Chili

How do you like to eat your chili?

I think chili is truly a fantastic dish, and we often ate it with rice back home but today I like to switch it up so it's tortillas, rice, pasta.. polenta, couscous! Whatever you got!

Whatever you choose to serve it with you're going to need one thing, and that's a fantastic chili recipe!

This is my recipe that I prepared for the chili dogs early in the summer. Don't be afraid of dry beans, just get them soaking the night before and you're good to go.

If you want to prepare in advance boil them up and freeze, now you can just pull out a bag and throw it in the chili, trust me, you'll be saying byebye to those cans before you know it ;-)

My homemade Chili

One or two nights in advance:

- Measure out dry kidney beans (or any beans of your preference)

I did a mixture of kidney and Steuben yellow eye bean (an heirloom

variety used in baked beans)

The rule is to wash, soak in a lot of salty water, so keep adding salt

until it tastes like the ocean.

Some people don't add salt to their soaked beans, which is fine but I

think the beans taste a lot better if they absorb some salt.

After 12 hours or a day, and you're ready to boil these beans simply

dump all the water into a large pot and bring to a boil then simmer on

medium low until the beans are tender (adding more water if it steamed

off) I keep the lid slightly covered as if it's closed tightly it

overflows sometimes due to the starchiness.

This may take a few hours but once they are tender (be sure to check a

few to make sure all of them are cooked and not just a random one and

then you end up with hard beans) They should keep their shapes almost

but be nice and tender.

Alternatively if you want to skip this step and use canned beans that's

fine too but I think more people should be going back to dry beans,

they are creamy and I think it takes the whole dish to another level.

Preparing chili

Ingredients:

- 1 lb ground meat (I use beef but you can use turkey or chicken..)

- 2 1/2 to 3 cups precooked beans

- 1 Chopped onion

- 2 medium Chopped green bell pepper

- Tomato paste (few tbsps)

- 1 can pureed tomato

- 1 tbsp molasses

- Worsterchire sauce

- Salt & Black pepper to taste

- Ground cumin powder

Water

Oil

Directions: In a large heavy bottomed pan on medium high heat add oil, sautee onions and peppers until they are transluscient or slightly softened (but not burning)

Bring the heat up to high and brown the ground meat really well, you want to see brown bits in the pot (this is extra flavour)

Add tomato paste and fry it around, add can of tomato, season with salt and pepper, 3/4 tsp cumin powder or so, molasses, worstershire sauce, strained tomato puree and water.

Simmer on medium low until the meat and vegetables are so very tender, I left mine on the stove for 6 hours and kept adding more water to the pot as it boiled off (even though the lid was on)

In the last hour or so add the beans to the pot and let them absorb the yummy flavours and simmer together.

If making the chili dogs below immediately let the chili cool a bit before topping them.