I love chili. Most of the ingredients are super cheap. Can be omnivorous, vegetarian, or vegan. There’s like 1,000 varieties. If you eat meat it extends that meat to save on cost. If you don’t…well it still extends your meat alternatives to also save on cost. lol. Is an easy vector to add in other protein sources with minimal impact to flavor. And you can make a shit load of it in one big go and then just live off of it for a week or so.

I’ll make like 4-5 gallons of chili, freeze 2/3 of it in smaller bowls, then eat chili for a whole damn week. Then have like 2-3 days of chili for the next few weeks. Then do it all over again. Each time I try a change or two to my recipe and write it all down. I got like 5 main recipes now. Some use more store bought ingredients, some use almost entirely home grown tomato products. Like homemade tomato paste etc. Those recipes beat the dogshit out of the store bought recipes. All of them include fermented beans.

I got some recipes that, while not giving away my secret ingredients, I will share the basics if anyone is interested? I personally do include meat in my chili. If there are those who wish to take any of my recipes and offer meatless alternatives that would be awesome. Like tofu chili or something idk

  • Seanchaí (she/her)
    6•1 year ago

    Drop those vegan chili recipes friend, curious (hungry) minds want to know

    (just post a recipe and I will think of good vegan alternatives for any non-vegan ingredients)

    • @201dberg@lemmygrad.mlOP
      6•1 year ago

      Per batch I use: (makes about 4-5 gallons of chili)

      • 6lbs meat of choice (smoked is best for the added flavor
      • 4-5 cups of soup stock (beef broth in most my recipes, I’m sure vegetable stock with extra stuff to add umami flavors would work)
      • 2 28oz cans crushed tomatoes
      • 4 cans diced tomatoes, fire roasted variety
      • 16-24oz of tomato paste, if you can make your own out of lacto fermented tomatoes it’ll blow your mind how much better it is than store bought
      • 2 10oz cans diced tomatoes and green chilies
      • 6 diced and thoroughly sauteed bell peppers (paprikas)
      • 2 bunches of celery, diced and thoroughly sauteed
      • 5 small white onions worth of diced and carmalized onions
      • 1.5 to 2 gallons of fermented beans. I use a mix of black, kidney, and red. You don’t have to ferment them, you could use canned I just don’t like to.
      • 18+ tablespoons of you chili seasoning blend
      • if you like a thicker chili take 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum, dissolve in a tbsp or two of olive oil, then stir that into the nearly finished chili.

      Potential seasoning suggestions: marmite or Vegemite for the umami yeast extracty flavors. Also using them means you basically don’t need to add much extra salt. Any salt you do use, you can cut that salt with 20% by weight with MSG. The flavor impact is significant. Miso paste is another addition that can help with that savory umami flavors. I haven’t tried adding mushrooms yet but next batch I plan to experiment with them.

      I’m pretty sure the only “non vegan” ingredient I use are the obvious meat and meat stock.

      • Seanchaí (she/her)
        6•1 year ago

        Thank you!

        For any vegan spectators out there, I would say to replace the beef stock with a nice mushroom stock to get that umami flavour, and then replace the beef itself with 2 parts TVP and 1 part lentils.

        Edit: and when soaking the TVP and lentils, I would season them with some sweet soy sauce, summer savory, and sage so that they have a stronger flavour going into the chili

        Edit 2: If you don’t have summer savory (apparently it doesn’t grow many places?? it grows here, so I can’t confirm) then maybe thyme and basil

        • @Faresh
          3•1 year ago

          There are also spices that exist merely to give a smoky aroma, for anyone who misses it. Rauchige Fetsau is one that comes to my head (which is smoked paprika, unlike what the name suggests).

        • @sparkingcircuit@lemmygrad.ml
          2•1 year ago

          I didn’t know you could buy textured vegetable protein in anything but an industrial scale for some reason, but now that I know I’m honestly kind of ecstatic that it’s an ingredient within my reach. Thank you for teaching me this (even if it was via a off handed reference for modifying a chili recipe).

  • @Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
    6•1 year ago

    Would it be possible to acquire a chili recipe in metric units? I can’t with those bleeping ounces and “tablespoons”. Pretty sure we have different size tablespoons!

    • @201dberg@lemmygrad.mlOP
      4•1 year ago
      • 2.72kg meat of choice (smoked is best for the added flavor
      • ~ 1 litre of soup stock (beef broth in most my recipes, I’m sure vegetable stock with extra stuff to add umami flavors would work)
      • 2 828ml cans crushed tomatoes
      • 4 cans diced tomatoes, fire roasted variety 473-709ml of tomato paste, if you can make your own out of lacto fermented tomatoes it’ll blow your mind how much better it is than store bought
      • 2 295ml cans diced tomatoes and green chilies
      • 6 diced and thoroughly sauteed bell peppers (paprikas)
      • 2 bunches of celery, diced and thoroughly sauteed
      • 5 small white onions worth of diced and carmalized onions
      • 5.7 - 7.5 litres of fermented beans. I use a mix of black, kidney, and red. You don’t have to ferment them, you could use canned I just don’t like to.
      • 18+ tablespoons of you chili seasoning blend
      • if you like a thicker chili take 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum, dissolve in a tbsp or two of olive oil, then stir that into the nearly finished chili.

      Idk how metric does tablespoons and teaspoons and idk how my spice blend would work in weight units. 1 tablespoon is like 14.78ml

    • @Slatlun
      3•1 year ago

      One thing for everyone to remember is that this isn’t a precision food. Get it close and adjust for taste. The recipe you like will be a little different from this any way. Don’t sweat the details. Give it plenty of time on the simmer, eat it with some good toppings to wake up the flavors, and you won’t go wrong.

  • @Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
    4•1 year ago

    Do you have chicken-based chili recipes? I would like to hear those. Keep hearing about this “chili” dish, but never actually made one

    • @201dberg@lemmygrad.mlOP
      4•1 year ago

      I have not made a chicken chili before but if you used chicken as the meat in the recipe I listed in my other comment on this post I’m sure it would turn out fine. There’s also “white chicken chili” that uses cream of chicken soup as the base in place of a tomato based soup but I have not delved into much of that styled chili.