Hey everyone!
Today I'm going to share with you the recipe for my version of famous texas meal: chilli con carne.
As my version is vegetarian, I called it “chilli sin carne”. I hope you will enjoy it.
To prepare that meal, you will need some patience, as it takes time. It's worth it though. Chilli sin carne is very healthy, easy to make and... cheap, as all the ingredients we will use are very simple.
My family is big, so the recipe is prepared for five average size plates. If you are cooking just for yourself or for two people, you can make enough food for two days or cut the amount of all the products for a half.
Ingredients
250 gram of any beans
2 small carrots
2 peppers (paprikas)
2 onions
coriander (if you don't like it, you can use parsley)
2 tomatoes
1 can of tomatoes in cubes
1 small jar of tomato concentrate
2,5 cups of white rice
1 spoon of butter or any other fat
spices: salt, pepper, chilli, sweet paprika, bay leaf
notice that not all the ingredients are on the photo, read carefully the list over the picture
Step 1
Start the day before. Put the beans into the bowl with water and leave it at least for 8 hours, preferably for all the night. I used red beans, but you can change it for black or white beans. Chickpeas or tofu will work as well. After that time, remove the liquid and boil the beans in the new water until it will be soft. You can add the bay leaf but remember to not salt it yet (salt would slow down the cooking process). It will take some time, but no worries, in the meantime you can make another steps
Step 2
Cut the onion into cubes or stripes (as you prefer). It's okay, you can cry.
Melt the butter in the pan and fry your onion for two minutes, mixing it. I add some salt. It makes onion softer and juicier. According to WHO we all eat too much salt, so if you prefer to skip salting your onion, it's fine.
men can cry too and men who cut the onion SHOULD cry ;)
Step 3
Turn off the onion to not burn it and wash the peppers. If you cut your onion into the cubes, do the same with your peppers. If you have chosen to make onion in stripes, cut paprika in the same way. I cut it into the stripes, but to not make it too long, every stripe cut into three smaller pieces.
Step 4
Incorporate paprika with the onion and fry another two – three minutes
Step 5
Wash the carrots and peel it as thin as you can. If your carrots are fresh and you bought it in the eco farm, you can leave the skin. In that case just remove thin slice from the top and bottom of your carrots. Most of the vitamins are right under the skin so it's worth it.
Cut the carrot into thin slices. Thinner slices you will make, softer the carrot will be, as we won't cook it for a long time.
Step 6
Boil the water in the kettle or small pot, turn it off and put tomatoes there. We don't want to cook them, we will just burn them. Make sure every part of tomatoes had a contact with the hot water and after few seconds take it out. Now you should be able to easily remove the skin from your tomatoes. If they are too hot to keep them in your hands, you can put them in the cold water for a short time.
Step 7
Cut the tomatoes into the halves and put it in the new pot. Add canned tomatoes and tomato concentrate. That mix will allow us to receive perfect consistency, but if you don't have canned tomatoes or tomato concentrate, there is solution for that problem:
Canned tomato can be changed for two extra regular tomatoes. In that case it's important to choose the kinds which are more juicy (basically all rounded tomatoes are juicy and long ones are more “meaty”).
Using fresh tomatoes instead of concentrate is a bit more complicated. Sure, you can do it with adding extra 3 or four vegetables instead of small jar, but prepare to boil it for at least half an hour to evaporate extra water.
Step 8
Add sliced carrot to your tomato sauce and cook it. You can also boil the water in another pot, salt it and prepare the rice. Make sure your rice will not be too soft. Each kind of rice requires different time of boiling so check it regurarly. Turn it off and remove the water when it will be al'dente
Step 9
Now the most difficult part – waiting. You have approximately 10 – 15 minutes for relax. To make yourself in the Texas mood, you can play some music, in example “Ernest Tubb – Waltz across Texas”
Step 10
When your beans will be soft, remove the water and add to them tomato sauce and onion with paprika. Boil for a while and as one of the last steps, add coriander.
I know that people love or hate coriander. If you belong to the second group, no worries – instead of coriander you can use fresh parsley. Whatever you will choose, save few leaves for the decoration.
Step 11
Add the spices. I used salt, pepper, sweet paprika and, obviously, chilli.
Bon appetite!
Smacznego!
@papi.mati