Recipe: Chili from scratch (vegan)
I recently cooked some chili, made from scratch. It came out FANTASTIC, except I could have made it like 3x spicier (it IS spicy, but it doesn't hurt (me) and it should).
You don't get good measurements from me because I cook primarily on intuition. Usually this leads to great results (for my tastes). Sometimes I blunder. It makes my dishes much less repeatable, but MANNN I like the creative part of cooking and measurements just don't give me that.
All the veggies were diced.
Recipe:
- Oil (excess oil removed from my 'all natural' peanut butter)
- 2 Onions (carmalized some)
- Red Bell, Green Bell, and two small/med anaheim peppers
- Carrots (a small bunch, diced. Should have boiled first. Did not skin them.)
- Whole bulb gahlic (too much bc causes lengthy aftertaste, use less)
- small can chipotle peppers (GREAT choice, buuut they have a lot of salt!)
- 1 can black beans, 2 cans kidney beans
- hella tomatoes (like 6 big ones from store + a few that were ready in my garden)
- veggie stock (2ish cups, homemade from scraps I had collected and frozen)
- A bunch of Ancho Chili Powder (expensive! But it's just the ancho chilis without added salt or paprika, so I prefer this over regular chili powder)
- A fair bit of nutritional yeast (a lot, but not a ton)
- California Reaper Pepper Powder (a smidge, but I wish i'd added wayyy more)
- Paprika (decent amount, not a ton)
- Oregano (Not sure the role this plays, but a recipe listed oregano so I added it. I'd be curious to try this dish side-by-side with a no-oregano version)
- hella crushed red pepper (less for spice and more for flavor. i love crushed red)
- Did I add Olive Oil late in the cooking process? I meant to but I think I decided against. I don't remember. (I think I ended up not using it because intuition)
- NO salt (the chipotle peppers had plenty), NO cumin (idk intuition said no), NO cayenne pepper (intuition again, but I'd have used it if I didn't have the california reaper. Cayenne isn't my favorite flavor), NO black pepper (initially intended to, but I'm glad I didn't add it), NO tomato paste (I bought it but decided against bc intuition. I stand by this choice)
Next time, I'd be interested to try using fresh habanero peppers for both flavor and spice (and because they're available at my local grocer and hotter peppers are not). Def would like to pre-cook the carrots a little more. They didn't soften fast enough so I had to cook the whole pot 10 or so minutes longer than I wanted. This was fine, but I think transformed the flavors in a way I wasn't wanting. An earlier taste test was 5-10% better, I thiiiink. I'd still leave the cumin out. Basically I fucking nailed it with this chili other than the spiciness, the garlic amount (flavor was great, but then i tasted it alllll niiiiiight), and the carrots' cooked-ness.
I'm curious about adding greens to it - spinach or kale. I originally wanted to add Tofu, but my pot was full ... and anyway tofu doesn't add anything flavor-wise. It's good. I like tofu, but it's role is mainly as a protein booster, not a flavor or quality additive. I originally wanted to add sweet corn (for more nutrients!) but intuition told me not to.