New recipe

Lately I have been mixing recipes together.... it's kind of a new thing for me. After all, I'm not a skilled cook. But I have been really trying to keep everything homemade, and that means substituting for canned or processed foods in one recipe with something from another. So far so good and I have made two different dishes doing this, which means I kind of have my own recipe to share! Now that's a first.

(image from myrecipes.com)

Chili Hash Brown Bake
Original recipes from here and here.
(Substituted can of sloppy joe sauce and can of chili with beans for the real thing)

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp yellow mustard
1 cup ketchup
4 tsp brown sugar
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
1 (15 oz) can chili beans
1/2  (30 oz) package frozen shredded hash browns (about 4 cups)
2 cups shredded cheese

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a medium skillet over medium heat, brown the ground beef, onion, and green pepper; drain off liquids.

2. Stir in the garlic powder, mustard, ketchup, brown sugar, and chili beans; mix thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Spoon chili mixture into lightly greased 13 x 9-inch baking dish or 10-oz ramekins. Top with frozen hash browns.

4. Bake, covered, at 425 degrees for 30 minutes; uncover and bake 10 more minutes or until browned and crisp. Sprinkle with cheese, and bake 5 more minutes or until cheese is melted.

Note: Our chili beans were a little hard so next time we will make sure they simmer a little bit, after reading reviews when I added the cheese I mixed the cheese with the hash browns, and next time we are going to try grating our own potatoes instead of using frozen hash browns at all!

Enjoy!