This chilli is the bomb. It’s bloody yummy, awesomely cheap and will make sure your stomach is well and truly full before going on the sesh, so you don’t end up in an ally chatting with a randomer at 1am because you had no dinner. [Freeborn F (2017) A Pub Crawl Study, Edinburgh, Scotland.]
Anyhoo, this is a good recipe to make in the evenings when you can just leave it to simmer for an hour (it takes this long so all the flavour can infuse into everything and the lentils can go noice and soft) while you do some work/trace all the fake wood grain patterns on your cheap linoleum floor with a sharpie.
This chilli made me about 10 generous portions. I like it best served scattered over tesco value nachos, sprinkled with lidl cheese and baked for 6-7 minutes. If you’re fancy, you could top it with guac (expensive) salsa (not so expensive) and sour cream. Also great with just rice, or some crusty homemade bread. Yes, I have made bread in my flat on more than one occasion. Recipe soon. But first, the Chilli.
Stuff – seems like a lot but don’t freak, you probs have a lot of this stuff anyways
1/2 a 500g bag of red lentils – 22.5p
Can of red kidney beans – 29p
Can or butter or borelli beans – 29p
Can of black beans – 34p
(alternatively use 2 cans of 5 bean mix, or if you’re being super lazy, 2 tins of baked beans, you student, you.)
Can of chopped tomatoes – 29p
Big spoon of tomato puree or Ketchup- 7p
Around a litre of veg stock (like, 3 or 4 big mugs) – 10p
A Onion, very big or 2 onion, smol – 10p
2 or 3 Garlic cloves -8p
1 big red smelly chilli – 10p
1 Green/red/yellow pepper, chopped up (optional but tastier)- roughly 30p
Spices and flavourings – no worries if you don’t have it all, put as much stuff in as you can
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon – 5p
Soy Sauce – a good splashness – 7p
1 big spoon of paprika – 7p
Smol spoon Oregano – 5p
1 or 2 Big spoon Cumin -8p
1 big squirt of BBQ sauce – this makes it super yummy and smokey – 8p
Chilli powder if you have no fresh chilli – as much or as little as you want
Obligatory nutmeg
Limes to serve if u a fancy bastard
What u do
Chop ur onions and chilli and garlic (this is sounding familiar) and fry it in a big ol’ pan in a parvus bit of oil until the onion is mostly cooked. Add in all de spicy spices apart from BBQ sauce and soy, and give it a stir. Add the Tomato Ketchup/Pureeeeee and BBQ and give it a good old stir, turning down the heat if it spatters or tries to assault you from the hob. Now add your lentils, stir again and add the tomato tin (not the tin, but you know what I mean) and the veg stock and soy sauce. Leave all this to simmer for around 20 minutes with the lid off before adding those beans beans beans and your chopped peppers. Mix again, taste and season. It should be salty enough from the BBQ and Soy but add more if you want, bearing in mind that some of the liquid will boil off, resulting in a more concentrated concoction.
Simmer this mengsel for a further 40 minutes with the lid half on/half off or until it’s proper thick and smockeley. You might want to stir it every so often, or you might not. Up to you and depends how extreme your cooker is. I’m fairly sure mine is a re-incarnated convicted murderer in hob format, so I like to stir it every 15 mins just to make sure nothing sticks.
After I ate a big bowl of this there and then for my tea, I portioned mine up into lil containers and froze them.I had them later in the week as suggested above: with nachos and cheese. The beans provide many proteins and fibres and count as like 7 of your 5 a day* so this dish is quite healthy too. Werve with slime ledges.
*Maybe
Student Cuisine for the Gloomy Teen 