Crockpot Chili with Beef and Kidney Beans
Crockpot chili with browned beef mince, kidney beans and smoked paprika, cooked low for six hours until thick. Serves eight with cheddar and soured cream.
Chili is one of the few dishes that genuinely improves in a slow cooker. Six hours on low gives the beef time to soften, the beans time to take on the spices, and the tomatoes time to cook down into something thick enough to hold a spoon upright. The only part that asks for attention is the first fifteen minutes at the hob, browning the mince and softening the onions. After that the lid goes on and the pot looks after itself until dinner. It makes eight generous bowls, and the leftovers are better than the first serving.
| Prep Time | 20 | Cook Time | 360 |
| Servings | 8 | Calories | 470 kcal |
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil, such as sunflower or rapeseed
- 900 g (2 lb) beef mince, 15 to 20 per cent fat
- 2 medium onions (about 300 g / 10 oz), finely chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 3 tablespoons chili powder (the American spice blend, not pure ground chilli)
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon fine salt, plus more to finish
- 0.5 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 140 g (5 oz / about 6 tablespoons) tomato purée, known as tomato paste in the US
- 2 tins (400 g / 14 oz each) chopped tomatoes, with their juice
- 2 tins (400 g / 14 oz each) red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 240 ml (1 cup) beef stock
- To serve: 150 g (1.5 cups) grated mature cheddar, 120 ml (0.5 cup) soured cream, 4 spring onions thinly sliced
Buy mince with some fat in it. Anything leaner than 15 per cent will brown poorly and turn grainy over six hours, because there is no fat left to keep the strands separate. The small amount of extra fat renders out and sits on the surface, where it is easy to spoon off at the end if you would rather not have it.
Chili powder is the one ingredient worth checking at the shop. In the US it is a blend of mild ground chillies, cumin, oregano and garlic; in the UK a jar marked chilli powder is usually pure ground chilli and roughly five times hotter. If that is what you have, use one teaspoon of it and make up the rest with extra cumin, paprika and oregano.
Essential Kitchen Tools
| Slow cooker (5 to 6 litres) | Holds a double batch of mince and four tins comfortably |
| Wide frying pan | Browning the mince in a single layer rather than steaming it |
| Wooden spoon | Scraping the browned residue off the pan base |
| Sieve | Draining and rinsing the tinned beans |
| Ladle | Serving without splashing sauce down the side of the bowl |
If you have no slow cooker, a heavy casserole with a tight lid does the same job in a 150 °C (300 °F) oven for about 2 hours 30, stirred once halfway.
Why This Recipe Works
Chili is built on two slow processes that happen to suit a crockpot exactly. The first is the breakdown of connective tissue in the beef, which needs hours of gentle heat rather than minutes of hard heat. The second is the exchange of flavour between the beans and the liquid around them: beans are porous, and they spend the whole cook drawing in tomato, stock and spice. Neither can be hurried, and neither needs watching.
The spices are added to hot fat rather than straight into the pot for a chemical reason. The compounds that carry the aroma of cumin and paprika dissolve in fat, not in water, so toasting them in the pan spreads that aroma through the whole dish. Tipped dry into the cooker, the same spices stay stubbornly grainy and taste raw even after six hours.
The tomato purée does the thickening. Six hours of sealed cooking concentrates nothing, because no steam escapes, so the sauce has to arrive already thick. Frying the purée until it darkens gives the pot both its body and the faintly sweet, roasted depth that distinguishes a long-cooked chili from a quick one.
Pro Tips for Better Results
Brown in two batches if your pan is small. Crowded mince releases water faster than it evaporates, and it boils instead of browning. Two batches of four minutes beat one batch of ten.
Deglaze properly. The dark layer on the pan base after browning holds a large share of the finished flavour. A splash of stock and thirty seconds of scraping transfers all of it to the pot.
Rinse the beans. The starchy liquid in the tin tastes metallic and clouds the sauce. Cold water through a sieve for ten seconds is enough.
Resist stirring. Every lift of the lid costs roughly 20 minutes of cooking time, and stirring breaks the beans. One stir at the start is all this needs.
Salt at the end, not just the beginning. Flavours concentrate unpredictably over six hours, and tinned tomatoes vary in acidity. Taste before serving and correct then.
Let it sit. Fifteen minutes with the heat off lets the fat settle and the sauce tighten, and it stops the first mouthful burning the roof of your mouth.
Nutrition Facts (per serving)
| Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat | Fiber |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 470 kcal | 32g | 26g | 26g | 8g |
Figures cover one of eight servings including the cheddar and soured cream, but no rice or bread. Leaving off the toppings brings a serving to roughly 350 kcal and 16 g of fat.
Crockpot Chili with Beef and Kidney Beans
Crockpot chili with browned beef mince, kidney beans and smoked paprika, cooked low for six hours until thick. Serves eight with cheddar and soured cream.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a wide frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the beef mince in one layer. Leave it alone for three or four minutes before breaking it up. That undisturbed contact with the hot pan is where the browning happens, and browning is the one flavour a slow cooker cannot produce on its own.
- Break the meat into clumps and keep cooking until no pink remains and the bottom of the pan has gone brown, about eight minutes in total. Tip the mince into the slow cooker but leave the fat and the browned bits behind in the pan.
- Lower the heat to medium and cook the chopped onions in that same fat for five minutes, until soft and translucent. Scraping the pan as they release their moisture lifts the stuck-on beef residue, which is pure flavour you would otherwise throw away.
- Add the crushed garlic, chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, salt and pepper to the onions and stir for one minute. Heating ground spices in fat before they meet liquid is what separates a chili that tastes of spice from one that tastes of dust; one minute is enough, and much longer will scorch them.
- Stir in the tomato purée and cook for a further two minutes, until it darkens from bright red to brick. This cooks off the raw tinned edge and concentrates the tomato flavour that carries the whole pot.
- Pour the beef stock into the pan, bring it to a simmer and scrape the base thoroughly with a wooden spoon until nothing is stuck. Tip the entire contents of the pan into the slow cooker over the mince.
- Add the chopped tomatoes with their juice and the drained kidney beans. Stir once to combine, then put the lid on. Do not add any further liquid: a slow cooker loses almost no steam, so whatever goes in stays in.
- Cook on low for 6 hours, or 3 to 4 hours on high if you are short of time. Low is better here because it gives the beans time to absorb the spices without collapsing into mush.
- Take the lid off for the final 30 minutes if the chili looks looser than you want. The surface liquid evaporates quickly once the seal is broken, and the pot thickens noticeably in that half hour.
- Taste and adjust the salt, which almost always needs a final pinch after six hours. Ladle into bowls and top each one with grated cheddar, a spoonful of soured cream and a scattering of sliced spring onions.