The Best Vegetarian Chili

This is my all time favorite chili recipe. This is the chili that I measure all other chilies against. And with my current chili quest, I needed an old favorite. This may actually be the first vegetarian chili that I ever made and I was blown away by all the vegetables that are included. This is a job for someone who likes chopping, because there is a lot of it. But the flavor and texture make all that chopping worth it!

Here are some onions, peppers and herbs steaming up. The only downside to this cookbook is that it assumes that you know something about cooking. For example, the instruction here is to cook the vegetables until they are half done. Yes, but how long is that in minutes??

I usually cook them for about 8 minutes. Perhaps I should embrace the creativity of being able to define "half done" myself.


Time to add the tomatoes and TVP:


My mouth is watering.

Oh, and check out my soaked and cooked kidney beans. I used to mourn the loss of the bright red colors that only can kidney beans provide, but I am starting to appreciate the look of these beans without the bright red hue. In fact, I may even prefer this look now.

And since I learned from an earlier mistake, I cooked the garbanzo beans separately from the kidney beans so that they both remained their intended color. If you look at the top picture you can see how much better those beans look than my 3 bean chili attempt. Individual colors are important to me.


Here's my bowl and the book that started it all. And now I am drooling.


Oh, I should also mention that this recipe claims to serve 20 people. I have never reduced the quantity because I love it so much that I eat it for every meal for 3 days. This time I did put some in the freezer though, so hopefully it freezes well!