Cooking with the dean

Just in time: Super Bowl-worthy chili verde

With the Super Bowl just around the corner, this dish is bound for crowd-pleaser status among your game-day guests. No matter how low the mercury may plummet come Sunday, take the temperature in your home up a few degrees with this winter-warming, one-pot meal from our dean, Dr. Lawrence Wolinsky. How spicy the chili gets depends on you — and whether or not you add jalapenos!

Ingredients:

• 3 pounds pork butt or pork shoulder, cubed
• seasoned flour (1 cup all-purpose flour with 1 teaspoon kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon milled pepper)
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 onions, sliced
• 4 tomatillos, diced
• 2 anaheim chiles, roasted and peeled, seeded and sliced
• 2 poblano chiles, roasted and peeled, seeded and sliced
• 2 plum tomatoes, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• chicken stock

(Recipe from Dad’s Home Cooking, 2012)

Directions:

Sprinkle the cubed pork with salt and pepper. Place seasoned flour in a brown paper bag, and place all the pork into the bag. Shake the bag to coat the pork pieces. In a large soup pot, brown the pork pieces a few at a time in the vegetable oil. Remove the pork, and drain in a bowl with a paper towel.

Place the onions in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and sauté until caramelized. Add the tomatillos, chiles and garlic, stirring frequently. Add the cumin and oregano, mixing frequently. Return the pork to the pot, and add the chicken stock. Use enough to cover the ingredients. Bring to a boil, and then turn down to simmer for 1.5 hours.
Serve over long grain rice with chopped cilantro and avocado slices.

Yields 6-8 servings.

Chemistry cues: “The key is roasting the chiles on the stove,” says Wolinsky. “It gives that authentic charred flavor that you find with chiles roasted on an open flame. If I really want to get dangerous I put in jalapenos.”

Tips: Make extra. “For years my kids would come home and eat half a pot,” Wolinsky says. “This is a keeper.”