When I was a kid, I thought didn’t like chili. I can’t pinpoint why exactly, but I remember I never wanted to eat it when my mom made it for dinner.
I’m always trying to figure out a solid go-to list of recipes to make for dinner and many times Bob and I circled back to chili. When looking at the general ingredients, there’s not really anything in there that we don’t like. Why not try it out?
I’ve perused countless chili recipes in all of my food blog reading, and so many of them are ridiculously elaborate and complicated and take hours to get through. Why do recipe developers like to make things so unnecessarily complicated? Stop it. Nobody likes you.
I decided to experiment with the basic ingredients and see how it turned out. And it actually turned out. It’s one of the few recipes I’ve concocted that is consistently good. We don’t have it terribly often, because it does require a long cook time and I’m lazy, but we’re both happy with the way it turned out.
Chili
Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
2 15-oz cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained
2 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes, with juice
1 14-oz can tomato sauce
1 14-oz can beef broth
2 cups water
2 Tbsp chili powder
2 Tbsp dried minced onion
black pepper to tasteshredded cheese for topping, optional
Directions:
1.) In a large stock pot brown meat until no longer pink. Add black pepper and minced onions halfway through. Drain excess fat if necessary.
2.) Mix chili powder with meat, add kidney beans, diced tomatoes (with juice), tomato sauce, broth, and water. Stir to combine.
3.) Cover and bring to a low boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer (covered) for 2 hours.
Source: original recipe
This usually lasts us three or four nights and it holds up well as leftovers.
You could use ground turkey or chicken, but I haven’t tried it. This is one of the few things we actually use ground beef for. I think it needs the fat from the beef for the right flavor.
Aside from a little prep work and a long cook time, it’s a simple recipe that doesn’t make me want to start hucking rocks at food bloggers for their unnecessarily complicated masterpieces.
ETA…
I’m not crazy about the texture of kidney beans and sometimes by the third night of leftovers I have a hard time choking it down. (I have big texture issues with food.) So we brainstormed ideas of things to substitute in for one of the cans of beans. It was difficult to come up with something that wouldn’t modify the flavor and Bob had the idea to try tofu. We’re not big tofu eaters by any means. I’ve only ever used it in Hot & Sour Soup. But because it takes on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked with, we decided it couldn’t hurt to try it once.
I diced it up (14-oz block firm/extra firm) to roughly the size of kidney beans and used only one can of beans. It turned out pretty well. Bob actually liked it better with the tofu and I appreciated a reduction in the quantity of beans. Sure tofu isn’t a traditional chili ingredient (unless you’re vegetarian/vegan) but it’s a decent addition.
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