Homestyle Chili and Cornbread (Day 12)

Usually I only think to cook chili for church potlucks, but chili is actually a great meal for two on a cold night. And since I'm looking for great meals to cook during a busy semester, I had to try the chili recipe out! My recipe book actually has several different recipes for chili, but the one I picked seemed like the most genuine one. It seemed like it would be hard and time-consuming, but actually it wasn't!

The recipe:

Now I didn't follow this recipe completely. For instance, five 16-oz cans of kidney beans? I only did two cans. Two cans of pinto beans? No. One. I didn't realize this would be a problem until it had ten more minutes of simmering. . .I didn't cut down the rest of the recipe. Which wasn't bad, per se, but spicy. But if you're like us and you're into that, then it's all good!

Onions, peppers and salt and pepper right before adding a pound of hamburger.

Very colorful, isn't it? I drained the beans which I probably wasn't supposed to do (recipe didn't tell me!). In my case it was okay because my pan probably couldn't have held that extra juice. It still had fat from the hamburger, so it was "soupy" enough.

The chili mid-simmer. During this time, I made some cornbread. Nothing fancy, just from a box mix (Krusteaz Honey Cornbread. Add milk, oil and egg.) Cornbread is just a must with chili.

The sour cream takes away some of the spice, and adds to the flavor at the same time. So good!

We just loved it! And we loved how much leftover we had. We're going to bring it over and have lunch with my brother-in-law, Derek, and his fiancee, Kaylee. We're also going to make chocolate-dipped mice. What is that? I'll post pictures next time :)

Taste: 9. It was very, very spicy. I like spicy, but too much can overwhelm the other flavors which it almost did. The sour cream helped with that though. That wasn't the recipe's fault though. It wouldn't have been as spicy if I didn't take away 4 cans of beans. . .but I just didn't need that much!
Simplicity: 10. Very easy. You're basically just adding, adding, adding. The only prep you have to do is cut the onion and peppers. It's pretty fast too! After you brown the meat, you add the rest and simmer for 20 minutes. I'm all for that!
Overall, a very quick and satisfying comfort food. I'm excited to bring this chili to my next church potluck. Next time I'll use every can of beans so there's enough for everyone!