Over the past month or so, I have been working on emptying our overflowing freezer. Two weeks ago, I found some cooked white beans that I had frozen a couple months ago. Our friends were serving chili at our community dinner, so I decided it might be a good time to try some white bean chili. With some improvising on the fly, it turned out pretty good. Unfortunately I did not write down the specific improvisations, but here's a close approximation. The original recipe came from myrecipes.com.
Ingredients:
1 medium onion
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves (I used SCD legal minced garlic from Spice World)
1 lb ground chicken
4 cups water
1-2 teaspoons salt (I'm a bit of a salt fiend)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder (to taste)
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
2 cups white beans (cooked per Breaking the Vicious Cycle instructions)
1 cup homemade chicken broth
3 tablespoons lime juice
Preparation
- Sauté chopped onion in hot oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat 7 minutes; add garlic, and sauté 2 to 3 minutes.
- Stir in chicken, and cook, stirring constantly, until chicken is lightly browned. Stir in water and salt, cumin, chili powder, pepper, and oregano; reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often, 10 minutes or until chicken is done.
- Place beans into Dutch oven; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often, 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Stir in lime juice just before serving. Garnish with cilanto, if desired.
- Top with freshly shredded Monterrey jack cheese.
- Optional: I cooked some frozen corn on the side and added that to the non-SCDers bowls. I served corn muffins and tortilla chips for them along with the chili. I had made some SCD muffins to go along with mine. Also, the recipe calls for 2 cans of green chiles (4.5 ounces each) but I omitted these as well just because I didn't have any legal ones on hand.
It's a great dish for the increasingly cold nights!
