In Episode 071 we are making a traditional Homemade Chili for Dinner. Susie shares this chili recipe with all the tips and tricks to make a delicious dinner. Just add some toppings like Fritos, green onions, sour cream, shredded cheese, hot sauce, or chopped avocado to make a great dinner. Cornbread is a great side dish for chili too!
Transcript
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Intro: Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: Hey everybody. All right, so if you’re listening to this in real time, then it is New Year’s 2023. Welcome to the New Year. Time to reset, refocus, kind of a clean slate. Doesn’t it Feel fresh? It feels fresh and new to me. It feels like I have a chance to restart. I mean, it’s still the same old me, same podcast, all of that, but it feels like a clean slate. I’m super pumped for this year, the first podcast episode of 2023, we are making homemade chili. It’s the perfect winter food. When it’s really cold out, or like if it’s going to snow, you know, I’m making chili.
The chili recipe on mom’s dinner is definitely a classic. I would say maybe Midwestern chili, so it includes ground beef, it has celery, onions, garlic. It has a chili flavored tomato sauce, and then of course it has beans. I know that’s super controversial for some people, whether you have beans or not in beans and chili. But for this recipe, we are pro bean. If you do not like beans in your chili, this will not be the recipe for you. You’ll want to move on, make something else. Search no bean Chili on Google.
Tips and Tricks: A few tips for this recipe. You definitely want to start with a really flavorful ground beef. When I say flavorful ground beef, that just means that you’re going to use a higher fat content beef. So an 80/20 or an 85/15, will be perfect.
The other part of this recipe that can be up for debate is the beans, which we talked about. In my recipe, I use a canned chili bean in sauce, and for me and my family, I like a mild one. It also comes in hot, which you can just find at the grocery store. For my chili beans, I love Brooks chili beans. Those seem to be the best, if you can find them, that’s what we prefer here. And I would definitely recommend you give them a try. The other beans that we add are Northern beans, and it’s like a white bean. I think it might be similar to a cannellini bean, so you could use those as well. Or you could use more of a kidney bean if you prefer that. A light or a dark red kidney bean will work here as well. As well as like pinto beans, really, the second bean, the chili beans in sauce, you want to keep just how it is, but the second bean that you add, that really is up to you.
Homemade Chili with Beans Recipe: All right, so let’s get started with this full recipe for homemade chili. You’re going to start with a large pot. This makes a good amount of chili, so you want a big pot. I of course love a glazed dutch oven. You’re going to start over medium high heat, and you’re going to saute three minced garlic cloves and one large onion that’s chopped, and then two celery stocks that are chopped. Saute those in one or two tablespoons of oil until they start to soften a little bit. So this is going to be about five minutes. Then you’re going to add one pound of ground beef, and again, try to use something like an 80/20 or an 85/15 and just crumble that up while it cooks through. Probably about another five minutes.
Then at the end of that process, if you have quite a bit of grease at the bottom of your pot, what I like to do is scrape all of the beef and the veggies to one side of the pot and then tip the pot up and sop up just a little bit of that grease with some paper towels and a pair of tongs, and then discard the paper towels.
Now you’re going to turn the heat to medium low and you’re going to add in one four ounce can of chopped green chilies. A 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, 16 ounces of tomato sauce, one cup of water, a 15 ounce can of chili beans in sauce. You want to make sure you don’t drain those because you want that chili sauce in your chili. However, you’re going to add another 15 ounce can of beans and the recipe calls for Northern beans. But like I said, you could use cannellini, you could use pinto beans or kidney beans. You want to drain those.
Then for all of the spices and seasonings, you’re going to add one and a half tablespoons of sugar. It may sound weird to add sugar to your chili. Your chili’s not going to be sweet. What that’s doing is balancing the tartness and the acidity of all the tomatoes. You’ll add one bay leaf, one heaping tablespoon of chili powder, one teaspoon of dried oregano, one teaspoon of cumin. One teaspoon of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Now we’re going to add some spices you may not normally add to your chili, but they add such a warm flavor to your chili. So add a pinch of ground allspice, and a pinch of ground clove. Then if you like it spicy, you can definitely add some red pepper flakes or some cayenne pepper.
So stir all of that to combine, and then you’re just going to let it simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring it occasionally. That’s the whole entire chili recipe. Of course, before you serve it, you’ll want to remove the bay leaf and just discard it. If you know or if you don’t know, chili actually gets better with time. It’s like the flavors develop and meld together. So if you can make this chili a day ahead. If you can’t, it’s going to be super delicious just as it is.
If you do make it ahead and you’re going to reheat it the next day, you may want to loosen it up just a little bit with a little water or chicken stock, or maybe even beef broth or even red wine would be really good.
Now, when you serve your chili, we like to add all of the toppings and make it more of like a loaded chili. So we’ll put out maybe Fritos, sour cream, green onions, jalapenos, shredded cheddar cheese, or shredded pepper jack cheese, maybe some hot sauce. Fresh, chopped avocado or just saltine crackers or cornbread. So I have a lot of cornbread recipes on Mom’s Dinner that I will link in the show notes for you as well as a recipe for this chili made in the Instant Pot. So if you love your Instant Pot, you could pop over and make it in your Instant Pot instead.
So that’s it. That does it for the full recipe for our classic chili. I hope that you will make this chili and enjoy it on a super chilly night with the blankets and maybe a good movie. As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you so you can find them, pin them, save them, make them whenever you’re ready.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
Tips Shared
Use a flavorful ground beef that has a higher fat content. We recommend an 80/20 or 85/15.
Make sure to use two types of beans: a chili bean in sauce and a second bean. Do not drain the chili beans in sauce, the sauce is super flavorful and perfect for your chili. But you do want to drain the second can of beans.
If you like a spicy chili add some chopped jalapenos when you sauté the onions and garlic, or a dash of red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper.
Recipes Mentioned
Equipment Recommended
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