“And I thought I’d make easy chili.”
“No, please don’t…I’ll make chili.”
That was the conversation Cathy and I had last week. Cathy found a slow cooker recipe for
chili. Only four ingredients. It was okay…I mean…it tasted like
chili…sorta. But it had no depth of
flavor…no…well…not much of anything.
So I decided to make chili.
Now, most of the chilis I’ve made in the past haven’t
exactly been healthy. Cathy makes a
wonderful turkey chili, and I’ve made chicken chili in the past, but when it
comes to good ol’ red meat, they tend to be a bit…unhealthy. So the task at hand was to make a beef chili
that tasted great, and was healthier.
So the first choice I had to make was what kind of beef I
would use. Well, I prefer a steak of
some sort that I can cut into cubes. I
like the texture that it brings to the dish, so ground meat was out. I wanted a piece that would be as lean as
possible, but maybe a little bit decadent, something like…filet mignon. Eureka!
I decided to make filet mignon chili!
I did some checking to see if anyone had made that
before. It had been made before, but
there weren’t a ton of recipes on it.
Some were more difficult than others; there was one that looked pretty
good. But, I wanted to do my own thing.
In order to make it healthier, I left out the beer. Generally when I cook chili, I like a dark
beer, but of course, there are no gluten free dark beers that I am aware of,
plus, I wanted to save the calories. So
I would leave that out.
So, here is what I did.
In my Dutch oven over medium heat, I put in two tablespoons of grape
seed oil. Once that was hot, I added in
two large chopped onions, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and let that cook
for about 10 minutes or so. Then I added
in roughly a pound of the fillet mignon which I had cut into cubes. Then I put in the spice mixture that I had
learned in the past. Three tablespoons
of chili powder, 1 tablespoon of cumin, ½ teaspoon of cayenne, and a quarter
teaspoon of red chili flakes. This would
add a good amount of heat, but wouldn’t blow away the palate. I let that cook for about another 10
minutes. Then in went two cans of small
red beans, and two large cans of diced tomatoes. I brought the whole thing to a boil, then let
it simmer for an hour. After an hour, I
tasted it, and then re-seasoned it.
I have to say, the taste was really quite good. It had heat, it had texture, it was meaty, a
tad bit soupy so there was something to sop up with my Udi’s gluten free rolls…everything
I like in a chili. If I made one
mistake, it was that I should have added a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste,
because I like the additional richness and body tomato paste brings to chili.
That being said, this was a success.
As for making it healthier? Well, one bowl was 291 calories with 11 grams of fat. That's roughly 32%. Not bad! That includes a small amount of low fat cheese on top.
