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I have never baked chili!

I have learned to bake a lot of things you ordinarily cook on the top of the stove. Slow oven, better flavor, don't have to time it so precisely, let it cook away and do your thing. It's better than a crockpot.

I forgot to mention the pot. It's about an 8-quart old stainless steel pot from my first cookware set eons ago with a mismatching lid. If I don't use that, I often use my turkey roaster. I usually still cook in large quantities like I did when the kids were still home and freeze or eat it for several days in a row.

I learned a trick about roasting small cuts of beef, pork, or chicken, to be more tastier late in my life. You get a *heavy* ovenproof dish with a lid that clamps down tight. Put a little water in the bottom to make steam. Bake at 275 until done. It comes out so tender, juicy and tasty. I happen to use a small porcelain covered iron casserole, but I have always wanted a larger one like the Pfalzgraff (sp?) people put out; they are quite expensive. I like rump and sirloin tip roast, got tired of chuck, but it doesn't make much gravy unless you cook a huge chunk, and good beef is so expensive in large cuts.

The newer cookware looks fancy, but doesn't always work as well as some of the older stuff I have accumulated, and it has gotten terribly expensive.

DO NOT USE ALUMINUM WHEN COOKING ANY ACID FOODS, like tomatoes or lemon filling, etc. It will affect the flavor. I know MS.BEHAVIN probably knows better, but I learned that the hard way long ago and don't want others to repeat my mistake. We did used to make tomato soup at home in Club aluminum (kill the acid with about 1/2 tsp baking soda) and it heated so fast then you poured it into the milk so it didn't taste funny. I don't do that any more.

Sometime I'll share how I make homemade pies, very unconventional but delicious. I never got the hang of rolling crust real pretty, so I developed a press-in-the-pan with crumbly topping using the same piecrust recipe.