Mexican chili recipe

The introduction

This recipe was written in a newspaper some time ago, which is a medical newspaper and my father had it as he is a doctor. So he read it and liked the idea of this dish. He told me about it and we decided to buy the ingredients and prepare the dish as it seemed to be delicious.

You know, you should always try to do some new things and try something new, because you never know when you find something you will like or love or whatsoever. Once I remember I was eating a Kiwi and my sister was very little and she had not eaten Kiwi yet and when I suggested eating it she refused and told me she didn’t love it while she hadn’t even tried it. And then some time later when she tasted it, Kiwi became one of her favourite fruits of all time. So, you can not really say you don’t like something until you have tried it or tasted it, etc.

So, what can I say about this recipe? It’s really good and not so light, not so heavy. It’s just perfect. Its consistency is great, the taste is amazing and if you like these ingredients you will definitely love this dish and the preparation process is not very difficult, too. And you don’t really need to get all dirty and stuff, as it is not that terrible thing to prepare this Chili.

As you see, the name is Chili and I can say, that it is a Mexican dish, or so this lady wrote in that newspaper that the recipe is Mexican and well, we have to trust her, as the ingredients sound very Mexican to me, if you want to know the truth. And, of course, you can always google the recipe and see if it is true or something is added or something subtracted, but hey, who cares that at this moment, when the dish is just perfect!

So, enough of that talk and let’s get started!

Ingredients:

• Ground beef 500 grams
• Bell peppers 2
• Mushrooms 300 grams
• Beans 200 grams
• Onions 2
• Black pepper to taste
• Red pepper to taste
• Salt to taste
• Peeled tomatoes 1 litre

Preparation process

Until I start writing about the preparation process, I want to tell you that you have to prepare some things some time earlier, than the time of cooking the dish. That way, it will be easier for you to complete your task. So, you have to have beans prepared already, or it will take you some time to prepare them. And, maybe you can pre-prepare some rice, too, but it is not in the ingredients of the dish, as it is not an ingredient, but something you can eat the dish with, and it’s totally up to you if you want to eat the dish with the rice or not.

Okay, so the first thing to do is to have a ground beef. Now, you can either buy beef and then ground it yourself in a grinding machine, or just buy the beef ground. Every grocery store has their meat section where you will find all kinds of meat that you will be surprised. There is practically everything and in every shape and size and price and stuff like that. And the buying process is very easy and comfortable, I think you will agree on that. The thing is, here in Georgia many people buy beef and then ground it, because they like to see what kind of meat they are having or from which part of an animal that meat came from, or something like that, well, that’s my assumptions, I guess, but many people would wonder what meat they are eating, right? So, it’s kind of better to see which parts of an animal your beef consists of. So, until you decide which beef you are going to buy _ ground or not ground, just think about it!

If you don’t want to ground the beef yourself or something like that, or if you don’t want to waste your time grinding and dealing with all that beef stuff (it’s not very exhausting, but still it’s a lot of work and time-consuming stuff, I can say), then you can just buy that ground beef. And, actually, there’s this canned beef bought in stores that is pre-prepared already, I mean, it is cooked and you just have to heat it up to eat, so this is all prepared and stuff and you don’t really need to do anything. And if you don’t want to deal with raw beef or you don’t want to waste any time on it, you can just buy this canned beef and heat it up and the first step of the process will be done in a couple of minutes. It can even take less than a couple of minutes, as it doesn’t really need much time to be warmed up.

So, I guess, you are wondering, after all this stuff I just wrote, what exactly is the first step of the preparation process to just do it already!

The first step here is to get your ground beef, put it in a saucepan and just cook it in some oil. You know, it’s like you do with the onions _ cook it until it becomes all brownish and stuff like that and it omits kind of a good smell. This first step is a pleasant step, I can say, it’s like you feel the beginning of something great and you will soon see it.

Then, you need some chopped onions and garlic. Well, here’s a thing now. First of all, you need to have these things prepared already, because you kind of need them to be added very soon after putting the ground beef into the saucepan and getting started with the cooking stuff. So, the onions need to be either chopped or sliced in round shapes. Here in the recipe this lady wrote that the onions should be sliced in round shapes (I guess, mainly that is because it gives the dish a good look and it becomes prettier). But I don’t really like those round shaped onions in my dishes, so I prefer chopping them to slicing them. So, it’s up to you, you decide which one you like better and do it that way.

And the other thing here, there are some people who don’t like garlic or have some kind of a bad reaction to it, and when eating garlic then you have this smell from your mouth that I hate so much and mainly I don’t use garlic in my dishes, or if I use it, I use it just a little, so that it really is not noticeable , I guess, so I’m telling you this because it’s not really necessary to do everything in a recipe just the way it is said, if you ask me. And remember what told you about trying some new things? Well, I sure like to try new things, especially with the food and recipes, and sometimes they come out better, sometimes they don’t, but at least I have tried and seen what can be done and what can not be done and the next time I won’t do that, of course.

So, you have that ground beef in your oiled saucepan, then you add some onions and garlic and you cook them all on a low gas heat for about 10 minutesor so.

The next step is to have a sliced bell pepper and mushrooms. You can have whichever bell pepper you want, but it’s great if you have different kinds of bell pepper such as the red and green and yellow ones, because it makes the dish colourful and kind of pretty, too. So, you just take the middle of the bell pepper out _ you know the white part where the seeds are and stuff, and just slice the bell peppers in a round shapes. Well, you can chop them if you like or do whatever you want, but according to the recipe you should slice them and believe me, it’s a good choice for the dish, as I said, it makes the dish pretty.

And about the mushrooms, you can either buy the sliced mushrooms, or the whole ones. Actually, it’s better if you buy the whole ones, but they should not be large and ugly, of course. Personally, I prefer small mushrooms. You know, the white cute small ones. I think, they are just perfect for the dish. I don’t really like those big things hanging around in dishes and when you have to slice them million times just to eat them and stuff like that. So, these mushrooms are sold in every grocery store and they usually don’t cost much, so just go and get them. Of course there are canned mushrooms, too and if you don’t want to spend your precious time cleaning these mushrooms and cooking them, you can just buy those canned ones and add them to the dish. Well, I don’t actually know if there are whole mushrooms canned, but I guess, there will be, because nowadays you can find anything in the grocery stores! It was not mentioned in this recipe, but until I put those mushrooms in that saucepan where I had all those other stuff being cooked, I boiled some water in another saucepan and put those mushrooms in that boiling water for a couple of minutes just in case. Then I took them out. So, you might as well do that. Or you can just skip that part.

Now, you just add these sliced bell peppers and whole mushrooms to the saucepan and cook them, too for about 10 minutes occasionally stirring.

The next step is the beans. You have to have pre-cooked beans, so that you can add them to the saucepan. Cooking the beans is not hard, but it takes time, so, you have to consider that. I have written some blogs about cooking the beans, but I can tell you that here, too. So, it’s better if you soak the beans a night before or some hours before preparing them, because that way it will take less time for them to be cooked. But if you just decided to prepare this dish and need to cook the beans, it’s alright, too. You just pour some water in a saucepan, put the beans and wait for the water to be boiled. When the water boils, spill it out and pour a cold water in the saucepan so that the beans are covered with it and you can add even more water, and just let it cook. When you see that the beans are kind of ready, you can taste them and then decide whether they are ready or not. You can add some salt in the cooking process, too, or when it’s done, or just don’t add any of it at all, because then you will add some salt to the main dish and everything will be fine. So, you should add those cooked beans to the main dish in the saucepan, and with them you should also add those tomatoes, black pepper, salt and red pepper to your taste!

Now, when you have everything in your saucepan, you should let the mixture cook on a low heat for about 40 minutes.

Then, you should preheat the oven on a 220 degrees Celsius, pour the dish into a heatproof bowl or something and put it in the oven for about 20 minutes. That way, it will become less juicy and will be all great and stuff. Of course, you can skip this step as I did it when I prepared this dish, because I really wanted to taste it and I couldn’t wait for another 20 minutes for it to be done. And it really didn’t matter whether I’d put it in the oven or not, because it was already perfect and I knew I could eat it at once.

The dish is very delicious, especially when you are hungry. You will not regret making your time for this dish and working a lot to prepare it. You can even eat the dish with rice _ it’s a great thing for eating the dish in a pleasant way.

So, enjoy your dish. I hope you will find the recipe very helpful! Have a good day!

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