royalty-free chili peppers stock photo by pickpik.com
Programmer Chili
This is my recipe for the first-place entry in my workplace’s chili cook-off. It’s a sweet and spicy baked bean chili with a ton of flexibility with the ingredients.
Feel free to play around with the ingredients to suit your taste. I’m sure this would be just as tasty made with pulled chicken, or ground turkey. Just adust the seasonings to suite your choice, and be more careful about overcooking leaner proteins.
And I better not see this at next year’s cook-off!
Ingredients
- 1 lb hot Italian sausage
- 2 lb 80/20 Ground beef
- 3 Packets McCormick chili seasoning (classic, hot, and/or tex-mex - I used one of each!)
- 1.5 tsp Accent® Flavor Enhancer (It’s just pure MSG, but don’t tell anyone)
- 1 14.5oz Can diced fire roasted tomatoes
- 1 14.5oz Can diced fire roasted tomatoes with hatch chilies
- 1 10oz Can diced tomatoes with fire roasted hatch chilies
- 1 4oz Can diced jalapeños (drained)
- 1 15.25oz Can southwest corn and peppers (drained)
- 1 28oz Can Bush’s Sweet Heat baked beans
- 1/2 Can tomato paste (ish)
- Cayenne pepper to taste (I probably used a couple tablespoons in the whole pot)
Instructions
- Start by combining the ground meat with the Accent® Flavor Enhancer in a large bowl
- Brown the meat in a saute pan over medium high heat to get some color on it and to let the fat render out a bit.
- Once the meat is starting to brown, add the seasonings to the pan.
- You do not need to cook the meat all the way through.
- Work in batches unless you have a saute pan the size of a large saute pan.
- Drain most of the fat from the pan before decanting the meat into a slow cooker.
- Once all of the meat is in the slow cooker, add the tomato paste, canned tomatoes, jalapeños, corn, and baked beans.
- Stir gently to incorporate all the ingredients together, and let sit for 3 hours on low to finish cooking
- Once the chili has finished cooking, give it a taste, and add as much (or as little) cayenne to suit your taste.
- Serve and enjoy!
Nutrition
