I am going to try to remember all of the ingredients in this bowl I know there was curry powder, garam masala, ancho chile powder, sweet paprika, oregano, some kosher salt, and cocoa powder which I have seen used in many chili recipes, I think I need to add more of it next time as I couldn't taste it at all in the chili. I liked what the chili tasted like, I will keep trying to make my own spice mixture as it seems like the type of thing I would enjoy doing, I might even try to mix up a big container of it so I don't have to try every time.
The cooked down onion and garlic mixture that I usually use, 3 green bell peppers, and a pack that contained one red, one yellow, and one orange bell pepper that I got at Aldi. I normally check all the produce thoroughly at Aldi as not everything is great, but the bell peppers were firm and smooth which is what I look for in a bell pepper.
I added the spices from the bowl to the veggies and stirred them up and let them heat together in the crock pot on high for 10-15 minutes, to just get the flavors mixing together. I usually use fire roasted canned chiles but I forgot to buy them. This is also the step I would add in tomato paste into the mix if I were including it.
I added a large can of crushed tomatoes and a large container of stock to the pot and mixed to combine everything together. I put just a little bit of soy sauce into it as well, I love the depth of flavor of soy sauce, even though it seems a bit out of place with these ingredients. I seasoned some chicken breasts and cooked them on high on each side for 7-8 minutes to get a nice golden brown color in the pan, let them sit for a few minutes, and then nestled them into the crock pot with the mixture.
After cooking for about 6 hours on low, I remove the chicken breasts from the crock pot, and let them cool, once they cooled I shredded them up and added them back to the pot, along with 3 drained cans of sweet corn.
I stirred the corn in and added 3 rinsed cans worth of black beans, some people don't rinse their beans out of the can, but I cant stand the starchy water that comes with the beans in the can. I drain them thoroughly. I turn the the chili off before adding the corn and beans, I let them sit mixed in for about 20 minutes just enough to heat everything through.
Here is a shot at the finished pot of chili, my chili is very chunky, and doesn't actually have that much meat it in, I am sure you could take the chicken out and it wouldn't be all that much worse, you would just want to take out the chicken stock and substitute veggie stock and then cook veggies in oil instead of bacon fat and it would be vegan if you wanted it to be.
I wanted to fry up some potatoes to put on top of my chili for a little bit of crispiness. When I pan fry potatoes I will always pat them dry to try to get some of the moisture out of them, it causes less splatter in the hot oil.
I added some salt to the potatoes in the hot oil, they are just starting to brown a little bit in this picture.
I don't turn the potatoes too quickly or they don't brown up as well, let them be for a few minutes before doing anything at all to them. Cooking them like this only takes maybe 10 minutes before they are brown and crispy. I like using Yukon Gold potatoes for this purpose.
I drained the potatoes after frying them, and salted them a little more.
A bowl of my chili covered with cheese and topped with my fried potatoes, it was delicious, the chili with my own seasonings was good too. I will continue to adapt the seasonings, and will probably never have a set recipe.
One last thing I wanted to add was this item I found at Aldi, which chocolate peanut butter, it seemed like an amazing idea, they also had a dark chocolate version. I tried it, and well I was a little bit disappointed by it, its just a bit too sweet for me when it comes to peanut butter, I might have to get some of the dark chocolate, which I bet goes better with peanut butter.
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