Turkey Bean Chili

Day 23-Let me start out by saying YAY!! After my night of burning everything I really needed a win. We went out for dinner Friday night, so I got a break. Then Saturday I decided to make chili and invited a few people over for dinner. I’m always really nervous to invite people over for dinner if I’m cooking. As evidenced in the last post I have good reason to be worried. Something easy could turn into a complete nightmare. Since I felt pretty safe making a one pot dish, I felt okay about inviting people over for dinner. Also since I wasn’t cutting the recipe I knew I was going to have a lot of leftover chili if I didn’t have company over. Thank goodness everything worked out.

Chili is awesome. I love it. I like cooking it on the stove or in the crock pot. Using ground beef, ground turkey, or some other ground meats. One pot meals are also awesome for clean up purposes. Although at the end of the night our sink was over flowing with items that needed to be washed! One pot turned into a five. I got this recipe from a magazine cookbook called Taste of Home: Casseroles, Slow Cooker, and Soups. All of my favorite things to cook! The recipe is super easy and was a much needed break from the more involved recipes I have done recently.

The prep work included chopping an onion, green pepper, and jalapeño pepper. Also you have to open the 4 cans of stewed tomatoes and chop those up in smaller pieces too. Then you need to drain and rinse 1 can of black beans, 1 can of kidney beans, and 1 can of pinto beans. Next you sauté the onion, pepper, and 2 pounds of ground turkey. Once the turkey is no longer pink, you add all the rest of the ingredients. The three cans of beans you drained, plus a can of chili beans (not drained), the tomatoes, jalapeño, and all the spices. Then you let it simmer for however long you want. That part doesn’t have to be timed out. I was able to let it sit longer then I thought and the longer it sits the better it tastes.

I made corn bread from the Jiffy box. I decided to add the stuff that Anthony adds to the scratch cornbread he makes. So I mixed up the Jiffy with chopped red pepper, a teaspoon of Goya Sazon seasoning, and some chili powder. I used the whole red pepper and I probably only needed 1/2, but I didn’t want it to go to waste. Our guests arrived to see most of my chili and corn bread making. Then Anthony arrived home and decided that he wanted to make fried green tomatoes too! So we had quite the southern meal Saturday night. The only thing missing was the collard greens. Everything came out really well. My corn bread was a little crumbly from too many red peppers, but it was still tasty.

Final Product:

This chili will be made again, most likely in a smaller batch. Corn bread would have been even better if it was scratch, so I’ll try that next time. The tomatoes were also really good, I don’t really know how Anthony makes then, I only know that corn meal is involved. Great food, great time!

Next up, Squash Soup served in Acorn Squash bowls. This has to go well, it’s soup!

Don't forget if you want any of the recipes from this blog, click the link on the right side of the blog titled Recipes Used for The Hesitant Cook!