Pineapple Pork Crock-Pot Chili - Brooke

The chili challenge coincided with my work’s annual soup lunch, so I decided to combine efforts. This was a first try at the recipe— tore it out of a magazine years ago (Taste of Home, I believe), double-checked online, and made some modifications described below. The recipe is doubled from the original because I needed to serve a big crowd.

So again: This is a double-size recipe that will completely fill a 4-quart crock pot. Halve it for a more family-size amount.















Ingredients for (a massive amount of) Pineapple Pork Crock-Pot Chili
2 pounds lean boneless pork, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 cups dried white beans, soaked overnight and drained (or use canned)
1 ½ cups hot water
2 (14 ½ oz.) cans diced tomatoes (optional: with garlic)
2 (6 oz.) cans tomato paste
2 (20 oz.) cans pineapple chunks
2 (4 oz.) cans diced green chilies
2 medium onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped (optional)
2 Tbsp. chili powder, or to taste
2 Tbsp. cumin, or to taste
2 tsp. garlic powder, or to taste
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. SECRET INGREDIENT: Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce
Prep time is about 15 minutes; cook time is 9 hours. Serves 8 to 12.

Directions:
Drain the juice out of the pineapple and into your 4-quart crock pot, reserving the pineapple chunks (which will be added at the end). Add to the crock pot: cubed pork, beans, hot water, tomatoes with their liquid, tomato paste, chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, SECRET INGREDIENT. Mix well. Cover and cook on the low heat setting for about 9 hours until the pork and beans are tender, stirring once or twice if possible. Stir in the pineapple chunks and serve.

(Note: The crock pot will be very full. If you are concerned about it bubbling over, drain a bit of the liquid and add it back in during the last hours of cooking.)

Result: The taste of this chili is sweet and tropical, in a porky way. Seemed like it needed more salt to balance the flavor, and I would have liked it to be a little more garlicky. I'm definitely going to try this again, in a smaller batch.

My changes/notes to the original recipe:
About onion: using both red and white adds color and flavor. About tomatoes: here’s a plug for Red Gold tomato products, family-grown in my home state of Indiana since 1949. About pineapple: the chunks were really big, so you might want pineapple “pieces” instead. About beans: the original recipe doesn’t say to do so, but definitely soak the beans first, or use canned beans instead-- because I didn't do this, mine were just slightly not completely cooked through... ugh. Finally, I added a SECRET INGREDIENT, which is Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbeque Sauce. The Sauce is The Boss!