How to Improvise: Easy Vegan Chili Recipe With Meat Option

This awesome easy chili recipe from Twitters makes improvising fun and easy.

December 7, 2011
How to Improvise: Easy Chili Recipe With Meat OptionSource: Susan Orlins

How to Improvise: Easy Vegan Chili Recipe With Meat Option.

My cooking style is well-suited to improvising with this easy chili recipe: an awesome vegan chili, from Twitter (twecipe) that lends itself well to creative interpretation.

Last week my daughter and I made the 140-character vegan chili twecipe, with great success.

If you have read some of my other recipes, you may have noticed how flexible I like to be when cooking.

Unlike during my coloring book years, when I drew within the lines; somewhere between then and the birth of my first child, my inclination to restrict myself to boundaries flew the coop.

Below are all the details from this easy chili recipe, which resulted in a piquant chili with a hint of heat, a hint of sweet.

The vegan chili recipe:

Veg Chili: Brwn onion/T oil; +T garlc&grndcoffee&chilipdr&worces&soya/2c shroom&bell&carrot&celery&cookdbean; +4c crushdtom. Simmr h; +lim

Translation of vegan chili recipe:

Brown onion in 1 Tbsp oil.

Add 1 Tbsp each garlic, ground coffee, chili powder, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce.

Add 2 cups each mushrooms, bell pepper, carrots, celery, cooked beans.

Add 4 cups crushed tomatoes.

Simmer for 1 hour.

Add lim (I didn't add lim, not sure what it's meant to be. Lime?)

Here's how we made our version of the vegan chili recipe:

Keep in mind my philosophy of adding more of what I like, less of what I like less, adjusting the taste as I go along. We also added a pound of ground turkey, frozen corn, maple syrup to taste and finely-chopped hot peppers.

We chopped all the vegetables as we went along.

Brown a yellow onion in olive oil (Some would say use a more neutral vegetable oil, such as canola.)

Here's where we added a pound of ground meat, which—like practically everything else in my Twecipeland—is optional.

Here is also where the meat was sticking and my daughter said, "We need more olive oil." So I got the bottle and poured, pretty quickly realizing it was not the olive oil, but balsamic vinegar. Oops. Ok, got the olive oil.

The twecipe calls for 1 Tbsp each garlic, ground coffee (we added only 2 tsp), chili powder (we added 2 Tbsp), worcestershire sauce, soy sauce.

Add 2 cups each mushrooms, bell pepper (we used one green and one red), carrots, celery, cooked beans. (We used canned, drained and rinsed red kidney beans and black beans. We also added finely chopped hot peppers—the equivalent of one or two jalapenos—being careful to cover our hands while dicing so as not to burn our skin.)

Add 4 cups crushed tomatoes (we used diced tomatoes, because that's what we had).

Cover and simmer for 1 hour. (Frequent tastings led to our adding a few dollops of maple syrup to lend a hint of sweetness; brown sugar ought to work as well.)

Toward the end, we added 2 cups frozen corn.

Our chili was a bit liquid-y, so after 45 minutes or so we took off the lid. The theme here is to improvise with ingredients to enhance the taste to suit you.

Bon appetit!

More recipes:

See links to all my recipes and articles, including those on my blog, Confessions of a Worrywart.

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Anonymous | Dec 5, 2011
There are many reasons to choose a vegan lifestyle. Here are two uplifting videos to help everyone understand why so many people are making this life-altering choice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKr4HZ7ukSE and http://www.veganvideo.org
Anonymous | Dec 5, 2011
Looks amazing! Can't wait to try it!!
Susan Orlins | Dec 5, 2011

It's great and you just fiddle with the taste, adding more chili powder or hot pepper or syrup or brown sugar. I just remembered that we also added some beer. I look on the Internet at a few different recipes and get ideas that way too.

Anonymous | Dec 6, 2011
Oh interesting! I never thought of putting beer in my chili. At what point did you put it in?
Susan Orlins | Dec 6, 2011

Any time! improvise! We added a half bottle of beer after tasting the chili with all the other ingredients. 

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