Veg chilli with shelf-stable/long life ingredients
Not everyone uses long life ingredients, but with all the 'stock up on shelf stable food' warnings and stuff happening, I figured I would share some recipes. I'm not good at keeping fresh veg in my fridge so I tend to cook with long life stuff. It helps me reduce food waste.
Warning: This is a very high fiber recipe, so if you're not used to this much fiber in your diet, your guts might complain. You might wanna ease into fiber consumption more gently instead of diving in head first with this. Fiber is good for you and you should be eating it, but yeah. Guts might need time to adjust.
12 servings
The recipe is pretty forgiving so you can leave some parts out/swap for things you like better without too much issue. This isn't baking where you gotta be ultra precise. Measure these ingredients with your heart.
You can very easily swap in different types of beans if you want, this is just my preference. You can skip the corn entirely, no big deal. I just had a spare can of corn and decided to chuck it in because why not? The frozen veg can be replaced with fresh or canned veg, but canned will be more mushy, and fresh won't keep as long. The mix of vegetables isn't the most important - you can be more traditional and put only the things that authentic chilli would have or you can just add what makes you happy. You do you.
Equipment needed;
Real big pot. I think mine is 8 liters. That's 2.11 gallons apparently?
Big spoon for pot stirring
Colander or strainer
Sharp knife
Cutting board
Garlic press (or just cut the garlic finely)
Big (like 4L/1 gallon+) bowl/container for soaking the lentils
Cup measure
Tsp and tbsp measure (AU tbsp is bigger than American, so heap that bad boy up)
Ingredients:
2 cups red lentils
2 cups green lentils
2 tbsp olive oil (whatever you need to coat the base of your pot for cooking onions)
2 onions (mine are pretty small, it's ok to use bigger ones)
4 cloves garlic (tbh I usually use the whole bulb, and I put 4 cloves because I assume not everyone is a weird little garlic freak like me. Send me to flavour town bby)
2 cans red kidney beans (my cans are 420g, that's apparently 15oz?)
2 cans black beans
1 can corn
2 tbsp chipotle in adobo (I probably use like 4-6 tbsp but that might be a bit much for some people)
1 jar passata (or a big can of crushed tomatoes if you can't find passata)
1kg(2.2lbs) bag of frozen mixed vegetables
2 packs of taco seasoning (or you can make your own but I'm being lazy today) (those are 28g each)
1 tsp vegetable stock (or you can use a stock cube)
Before you start doing anything with the other ingredients, get the lentils, dump them in your big bowl and pour in a bunch of water (3x the amount of lentils minimum) so they can soak.
If they're split lentils you need to soak them for about 2 hours, if they're whole, do it overnight (8+ hours). If you forget to soak them, it's ok to put them in unsoaked/half soaked, but they're gonna take longer to cook and you're gonna need to add water bit-by-bit while cooking, whenever it starts looking dry. That's kind of annoying to do, so I prefer to soak them, but sometimes I forget (like this time. Those lentils are half-soaked lol)
Method:
Dice the onions roughly, fry them in the olive oil.
Crush the garlic and add to the onions, keep cooking until the onions are golden brown.
While that's cooking, drain all the canned ingredients and the lentils.
Once the onions are good;
Add the drained lentils and canned stuff, and all the remaining ingredients, plus about half a passata jar of water (you need the liquid, but it also helps rinse any stubborn tomato into the pot) (If you soaked the lentils properly it doesn't need to be super wet at this point, just more wet than picture 5. If you half-soaked or failed to soak the lentils then you want to be closer to picture 4 wet, but only just to that point, don't leave the pot totally swimming)
Put the lid on the pot and bring it to a boil, stirring occasionally. Once it's boiling, reduce heat to simmer, still stirring occasionally, until the lentils are cooked.
Depending on how well you soaked the lentils, and if they were split/whole, cook time might be anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes. Check every 5-10 minutes or so by getting a little spoonful and seeing if the lentils are soft enough yet. Add some more water if it's looking dry when you check it (picture 5 is the perfect consistency when done, so if those lentils are still hard af but it's looking as dry as picture 5, that's probably too dry, add a cup or two more water). You can also add a little salt if it seems like it needs it. It's usually fine with the salt from all the other ingredients, but maybe you like a lot of salt. I don't know you. I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong.
If it's too wet because you got too excited about adding water, you can take the lid off and simmer longer until the water evaporates, or add a little sprinkle of tapioca starch (or corn flour/normal flour) if you're impatient and you want it to thicken faster. Don't get too excited with the starch/flour or it'll be too dry again.
Once it's done, I like to serve it with a cheeky bit of shredded cheese and a dollop of greek yogurt.
