Welcome to Chaos Queer Cooking! The food isn’t gay, but the chef is, and the measurements are pretty relaxed. This recipe is for a really tasty beef stew that I made up on the fly at my best friend’s house, and it’s endlessly modifiable.

What you need:

-stewing beef (or pork, but probably not chicken)*
-a can of chickpeas (14 oz, but more is fine)
-a can of diced tomatoes (or half – should be about the same amount as the chickpeas)
-2-3 potatoes, peeled and chopped (you can also use daikon, turnip, sweet potato, etc.)
-4 garlic cloves (or 4 teaspoons minced garlic)
-chicken or beef stock
-3 cups of water
-cornstarch
-chipotle hot sauce (or chipotle peppers in adobo)
-barbecue sauce (flavour of your choice)
-cinnamon
-celery salt
-onion powder
-sugar (white or brown)

1. Mix stock according to instructions for 2 cups. Put it on the stove, and while it’s heating, mix in the tomatoes, chickpeas and garlic.
2. Season the stew broth according to taste. I put in about 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce, a tablespoon of chipotle, 2 tsp of cinnamon, 2 tsp of onion powder, and 1 tsp of celery salt. If you don’t have celery salt, you can just leave it out, but make sure to add a bit of table salt to taste instead.
3. Add potatoes (and any other hard vegetables; if you add or substitute daikon, carrots, turnips, squash, etc. this is the time to put them in.)
4. Keep it boiling while you take out a little bit of the stock, and mix that separately with 1-2 tsp of cornstarch. Once they’re blended, tip it back into the pot.
5. Chop your meat into 1-2 inch cubes (they might already be this size if you’re using stewing meat!) and fry them in a little bit of oil over medium-high heat until the cubes are about half-cooked. Then tip them into the pot.
6. Cook for about 5-10 minutes more. This is a perfect time to make your couscous – if you’re making rice instead, you should put it on a little earlier, before you cook the meat.
7. Once the meat is brown and the potatoes are soft, take the stew off the heat. Serve warm with couscous or rice! Keeps well in the fridge.

Extra notes: I didn’t make this with any veggies other than listed, but if you wanted to add any other vegetables (spinach, cabbage, corn, etc.) they’d also go pretty well! Spinach, beansprouts, peas, and corn go in near the end, just after the meat; cabbage goes in before the meat. Mushrooms and onions I would fry before adding, for flavour.

If you don’t have chipotle, other hot sauces would be fun to experiment with! Be sure to test the flavour combination, though. Sriracha, for example, probably goes better with ginger than cinnamon, and Frank’s doesn’t go well with anything. (I’m kidding. Paprika and mustard powder.) It all depends on what’s in your cupboard and what you like!