Chilli con carne
The recipe I normally use for Chilli con carne is from Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food cookbook, but I thought I’d have a go at a different recipe to see if I prefer it. The recipe I used is from the BBC Good Food website, please see the link for the method.
Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
1 large onion
1 red pepper
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 heaped tsp hot chilli powder (or 1 level tbsp if you only have mild)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
500g lean minced beef
1 beef stock cube
400g can chopped tomatoes
½ tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp tomato purée
410g can red kidney beans
soured cream and plain boiled long grain rice, to serve
Now I do have a tendency with main meals to substitute ingredients I am not so keen on, or simply don’t happen to have in, so I made the following alterations to the above list:
- I didn’t have an onion in so I used a few spring onions I had hanging around
- I added some mushrooms, a small yellow bell pepper, and a small carrot
- I crushed my garlic cloves, which isn’t actually mentioned in the recipe
- My tin of kidney beans was only 200g
- I added the end of a carton of passata that was in the fridge
- I used Frylight (a commercial oil spray) instead of actual oil
- I just served with rice, as I didn’t have any soured cream
- I didn’t add the chocolate (see tip at the bottom of the recipe) as I didn’t have any in
It turned out to be a tasty recipe, although it was a bit watery. I was surprised it was so watery, because the recipe itself keeps commenting that you should ensure the dish doesn’t dry out – I suppose it could be partially because I added mushrooms. Overall it tasted fairly similar to my normal Jamie recipe, there wasn’t much to choose between them.
If I did this recipe again I would do the following:
- I would use fresh chillies instead of chilli powder – I think they taste better
- I would cook it for longer at the simmering stages, and use all passata instead of tinned tomatoes which should reduce the liquid
I would cook this again, but I wont need to for a while because as there is only two of us for dinner there were some leftovers for the freezer.
