What’s for Dinner? Four Bean Chili with Cornbread

Fall weather has officially hit our neck of the woods. I always love when Fall comes, I’m ready to get out of my shorts and into my leggings and tall boots! I think all this rain and gloominess are getting to me though, every night I make myself a to-do list, like posting my blogs, but every night I fall asleep as soon as my toddler does! So again, I am apologizing for the gap in posts.

Fall is perfect for chili! I have a basic 5 quart crock pot that I use to cook my chili, but if you don’t have a crock pot it is just as easy to cook it in a large pot on the stove.

Now, if you are unlike me and plan your meals in advance rather than two in the afternoon, you could use dried beans for your chili. But since I only had a few hours to get my chili done before dinner time I used canned beans.

When buying canned goods I pay special attention to the labels. First and foremost I make sure that there is no dairy, but I also check the sodium, the number of ingredients inside the can, and I make sure that I can pronounce everything inside. When looking for canned beans, find something that has little to no salt, and little to no ingredients besides the beans themselves.

Four Bean Chili (5QT Crock Pot)

1 lb of cooked ground beef or turkey (or you could not put any at all)

4 cups pinto beans

2 cups black beans

2 cups kidney beans

2 cups cannellini beans

2 7oz cans of diced green chiles

2 diced tomatoes

2 diced peppers

1 diced onion

3 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)

Now the seasoning is up to you, I just dump in whatever I feel like or have on hand, and I don’t measure anything…sorry! But here are some ideas:

Chili Powder, Garlic Powder, Salt, Paprika, Cumin, Cinnamon, Black Pepper, Cayenne Pepper, Red Pepper, Onion Powder

I cooked my chili on high for about four hours, or if you started it early in the day you could cook it on low for 6. Also, a little before dinner time I take out a couple of meals worth of child size servings and let one serving cool and store the rest. I then add more spicy-ness to the crock pot, usually cayenne or tapatio. I will warn you though, the chili may be the perfect amount of spice tonight, but it gets hotter as it sits, so tomorrow it may be too hot, if there is such a thing.

Now, about the corn bread… I searched the internet for a dairy free corn bread recipe or one that I could adapt, and I was just not excited about anything that I found. So feeling rather unmotivated I bought a store-bought mix and I made sure there was no dairy in the ingredient list. It called for added milk and eggs, but I used rice milk in place of dairy milk and ¼ cup of applesauce per egg. It turned out great!

Happy Crock-Potting 🙂