When life hands you chillies, roast them…
“The only thing better than a bowl of chili is two bowls of chili.”

Fun times for fall football time and what could be better than a quick cheater chili? It all started with a pantry raid where I keep a cheater basket stacked with “grocery store cheater” items like boxed chili mixes with all the spices you need to make a quick chili…of course, you can customize your chili with the additions of special ingredients, but the mixes give you a great start to a pot of touchdown” chili.

Two of my favorite readily available kits are shown below, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use a special order kit from a favorite supplier or you can make up your own special seasoning blends.

My additions today were again from the pantry stash of canned chilies, fire-roasted tomatoes, and tomato passata. My favorite beans for chili these days are Rancho Gordo’s Santa Maria Pinquinto beans cooked/not pre-soaked and I fancy up the bean cooking liquid with chunks of celery, onion, carrots, and better than bouillon chicken stock. I measured out about 1+1/2 cups of dry beans and cooked the beans for 20 minutes in 3-4 cups of water (add 1 tablespoon of chicken BTB}, with 1 carrot broken into 3 pieces, 1 rib of celery, broken into three pieces, and 1/2 of a peeled onion. and a fat clove of peeled garlic. My pot of beans took about 1+1/2 hours. Drain, remove the chunks of vegetables, and reserve cooking broth for chili instead of adding water as in the box recipe instructions.

My other chili additions today, are a can of mild Hatch Green Chilies/diced, a can of diced Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes, and tomato passata instead of tomato sauce.

Serve with an array of chili toppings of your choice…today my special addition to my bowl thanks to Bruce & Twila is a healthy helping of roasted poblanos and jalapeno peppers.

Follow Instant Pot chili cooking instructions and look to the chili mix package for stovetop instructions and ingredients…

Enjoy.