‘Chili Con Vegies’ – Vegetarian Chili Meal Thing

You know those chili dishes with mince? Well this is a vegetarian option. It wasn’t really intended to be a vegetarian dish, but I didn’t have any mince on me, so I decided to wing it. And honestly the result was genuinely very nice. Not something I’d have as a meal on its own, but definitely very nice when accompanied with some bread and maybe some cheese grated on top.

Ingredients

1 can of Kidney Beans, rinsed
1 can of Chick Peas, rinsed
1 can of sweet corn, rinsed
1 can of green peas, also rinsed
About a can’s worth of baby carrots, frozen or tinned or whatever
1 can of chopped tomatoes
Ketchup
Salt and Pepper
Paprika, chili powder
Frozen broccoli or cauliflower, optional
Some sort of cheese, optional

Serves 4

Directions

This recipe is actually pretty fucking easy. The gist of it is that you throw everything in a saucepan, add a bit of water, throw in your spices and cook it all down on a medium heat on the hob. You don’t want your final chili to be watery or anything, you want it to be somewhat thick.

Most of the vegetables will already be cooked, so really it’s just waiting for the frozen things to cook, which will take a maximum of about 25 minutes, but it should be done in 15 minutes. Theoretically, you could do this in a microwave (probably on high for about 10 minutes, stirring half way through) but I don’t have a microwave to test this, sorry.

When it’s cooked, serve with some toasted bread (e.g. tortillas or pita bread) and some cheese grated on top. At the time I only had edam, but really, whatever floats your boat.

Because it’s all veg, you can keep the leftovers, put them into individual servings and freeze them. Remember when you reheat it to make sure it’s hot all the way through.

If you want some meat with this dish, then I’d recommend cooking some minced meat first before adding in the rest of the ingredients. Mince doesn’t really cook well in water, but it does cook up really nicely when thrown into a saucepan and cooked with a tablespoon of olive oil and a bunch of spices. When you’re cooking mince, make sure there are no pink bits, if there are, it’s not cooked yet. I know you can cook beef mince and have it rare, but it’s always better to be on the safe side and just cook it all the way through.

You can also serve this as a side to a piece of chicken or pork, alongside some roasted potatoes or something.

Is this traditionally a chili con carne? No, not at all. Then again, apparently a traditional chili uses pieces of chopped up beef, rather than any sort of mince meat. But really, we shouldn’t worry about any of that traditional stuff. Cook things the way you want, according to your dietary needs and, of course, your preferred tastes. It’s silly to be a purist, as long as the food tastes nice, then how traditional or perfect it is shouldn’t really matter.