Hearty No Bean Chili Recipe - Butter Your Biscuit (2024)

FAQs

What does butter do to chili? ›

Butter smooths out the bitterness and adds its unique richness, making you take another bite without quite knowing why. A dash of sugar and vinegar gives a sweet-sour flavor that also makes the sauce rounder and more satisfying.

Instead of using beans, add veggies like carrots, celery, or green peppers. You could also try soaking and sprouting dried beans rather than using canned (which are harder to digest). The sprouting method makes them easier for your stomach to digest.

Easy No Bean Chili

Ground beef, onions or shallots, and garlic are browned then simmered with tomato sauce, crushed tomatoes, fire roasted tomatoes, beef stock, and green chilis, plus herbs, spices, and seasonings for just 20 minutes. If you love classic chili, you will LOVE this easy no bean recipe.

Sorry, Texas chili purists, but beans can totally be your BFF when attempting to thicken chili. In a bowl, use a fork to smash ½ cup to 1 cup of kidney beans, pinto beans, or black beans into a paste. Stir this bean mash into the chili and allow it to simmer for 5 to 10 additional minutes.

Saute the ground meat til all pink is gone. Drain meat, place back in pot. Add stick of butter, add this to the bean mixture, cover and let simmer for 40 minutes.

A cup of strong, brewed coffee will work wonders for your pot of chili, imparting a deep, roasted flavor that will make the chili taste like it simmered away all day long. For maximum flavor, reduce the coffee along with a blend of tomato paste, aromatic veggies and spices like we do in our Spicy Vegetarian Chili.

Add ajwain or epazote – both of these spices will decrease gas production – I swear by the epazote! Just add about a tablespoon to a large pot of beans during the cooking process. You can also add ginger or cumin as these spices help with digestion.

But, according to a study from 1985, adding a little baking soda to the water while soaking dried beans decreases the amount of gas-causing oligosaccharides in cooked beans. (Yes, you can cook beans in the same water they were soaked in.

Chilies also contain capsaicin, which is what gives them their heat. And the capsaicin is the source of a lot of other health benefits. Capsaicin may help to improve digestion by increasing the amount of digestive fluids in your stomach. It may also help fight bacterial infections.

Texans in particular are likely to reject beans; in fact, the no-bean version is often referred to as Texas chili.

Who eats chili with no beans? ›

“If you know beans about chili, you know that chili has no beans!” thundered Wick Fowler, journalist and chili fan from Texas, the state that made (beanless) chili its official state dish in 1977.

Of course, those results might make you cringe if you're from the Lone Star State — Texas chili is famously bean-free. Still, no-bean chili remains the favorite of many chili fans, accounting for 13.4% of our survey respondents.

Chili should be thick and hearty enough to be a meal on its own, but sometimes there's just a bit more liquid than you want in the pot. While you can simply keep simmering the chili, that method risks overcooking softer ingredients like the beans, losing all your nice texture to mushy monotony.

Tomato paste. This is probably the easiest and maybe most common addition to add thickness to a chili recipe. Tomato paste is super thick and not only adds texture but adds a richer and deeper flavor to chili.

Butter & Flour

You can still thicken your chili with some pantry staples you most likely have on hand. Butter and flour are commonly used to give sauces and stews a rich texture (like gumbo, for example).

It also can help add richness by complementing the chile powder with its nutty sweetness, and the healthy fats in peanut butter can even tame your chili if it's too spicy. Next time, when making your favorite tomato-based chili recipe, consider adding a hearty tablespoon or two of peanut butter.