy sauce.

•
The cornmeal acts as a thickening agent and gives the stew extra sweetness, a counterbalance to the cocoa powder and chiles. For the best results, use finely ground yellow cornmeal.

•
The cooking time for this chili is slightly less than that given for the other two chilis, partly because the beef is cut into smaller bits.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
These three kinds of chiles are the holy trinity of
mole negro
:

•
Ancho chiles
are dried poblano chiles, providing fruity, acidic notes.

•
Mulato chiles
are related to poblanos; they offer chocolate and licorice notes, as well as a moderate level of heat.

•
Pasilla chiles
are mild, fingerlike dried chilaca chiles with a pronounced citrus note. Pasillas are sometimes labeled as black chiles (
chile negro
). If possible, search out
pasilla de Oaxaca
, a smoked version of the standard pasilla.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
Capsaicin is the fiery chemical present in varying degrees in every chile, from mild bell peppers to insanely hot habaneros. It’s not water soluble, so the burn cannot be controlled by iced tea or even beer. Rather, capsaicin is fat soluble, so a buttered tortilla is a better flame retardant. Or sour cream. Or even diced avocado.

Given that chemistry, you can remove the threat of a burn from your hands by rubbing some canola, vegetable, or olive oil on them, massaging the oil under your fingertips and between your fingers, then washing your hands with soap and warm water.

1
Melt the butter in a large skillet set over medium heat. Add the onions and carrots; cook, stirring often, until the onions soften and turn translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the thyme, salt, and pepper. Remove from the heat to cool for 10 minutes.

2
Layer the vegetable mixture and steaks in the slow cooker: start with a ½-inch layer of the vegetables, add a layer of steak (without overlap, even a few holes between the steaks), and continue layering until you reach a final thin layer of vegetables.

3
Whisk the broth and flour in a large bowl until the flour has dissolved. Pour over the ingredients in the cooker.

4
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, until the beef steaks are fork-tender. Use a fork to transfer the steaks to serving plates and a slotted spoon to pick up all the vegetables, leaving the juicy sauce behind. Pour the sauce into a fat separator and stir in the vinegar. (You can also skim off the fat from the surface of the sauce with a spoon.) Drizzle the skimmed sauce over the servings.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Round steaks are sometimes pounded even thinner for this American classic (which has nothing to do with Switzerland). It’s a rich braise for a relatively affordable cut of beef. Best of all, the slow cooker works its magic without your needing to beat the steaks senseless.

•
We’ve pumped up the veggies to increase the flavor quite a bit. For the best texture, use ½-inch pieces of onion but very thin carrot rounds.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
What is “fork-tender”? It’s not a culinary cliché. It means that a meat fork, inserted into a cut, encounters no resistance
as it is pulled back out
. If you insert a meat fork into a cut and feel you have to tug to get it out, or indeed, if you encounter any but the slightest resistance, the meat is not yet fork-tender.