Good Old-Fashioned Chilli

This is on the go as I type, with some jacket spuds in the oven, so here goes:

Brown 500g of good quality, lean minced beef in a large hot pan. Meanwhile, finely chop a stick of celery, a couple of carrots, an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Roughly chop a handful of mushrooms and about half a red pepper (I like the sweet pointed peppers from Tesco). As always with 'Bloke' recipes, just put in as much or as little as you like. Or leave stuff out that you don't like.

Anyway, when the mince is browned, and I mean browned - with nice little charred bits like if you were barbecuing a burger or searing a steak, drain any excess fat and add in the chopped veg.

When this starts to soften, add a tablespoon of paprika (which I think gives it a nice depth of flavour) and an appropriate dose of chilli flakes (p.s. I tend to use a lot of dried, crushed chilli simply because it's convenient and lasts longer than fresh chilli. I do use fresh chilli for things like salsa or if I'm not feeling so lazy).

Season with a good amount of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt and keep it all moving until the veg has softened down.

Next, add a 500g carton of passata (sieved tomatoes). I use this instead of tinned tomatoes in this sort of thing because I think it gives a better texture. Anyway, add the passata followed by half a carton of water.

At this point you might want to add kidney beans, as is the norm. I don't because The Missus doesn't like them. If you are going to add them, I'd recommend using a tin and giving them a good old rinse before you add them.

Give it all a good stir, bring to the boil and then simmer over a moderate heat for about 20 minutes, until the sauce is nice and rich.

That's pretty much it. As I mentioned, I'm doing this with jacket potatoes but it's also good with rice flavoured with turmeric and lots of ground black pepper. The turmeric gives it a good yellow colour.

That's all for now. I'm going to check on my potatoes. As always, any questions just post either here, on Twitter or over at Facebook.

Happy cooking!


The Bloke