Tricolor Cherry Pepper Rotini is the right Fall dish of food when the weather is changing to cooler temperatures, when it’s time to turn on the furnace in the house to warm the floors so it doesn’t feel like you’re walking your bare feet on cold concrete. This warms the heart and bones. It’s when you don’t have to want soup on a cold day, but something satisfyingly filling that will warm the body–soup into goulash.
I love this color of pasta this time of year! I think we cook out of our emotions, not just for hunger at the moment, but also for the memory of somebody that we miss. We go on loving people even if they are no longer in our lives. The seasons help us decide, too.
The pickled cherry peppers help make this an extraordinary meal! Cherry peppers were one of my dad’s favorite peppers of all time… This is not a hot, spicy pot of food, even with the jar of peppers and all of the juice from the jar that is added. This recipe balances out evenly as far as “spice” goes.
I’m browning close to 2 pounds frozen hamburger meat. I want the onion pieces in the pan from the start, to flavor the beef. I’ll scrape the cooked meat away from the frozen part, time and time again, until there are cooked crumbles of ground beef in the pan. Drain the grease, if any… If it’s more water than grease, leave the lid off the pan and allow it to cook out, to evaporate. When this has been done, stir into the meat a third of a package of taco seasoning, then 32 ounces beef broth.
Remove the stems of whole cherry peppers, 16-ounce jar. Burst the peppers with your fingers. Empty the entire jar, liquid and all, into the pan. Add 1 can Ro-tel, 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes (undrained), 1 cup ketchup, and 12 ounces tricolor rotini. Cook the pasta barely done so it doesn’t get too soft, to a mushy stage.
When pasta has cooked in the “soup”, stir in a large can (55 ounces) Bush’s Baked Beans–any flavor. All of this comes together in flavor–the barbecue taste combined with the taco seasoning, the ketchup, and the cherry peppers and juice–the main players, making the meal a hit. It’s excellent. May wish to add more taco seasoning if desired.
Add hot water if more liquid is needed, if eating as a soup.
The next day, providing there are leftovers, the consistency is a rotini goulash. Flavors are more intense because the liquid is soaked into the ingredients, primarily into the pasta.
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