Diced! Chili Cook-off: Alex – Meatless Chili

Autumn. Perfect weather for carving pumpkins, watching football and eating chili. The Ranting Chef is excited to host the Diced! Chili Cook-off. We have a number of competitors that have submitted a chili recipe and post for consideration. For three out of five weeks I will post four entries each week. At the end of each week a poll will be opened to vote on your favorite from the week. The poll will be open from Friday to the following Wednesday. The top 3 vote getters in each week will be pitted against each other at the end to determine the winner. Check out today’s post from Alex at Wild Blue…

Usually when I cook, it’s for others, but I thought it would be nice to make myself a big pot of chili that I can use for lunches at work this week. I call this chili “meatless” rather than “vegetarian” because it has chicken broth in it. I’ve made a similar recipe with ground beef, so it’s easy to add meat in, if you’d like. Since this dish is only for me, I wanted to go meatless because I may not be a vegetarian, but I am picky. 🙂

Meatless Chili

Ingredients:

-1 can dice tomatoes with green chilis

-1 can tomato paste

-1 can pinto beans

-1 can black beans

-1 onion

-1 can chicken broth (I used a Knorr condensed broth packet)

-about 1 tablespoon of chili powder

-about half tsp of cumin

*You can really add any frozen, canned, or fresh vegetables as you’d like. I will probably make this again with veggies like carrots, bell pepper, or zucchini. This time around, I just wanted something basic.

Step 1. Chop your onion. Most people don’t include this in the recipe’s steps, they just list “1 chopped onion” in the ingredients. I give it its own step because chopping an onion is a lot of work! At least it is for me. I have such a hard time with onions that today I actually bought onion goggles.

So…yeah, I totally don’t look ridiculous, right?

Anyway, that onion got chopped.

Step 2. Cook your onions with some oil in a nice big pot. This is where you could brown your meat as well, if you wanted.

Step 3. Add the rest of your ingredients in and let cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. I told you it was easy!

I always like to make cornbread while my chili cooks, because really, ya can’t have chili without cornbread.

Now, add sour cream and cheese (because chili is really just a vehicle for sour cream and cheese, is it not?), and enjoy!

Alex is a school counselor in Minnesota. She writes a blog about crafting, baking, cats, and adventure at Wild Blue.