Three Bean Chili Con Carne

This is a pretty flexible recipe. And … because I love being a PITA, this is indeed a valid chili, even with its hearty bean presence.

While my recipes usually only depend on at most a pressure cooker and a kettle, this one also expects a food processor. It’s based on the same chile purée as my Chile Colorado recipe.

Ingredients

Beans

• 1¼ cup dry beans, assorted (see Notes for more on bean selection.)
• 3-4 cups water
• 1 Tbsp Better than Bouillon Chicken
• 1 Tbsp cumin, ground
• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 bay leaves

Chile purée

• 2 oz dried Guajillo, New Mexico, or other red chile
• 5 cloves garlic
• Hot water
• 1/2 cup beef stock (consider Better than Bouillon here too)

Chili

• 16 oz ground beef/pork, optionally bison or other meat
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 red or orange bell pepper, diced
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 2-3 Tbsp hatch red chile powder
• 1 Tbsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander seeds ground
• 1½ tsp oregano (Mexican, ideally)
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (optional)
• circa 1 Tbsp cornmeal (for thickening) (optional! Possibly unneeded)

Preparation

1. Sort & rinse your beans.
2. Place all the ingredients from the Beans section of the ingredients in the instant pot, and set it to pressure cook on high for 1 hour, 15 minutes, then natural pressure release for 20 minutes. While this is cooking, you’ll have plenty of time for the other steps.
3. Pull the stems on the dried chiles, and deseed them. Tear the chiles into roughly inch-and-a-half long pieces, and place them in a heatproof bowl that’ll hold heat well. I like a big glass bowl for this.
4. Boil about a liter of water, and pour it over the chiles. Cover until they’re rehydrated, probably 20 minutes.
5. Wash & chop veggies, then set aside.
6. Drain your now-rehydrated chiles, and transfer them to a food processor or blender, along with the garlic and the stock. Blend/process until smooth. Optionally strain for fragments of chile skin.
7. Heat oil in a chef’s pan or similar over medium to medium-high heat, then add onion & sauté. Add the bell pepper and carrot and continue to cook until just browned.
8. Add the ground beef & cook until just browned, then turn the heat down to low.
9. Add the beans, then stir in the spices with the chile purée, and heat until simmering.
10. Check for seasoning and decide if your chile needs thickening. I usually find that this method, plus possibly some of the bean liquid, doesn’t require any further thickener.

Serve with rice, or chips and salsa, or maybe top a hot dog with it.

Notes

The beans used can vary. I like a mix of red, black, and either pinto or white beans. Sometimes I’ll use kidney beans, but they really define the cooking time for the whole batch, and that may stretch the black beans so far they disintegrate.