Today we’re sharing our homemade chili recipe. This is the perfect comfort food to make during the cold fall and winter months.
Chili is such a versatile food in that you can eat just a bowl of chili or can eat it along with a piece of cornbread, bread or biscuit. Chili is also great to serve over corn chips or to use to make nachos. Chili also makes amazing leftovers with having chili dogs, chili burgers, chili potatoes or really any food that you would enjoy topped with chili.
Homemade chili is a one pot meal that keeps on giving with so many leftovers and additional meals. It is also very inexpensive or frugal meal if you’re trying to reduce your grocery budget. If you use dried beans, you can get these for around 60 cents to 1.00 per pound. Then you only need some vegetables, a few canned items, and a pound or so of ground meat to complete a pot of chili.
Our homemade chili recipe starts with the perfect beans. A good bowl of chili is really about the beans. We feel the best type of beans to use are pinto beans. The best way to cook dried beans is to soak them overnight and cook them before adding them to your chili. Then once you add all the ingredients to your pot, you’re just heating the chili through since everything is cooked.
Homemade Chili
The best and easiest homemade chili recipe
Ingredients
To make the beans
- 1 quart dry pinto beans
- Enough water to cover the beans
To make the chili
- 1 lb ground beef, cooked and drained
- 1 onion, diced
- 1/2 cup celery, chopped
- 1/2 cup green bell pepper, chopped
- 1 15-ounce can of tomato sauce
- 1 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes
- 1 6-ounce can of tomato paste
- 2 cans of water
- 1-2 tbsp chili powder
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp coriander
- 1 tsp oregano
- 1 tsp sugar
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
To make the beans
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Sort and rinse one quart of dry pinto beans.
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Pour pinto beans into your instant pot and cover with at least a couple of inches water. Place a plate or loose cover over the pot.
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Soak these pinto beans overnight.
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The next morning, drain and rinse the beans.
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Place the beans back into the instant pot and cover them with a couple of inches of water.
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Use your chili or bean function or cook them on manual for 30 minutes in your instant pot.
To make the chili
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Once your beans are cooked, you will drain and remove them from the instant pot.
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You will then brown up the ground beef. Once the beef is almost cooked through, add your onion, celery, and bell pepper and saute with the meat.
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Once the beef and vegetables are cooked. You will then add your canned tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, tomato paste and a couple of cans of water.
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Add all of your spices and return your beans to the pot.
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Use the slow cooker function and cook for 4 hours.
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Serve chili with your favorite toppings or sides.
How long does homemade chili keep?
Chili makes amazing leftovers. Homemade chili will keep for several days if stored in an airtight container and refrigerated. It can also be placed in freezer safe containers for longer term storage in the freezer. If you get burnt out on chili after a few days, just package up the rest of your leftovers and freeze them for later use.
We’d love to hear what you think about the recipe. Please give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below. Thank you for stopping by and visiting Sunup to Sundown! We’ll be back soon with another recipe or update regarding our garden or our journey to becoming more self-reliant. Please subscribe, like or share this post with others who could benefit from it.
