Friday, February 4, 2011

Veggie Chili

With how cold and generally unpleasant the weather has been in Chicago this winter, Sarah and I have been making a lot of chili. We've made beef chili, turkey chili, and white chili. So, when I saw this recipe for veggie chili, I couldn' resist. Plus, I generally like Real Simple recipes. So I thought I would give it a shot. It has some ingredients that I was very interested in seeing in a chili, like sweet potato. But it also has some ingredients that I thought were dumb, like cocoa powder.


Veggie Chili:

  1. chop a ton of veggies: 1 medium onion, 1 green pepper, and 4 cloves of garlic. I like garlic, so I think I may have put in like five or six. These all went into the crock pot.
  2. cube a sweet potato into half inch pieces. Use a heavy, sharp knife for this. Put the sweet potato into the crock.
  3. toss in a whole bunch of canned things: 28 oz fire roasted diced tomatoes, 15.5 oz black beans rinsed, 15.5 oz kidney beans rinsed. 
  4. seasonings: usually, I pretty much make up whatever I want for the seasoning, but I decided to follow the recipe on this one, since I have never made a veggie chili before. 1T chili powder, 1T cumin, 2t cocoa powder, and 1/4t cinnamon. 
  5. time: I put this all in the crock pot for several hours
I served the chili with a dollop of sour cream and a little bit of cheddar cheese. Then, of course, I doused it in hot sauce. 

The chili turned out ok. Not my favorite. It was watery, and I don't think it was because I didn't cook it long enough. The sweet potatoes were great. I may even start adding it to all my chilis. But the cinnamon and the cocoa powder were not so great. I couldn't really taste them, and when I did, I didn't really like them.

Usually, when I make a chili, I love it and I end up eating in for several meals in a row. This, I didn't love. I missed the meat. It tasted good and all. But I was expecting something special, and this was just average. I think there's still some left over in the fridge still.

2 comments:

  1. We make Veggie Chili all the time and in the crock pot too. I bet if you just put in your own ingredients it would taste better then following a recipe.
    This is what we do for Veggie Chili: 1 onion diced, lots of minced garlic (like 2 tablespoons or more if you like more. We love garlic), 1 or 2 cans of diced tomatoes (depending on the size of your crock pot), mixture of drained beans which we usually use about three cans (Chili Beans, Pinto Beans, Black Beans, Kidney Beans, White Beans..take your pick), small can or corn, 1 Bay Leaf and then to the spices. We use chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper and paprika. You can play with the flavors as it cooks. If it isn't as spicy as we want it (due to kids also eating it), we add some hot sauce in our own separate bowls. We top it with cheese and sometimes a little sour cream.
    Chili is delicious!

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  2. I think you're on to something there, especially with the garlic. I think the next time, I may also try and make my own sweet potato chips, rather than put sweet potato in it. But I don't know if I will go meatless again. I think my next chili is going to have skirt steak in it.
    I also think I need to buy higher quality spices. My paprika smells like dirt and tastes like nothing. It does imbue a nice red color to everything though.

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