Let's make chili - vegan style

1. Class Introduction: Hi, I'm Mark Isaacson, And I've been vegetarian since 1997 and vegan since 2000 and one when I would tell people that I was a vegetarian. Many times I would hear people say to me, Wow, you must make a really good chili. Now, I'm not really sure why they would make that assumption. And I have to admit, I made a chilly. That was okay. Sometimes it came out better than others, and I didn't really follow a recipe. I would look at what I had in the house, and I would make it more or less the same way each time. But it really would vary depending what I did have in the house at the time. And so eventually I reached a point that I decided, Why don't I come up with the recipe so that I could make it consistently good every time that I make it? And that's the recipe that I'm going to share with you today. Now, I want you to know that the recipe I'm sharing just gives you a nice base forced making a vegan chili. You can feel free to tweak it, however you want to make it spicier, or give it a little bit different Consistency of texture. Some have some different ingredients in it. But what I'm gonna give you today gives you something that gives you a pretty easy base that's consistently good. And then it gives you something that you can work with on your own. So why don't I stopped talking about it and let you see what I put together for you? Let's check it out. 2. The Base Ingredients: One of the things that I like to do with all of the recipes I prepare is to make sure that they're pretty easy to put together. And they don't require a whole lot of ingredients or very unusual ingredients. And so what I've done with this chili is the base ingredients that I like to use our three different types of beans, a can of tomato puree, diced tomatoes and an onion. So what, you can see how God here is a 25 ounce can of black beans, a 25 ounce can kidney beans, a 25 ounce can of garbanzo beans. I've got a 28 ounce can of fire roasted tomatoes, and these happen to be whole tomatoes. But we can break them up in the pop, and I've got a 28 ounce can of tomato puree. Now this is just, ah, white onion. Now you can see what I've done. Additionally, Teoh add a little bit more flavor and variety to this. Chilies have added to small zucchini. You can get one medium zucchini, too small zucchini. It depends on what your preferences are, and I've added to medium sized carrots as well then I'm gonna put in there, and that's really all the ingredients that make up the chili right now. So next I'll take a look at the spices that I like to include with the chili. 3. The Spices: Now we'll take a look at the spices that I like to put in the chilly, and you can see that there's not a whole lot of spices that I put in here, so it's not very complicated. I like to use 1/2 a tablespoon of chili powder, 1/2 a tablespoon of cumin. I'll put in 1/4 or an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne red pepper. And again, you can adjust the spices to your taste for how how hot or mild you'd like it to be. I put in 1/2 will take half of a tablespoon of garlic. I'll put in it half of a teaspoon of salt. I'll great in some pepper and just do that to taste. And then what I've got here is some dried pepper powder that a friend had given to me, and this is some really hot stuff. And so what I do with that is I put in just a little bit, maybe like an eighth of a teaspoon for the size recipe that I have here and again. Feel free to adjust that to your preferences, and then the last thing that I like to put in is six tablespoons of nutritionally east. I think it adds a nice flavor to it. It certainly adds a lot more nutrition. You can feel free to leave that out. If you want to and see how you like it, try it both ways and see which one you prefer. So now that we've gotten a chance to see the spices and the main ingredients, let's start putting the things together. 4. Empty the Cans: one of the things that I love love, love to aim for in my recipes is to make very little mess and have very little cleanup. Not have to use a lot of pots and pans and bowls and mixing things. And that's one of the things that's so great about this chili recipe is there's almost no mess that we make. So you're going to see I'm gonna something go ahead and I could just dump the things right out of the can into the pot. I'm actually going to get a spatula here so I can get all of them puree out. Now, this is really nice, because it doesn't really matter what order I put the ingredients in, and I haven't even started to preheat the pot pretty much. I just dump all of the ingredients into the pop, and then I turn the heat on the pot. So it's so simple to do you want to worry about getting things in the wrong order that some things might cook too much. Some things might not cook enough, and you'll see I'm gonna take all the cans and I just dumped him in there. Now, as I mentioned. I'm actually using whole fire roasted tomatoes as this cooks. I could even need some right now. Delicious. Um, I can break this up some into into the chili. Next, I'll put in the cans of beans. And what you're going to see is that I'm not gonna actually even drain or rinse the beans. I just take them right from the can. Dump them into the pot. Now, if you felt like your chili was coming out too thin, you could either feel free to drain some of the liquid off before you do it. Or what I prefer to do is I just like to let the chili simmer longer and cook off some of the liquid that's in there because the more you simmer it, the more the flavors will spread throughout in the more the flavors develop. So I like to just dump the cans right in there and deal with, however thick or thin it is later on, we got our last can of beans we're gonna put into the pot Nam and multiplying. This recipe is also super simple, and you don't have to have the exact measurements. The rest of you that I have given you gives you just a good general ratio of ingredients that you're going to use. So now I've got all the beans, the tomato puree and the whole fire roasted tomatoes in the pot. And next I'm gonna move on to the produce. 5. Prepare the Produce: so I'll need to rinse these cans out from I came up later on, but what I'm going to do right now is just really quickly. I'll go ahead and I'm gonna peel the carrots. I don't think you really need a close up of me peeling the carrots into the sink here. There's no special technique that I'm using to peel my carrots. I think you're quite capable of peeling carrots on your own. I don't think you need an instruction manual on that. Now that I peeled my carrots, I'm just gonna really quickly rinse off the zucchini. I don't feel that I need to peel it. I'm happy to have all of the zucchini in Chile, and then I'm gonna go ahead and I'll peel my teammate and I my onion, and then I'll come back in a little bit and show you how much I chop things up before I put them into the chili pot. 6. Dice the Produce: Hi. Well, I peeled, I've rinsed. I've got my produce ready to go. I'm gonna chop it up now and I'm going to get it into the pot so we'll do a little bit of fast forward as I'm doing this right now. But I want to give you a chance to see how what size I dice these things too, Just for your information. Are you ready? Let's get started. And now it's time to dice the tomato. I hope I don't cry. So you can see one thing that I've done is I haven't cut the tomato all the way through here. I still got it attached. So right now, even though I started cutting it there really aren't those fumes or gases coming out that irritate the I So much So I've got to do the one last cut. We'll see how quickly I can do it and get it in the pot. Look, Mom, no tears 7. Add the Spices: now for something completely different, thus spices. 8. Stir the Pot: Well, I've got all of the ingredients in the pot right now, and I probably could have used a little bit bigger part than this, but that's OK. We'll work with what we've got right now, So I'm going to give these things a quick little stir here to start mixing the ingredients together. So I've got everything mixed together right now and Oh, man, I got to tell you, this smells so good. I am so hungry standing here. I haven't had my lunch yet. I wanted to shoot this before I did lunch. Today. I'm planning to have this chili for lunch, but I am starving right now, and this smells amazing right now. So the next thing that I need to do is I'm gonna cover the pop and I'm going to turn up the heat. Now, I'd love to put it on high so that I could bring it to a boil quickly. The problem is, if I try to bring it to a boil too quickly, it's likely that the stuff on the bottom is gonna end up burning. And that's really no fun to have all the stuff burned on the bottom. So it's actually much better to just take my time. Let it come up to heat gradually and then you want to be careful. A swell once it becomes one, once it comes to a boil, then you can lower the heat and you can let it simmer for a while. And the more you let it simmer them or the flavors cook together and the richer and hardier the flavor becomes and as well. Another thing that you can do is instead of eating it the day that you prepared it, you can actually put it in the refrigerator and then warming up another day or what some people can even do may choose to dio is that she would actually freeze it. And then you re heated another time because generally what happens once you've cooled it and then you reheat it, it becomes even more flavorful. So for right now, I'm gonna let this do its thing. I'm gonna let it come to a boil. I'll check on it periodically so that it's not burning on the bottom. And then once it's come to the boil, lower to simmer and I'll let it cook for however much longer. I want to cause pretty much. Once it's come to a boil, it's heated through and you're good to eat it. The only reason you need to let it simmer is if you wanted it to thicken up some. Maybe I'll give you a close up shot here in just a bit so you can see what the consistency this is right now. I'm actually really happy with the thickness of us. I don't think it's too thick. I don't think it's too watery. So I don't think I'm gonna go crazy simmering it too much. But, man, Oh, man, I can't wait for it to be done because I am home Gree. 9. Close Up of the Consistency: So I just wanted to give you a nice close up shot here of the ingredients in the pot so you can get an idea of how thick it was. Remember, I just took all of the cans and I just dump them right in here. I didn't train them. I didn't rinse them. I didn't do any of that stuff. I just took it and go through it right into the pot. And I'm pretty happy with the way this looks. You can adjust it the way that you want, but this is on the medium high heat. Now. I guess you'd say I'm giving it a chance to come to a boil and I'm gonna have to check back in later on. Who? 10. The Clean Up: Hi. So this is one of the things that I love to geek out about When I make my recipes is how little mess there is and how easy it is to clean up. So I'm getting a really tight shot here on the sink. Showing you what I've gotten the same. When I was preparing these things, I just went ahead. I dropped the cans into the sink. I peeled the vegetables into the sink. If I wanted to, I could have probably been more careful because I actually compost my vegetables. I could have just peeled them and put the things right into the compost bucket. But you can see there's hardly any mess here, and I'm gonna be careful, so I don't cut myself. Unlike hands, I've got the one night that I used to cut things up on the Terance that I've got the cutting board that I want to rent and then pretty much the rest of this stuff, I'll rinse out the cans. I'll put them in recycling. I've got the scraps from the vegetables that will get caught by the strainer and I'll dump them in the compost bin. The only other thing that I've done besides, that is, I just had to take a dry towel and I wiped off the tea spoons that tablespoon half teaspoon a to spoon, whatever the measuring spoons that I use, so it's pretty awesome making this recipe. 11. More Great Things About This Recipe: So besides the fact that this recipe is so easy to make and so easy to clean up, I didn't mention how easy it is to clean it up tonight. Sure is that not only isn't vegan, it's also gluten free soy free, and I've only put in eighth of a teaspoon of salt in the whole recipe, so it's very low sodium as well. Now as I've mentioned, you can feel free to tweak the recipe to your taste. And maybe you'd even pay attention to the cans of beans that you put in there, and you'd make sure that you got extra low sodium beans. If if that's a signature concerned about. So the recipe is suitable for so many different people. And trust me, it's really yummy. Oh so and, man, Oh, man, I am still waiting for this stuff to come to a boil and heat fully so that I can finally have my lunch. Please, please, please hurry up already. You numbers 12. It's Alive!: At this point, the chili has come to a boil. I'm just taking the top off now. I have been stirring it periodically while it's been heating up, and I'm gonna bring this down now toe, let it simmer some. And so it's good, because I've been careful to be patient about this so that the things don't burn on the bottom. And now it's just a matter of deciding how much I want the different ingredients to cook down, like how soft I would want the onions to get or how soft I'd want the zucchini to get. Now I had mentioned that I made my recipe with Oops, I'm gonna drop that right out of the pot with these whole fire roasted tomatoes, I could let those cook down. I could see about breaking them up some in there or, if you prefer, you could just do it with diced tomatoes to start out with instead of doing the whole tomatoes. But now all that's really left is to let the simmer for whatever amount of time I want to let the rest of the ingredients finished cooking to whatever consistency I want them to be , and then as well. I will let this cook with the top off at this point because that will help it to thicken up some if I you know, if I don't want it to be quite as, um thin as it is right now. Although I'm I'm pretty happy to eat it this way. But it's just a matter of how I want things to come out at this point. So I'm gonna let it simmer some. And I still can't wait to eat this. It smells so amazing in my house. Right now. I am just dying waiting for this to be ready. And in fact, what I may end up doing is I may take some of it off the stove right now, put it in a bowl and eat it even before it's simmered down further 13. Let's Eat :): okay. It's about time. I am ready to eat. What I've done is I've still got the pots simmering on the stove. I'm gonna let some of the things soften a little bit more. I'm gonna let the flavors make their way throughout the whole chili. Maybe let the chili thicken up some. But I am so hungry right now. I've been playing around all day building this course, making this chili. The house smells amazing, and I just don't wanna wait. Teoh eat. So I'm gonna sit down and have some of it. Now, even though I haven't may be completely finished cooking it. You can see I've got the different things in here. I've got got one of those tomatoes, got some carrots, zucchini. I've got the three different types of beans in here and the onions, and I'm just gonna go ahead and have a taste of this. I've let it cool a little bit here, so I hope that I don't burn my mouth with this first spoon. But I'm gonna give it a taste and let you know what I think. Oh, yeah, that's good. It's got that nice little bit of heat to it. that comes in at the end because I put just a little bit of that spice. It's got a nice mixture of flavors, and I am ready to dig in and finish the rest Vegan love. 14. Final Thoughts: That was good. I'm so glad that you watched the whole class. And now it's gonna be time for you to start your own project. This was so delicious. I had two bowls full of it. That nice and hot little bit of spice. My bald spot is sweating here. Some things that you might want to do to vary the recipe on your own. Maybe you've had some bell peppers or maybe put in some baking potatoes or sweet potatoes. A nice way to complement the beans is to put in some brown rice, kind of complete the protein there. Perhaps you'd even want a garnish it with a bit of vegan cheese or vegan sour cream. So go ahead and get your project started. I'd like to see what you do with this recipe and let me know how you like the base that I gave you. Born appetite