[grrlscout]

A friend of the family is a big sportsman, and he offered us some elk from his last hunting trip. I looked up the facts, and it seems like a relatively lean, but flavorful meat. Here are the stats for a 3oz serving:

Calories: 147.134
Total Fat: 7.501 g
Saturated Fat: 2.95 g
Monounsaturated Fat: 2.132 g
Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.353 g
Cholesterol: 56.132 mg
Sodium: 67.188 mg
Total Carbohydrate: 0 g
Dietary Fiber: 0 g
Protein: 18.506 g
Calcium: 10.206 mg
Iron: 2.339 mg

Bored with chicken breasts and lean beef, I dug the ground elk out of the freezer, and made chili with it.

Since it is so leab, I needed a little fat to brown it in. I used a couple pieces of natural bacon ends. To make it healthier, feel free to use a tsp of canola or olive oil. Or you can just not brown it, and throw it directly in the crockpot.

Then I cooked down 1/2 each green and yellow bell pepper + 1 small onion in the same pan and fat, added it to the pot.

To that, added 1 can each:

Tomato paste
Diced tomatoes
Ro*tel tomatoes
Pinto beans
Miller High Life (feel free to sub in chicken broth)

Seasonings:

A couple of smashed and sliced garlic cloves
Worchestershire sauce
Ancho chile powder
Cayenne chile powder
Cumin
S&P

If it were up to me, I would have added a can of kidney beans too. But the fam doesn't like it very beany. Increasing the bean to meat ratio would make it lighter as well.

I would also prefer it hotter -- maybe with some diced jalapeņos. I ended up adding a few hearty dashes of Crystal hot sauce to my bowl.

I cooked on low for about 9 hours.

The only problem was that the beer gave it a slightly bitter undertaste. I corrected it with a couple TBSP brown sugar.

In the future, I'd use a better beer, or red wine + stock, as the simmering liquid.

All in all, it turned out to be a tasty and filling meal.