All-American Chili Chowder

The calendar says chili and soup weather is here!!! While the last couple days have been soup and chili weather, we're expected to have warmer weather again by this weekend. Sigh. This is from All You Magazine from a while back. All this time I didn't realize it's supposed to be a chowder.

Serves 12 (yep! It freezes well so I like to make a full batch and freeze the rest for another day.)

2 Tblsp olive oil
3 medium-size onions, diced
2 lbs. lean ground turkey
2 28 oz. cans diced tomatoes
2 15 1/2 oz, cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 28 oz. can baked beans
8 oz. tomato sauce
4 c frozen corn, thawed
1/4 c chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
tortilla chips, optional

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook onions for 10 mins., stirring occasionally, until nicely browned. Crumble in turkey, cook 8-10 mins till turkey cooks through.

Place turkey mixture in a 6 qt. slow coooker. Stir in diced tomatoes, kidney beans, baked beans, tomato sauce, corn, chili powder, salt and pepper. Cook 4 hours on high or 7 hours on low. Serve with tortilla chips, if desired.

All this food doesn't fit in my slow cooker. I never paid attention to how big mine is until I made this for the first time. I now know I have a 4 quart slow cooker. If I were to halve the recipe I can throw it in my slow cooker, but for a full batch I cook it on the stovetop for a few hours over low heat, stirring occasionally.

This time I used 2 pretty good size onions instead of the 3 called for. I used 3 pounds of meat, an extra 15 oz. can of kidney beans, and a lot more than 4 cups of corn (I admit I didn't measure them), but kept the amount of the remaining ingedients the same. Also, I threw the salt, pepper, and chile powder in when the meat was browning up instead of later. I also added about a tablespoon of ancho chile powder at the very end, which is a very mild chile.