Quick and Easy Healthy Recipes – Meat Free Chili – Slow Cooker Edition.

Recipe – Meat Free Chili Con Carne

Prep time – 10 minutes

Serving – 6 – 8

How easy to make – You can’t get any easier than this

Cooking time – 6 hours in slow cooker

So, you are sat down, sunk into your comfy sofa or couch as they say, whilst staring at the ceiling wondering what you can rustle together for dinner this evening or tomorrow?

Nothing coming to mind? Sometimes it can feel like ground hog day with meals, especially with the plant based or vegetarian variety. As most of these wonderful meals take literally hours to prepare and end up turning an enjoyable pastime into a monotonous task.

Slashing Prep Time

If you are on a meat free diet, you will be all too familiar with the prep game involved maintaining this type of lifestyle. The majority of recipes and books have you slaving away (can I still say that?) most of the day and after a while it can get tedious and for some, put them off the idea all together (my other half at the time of writing bottled it months ago).

Here I am, looking at the cobwebs swaying like a palm tree on a warm sunny day in the Caribbean from side to side on the ceiling, wondering to myself what is on the menu for this evening?

Alas! An idea…

Meat Free Chili To The Rescue!

Then it hit me…like a wet and fresh piece of tofu right between the eyes! Why don’t I try a meat free chili…but not just that, lob everything in the good old slow cooker and see what the crock pot of destiny turns out like?

Here we are, in 2021 making one of the most basic and simple recipes there is known to man (and woman or any other gender pronoun), the good old Chili con carne.

However, this one is using Quorn mince, which is a great meat free alternative for those looking to swap out the meat. Its high in protein, high in fibre and is gluten free.

For the record Quorn isnt plant based, its meat free as it contains egg white.

Get Cracking

The reason I first decided to go for this dish to make was simply because I hadn’t attempted it before, I have obviously made chili’s in the past and in the slow cooker too, but not like this the way im doing it with the ingredients.

I’ve lived a sheltered life I know, but thought it was worth a try and if it paid off, it’s a really quick meat free option for those who – A. can’t cook or B. don’t want to spend time prepping.

So, shall we begin prepping and spend less time blabbing? Alrighty then!

Ingredients

• 500g Quorn mince
• Red and Yellow Peppers
• 1 large white onion
• 400g tin of tomatoes
• 400g mixed beans
• vegetable stock cube
• 1 piled table spoon of tomato puree
• 1 teaspoon chili flakes
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 red wine stock pot
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• sprinkle of black pepper to taste

You will also need a slow cooker to literally throw it all into once it’s prepared. Simple as that.

Advanced Culinary Skills

Take the slow cooker and put it to one side, pour in the mince (frozen), then slice the peppers and onion into small chunks or strips depending on your preference.

Drop them into the slow cooker, add the tin of tomatoes, tin of mixed beans, then the stock cube and all the other ingredients mentioned above.

Simply stir it all in the slow cooker to mix it all up, then put the lid on and leave to cook for 6 hours. I like to check on it after a couple of hours for consistency. At the start there won’t be much liquid in the pot, but don’t worry, as the vegetables break down and the mince defrosts, they will release enough water to make the dish the right viscosity.

Its maybe around the 4-hour mark I will check the flavour and add a little pepper if desired, maybe even add a bit more cumin or paprika, depending on how it tastes.

Around 5 hours in, I will remove the lid of the slow cooker and leave it off to help thicken the sauce of the dish, as by this point there will be more liquid and it may seem a little watery.

All you need to do now is boil some rice and add a few of your preferred tortilla chips to dunk in on the side of your plate.

Once the 6 hours are up, dish up the rice and chili, along with the tortillas on the side and you have a quick and easy meat free meal, packed with nutrients and only takes literally 10 minutes to prepare, granted you have to wait 6 hours for it, but you aren’t having to do anything or worry you’ll burn or over do it.

It will feed between six to eight hungry mouths, you can also freeze it and simply reheat for another time, which is going to be even quicker than preparing the dish! WIN!

If you want to follow the recipe in real time, then click on the image below.

Time For Desert

If you would like to get in touch for any dinner parties, TV shows or festival events, then please ask someone who knows what they are doing (which isn’t me).

Look, what I’ve done here is hopefully given you some inspiration or you’ve taken the first step to actually cooking, to some people cooking is alien to them, to others it comes easy (we are all different), but with this recipe, it’s so easy and convenient that it might ignite the fire or open the door to get someone cooking…who knows?

If you have tried this quick and easy recipe or thinking of doing so and found this helpful, please leave a comment below, as I would love to hear them.

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Till next time, take care…