I am not a professional chef or photographer, so the images you’ll see are how the meals come out looking as I serve them to my family. Hope that’s ok…
Main Meal: End of the Week, Veggie-Loaded, Sausage Dump Chili Ingredients
- Meat (this can be anything you have leftover from earlier in the week. Ground beef, steak, chicken, etc. I used sausage for this recipe).
- Beans (YES! I include beans in my chili. I always have an overstock of random beans in my pantry, so this is the perfect way to use what you already have. For this recipe, I used 1 15 oz can of pinto beans, 1 15 oz can of black beans and 1 15 oz can of red kidney beans).
- 1 or 2 14.5 oz cans of fire-roasted diced tomatoes. (this is the secret ingredient, so don’t skip this one).
- 1 or 2 14.5 oz cans of crushed tomatoes
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- Veggies (by the end of the week I always have random extra vegetables in my fridge that I hate to throw away so I chopped them up and tossed them into the crockpot. For this recipe, I used onions, mushrooms, spinach and celery.
- Optional: seasoning to taste
Directions
- Prepare your meat. If it’s not already cooked, go ahead and cook it, brown it, fry it, or whatever it needs. Then place it in your crockpot.
- Chop and sautee any veggies. Raw veggies can be a bit weird in chili (except the celery that I used in which case I cut it up very, very fine). Place in the crockpot.
- Rinse your beans. I do rinse my beans because it makes for a less-soggy chili.
- Dump your 1 or 2 cans of fire-roasted tomatoes and crushed tomatoes into the crockpot. Then add your tomato paste.
- Add any seasoning that you like. I added garlic powder and a smokey sausage seasoning. Cover and set to ‘low.’ Let it simmer all day. I start mine at noon so it’s ready around 6ish. Stir throughout the day so nothing burns or sticks to the bottom of your crockpot.
Nutritional Information
- This makes about 6 cups of chili. One serving is a cup and a half. I also did not count calories from the vegetables in these calculations.
- Calories: 454
- Fat: 7 g
- Carbs: 60 g
- Sugar: 12 g
- Protein: 21 g
Side
- cornbread
Add protein: you could add more lean protein by using ground chicken or turkey. Combining all of these ingredients and letting it simmer can really help give blander meats, like chicken and turkey, some nice flavor.
Add veggies: literally, anything in your fridge that you think would be good in chili you can go ahead and dump. That’s why this is called ‘dump chili.’
Dinner & Mocktails 