Delicious warm chili for these cold nights. Happy solstice y’all!
We love eating this chili with garlic bread.
Serves: 4-6
Time: 1 hour 30 minutes (35 minutes active)
Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, minced
salt and pepper
1+ 1/4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp taco mix
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 medium zucchini, chopped
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 cup of corn, optional
2 cups drained and rinsed black beans*
3 cups vegetable broth (gluten-free option, soy-free option)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup brown or wild rice
1-3 cups of water
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
In a big soup pot over medium heat saute the onion and garlic in a little olive oil until the onions are soft and fragrant about 7 minutes. Add the chili powder, taco mix, garlic powder, salt, pepper, tomato paste, and zucchini. Stir well and continue to cook about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and corn (optional) and cook another 3 minutes until the tomatoes start to release their juice.
Add the rice and the broth. Reduce heat to an active simmer and cook about 40 minutes until the rice is almost tender. Add 1 cup of water, beans, and apple cider vinegar and cook another 15 minutes, stirring regularly. If it starts to stick on the bottom, add more water. Enjoy!
*Cooking black beans from dry:
In the Instant Pot:
To cook the black beans in an Instant Pot, add 1 cup of dried black beans to the pot. Cover the beans with water (in the small Instant Pot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp garlic powder, and 1/4 tsp cayenne. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 19 minutes letting depressurize naturally. Drain and rinse before adding to the dish.
On the stove:
If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook black beans from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the beans which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size.
Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt.
For this recipe, also add 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp garlic powder, and 1/4 tsp cayenne to the black beans as they cook. Cook the beans until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans! This may seem like a lot of work, however once you get the hang of it the work is almost all passive and the reward is high: black beans cooked from scratch taste much better and are much cheaper!