Not Just a Man's World

This is a staple meal in our house and gets eaten every week.  It was the last staple meal to be converted to a paleo recipe.  It was just too easy to make it each week with a reliable jar of sauce each week.  But it started to prey on my mind that I was consuming something that was filled with artificial flavourings, thickeners and other bad things every week.

When I found myself with some spare chillis in the house I decided it was time to try and do it myself from scratch.  How hard could it be? 

Well, the recipe below is the result of several weeks of repeated efforts to get the right combination of spices and I must thank Chris for his patience is being a guinea pig every week.  The problem was not a lack of inspiration – there are hundreds of basic chilli recipes on the internet, all revolving around the same basic mix of spices.  But none of them had that depth of zing and tang that you get in a good chilli. 

You’ll see that the recipe below is not entirely paleo, as it contains kidney beans.  We make this exception as a chilli is just not a chilli without them (for us) and kidney beans are just about passable given the amount of exercise we do.  But if you are bothered by the kidney beans then just leave them out.

Chilli

Warning!  This makes a very hot chilli so I’ve included notes of the reductions to make to certain ingredients if you don’t like your chilli really hot.

Ingredients: (serves 3-4)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 large fresh chillis, seeded and cut finely (reduce to 1 chilli for a milder chilli dish) or 1 tsp dried chilli seeds (½ tsp for a milder chilli)
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper (any colour), roughly chopped
500g lean beef mince
½ tin red kidney beans (c. 200g), drained and rinsed
1 tin tomatoes (c. 300g)
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne (reduce to ½ tsp for a milder chilli)
3 tbsp mixed lemon and lime juices (approximately ½ lemon and ½ lime)

Directions:

1. Heat some oil in a wok or large pan.  When the oil is hot add the garlic and fresh chilli.
2. Once the chilli aromas are starting to release, add the onion to the pan.
3. Once the onion is starting to go soft, add the pepper for a few minutes.
4. Once both onion and pepper are looking soft and browned, add the mince and keep moving in the pan until the mince is thoroughly browned (you may need to add some oil just before adding the mince if the onion has used up all the oil).
5. Reduce the heat and pour over the tin of tomatoes.  Before stirring in the tomatoes, sprinkle the spices on top of the tomato.  Once the spices are added, mix in the tomato and spice mix thoroughly (by sprinkling the spices over the tomato, the act of stirring in the tomato helps evenly distribute the spices).
6. Add the kidney beans, and the lemon and lime juices, stir in thoroughly, reduce the heat and simmer for 5 mins.
7. Take a small taste of the chilli.  If it is too mild for your tastes then add a little more cayenne pepper.  Similarly, if it is lacking a bit of depth and zing then add a splash more of the lemon and lime juices, but be careful not to add too much juice or that will be all you can taste!
8. Continue simmering until you want to serve – simmering for about 10 mins in total thickens the sauce to a good consistency but if hunger gets the better of you then increase the heat for a couple of minutes to reduce the sauce faster.

We serve it on its own with broccoli and eat it with spoons, but if we have non-paleo friends to visit then we do them a small helping of brown rice on the side.

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: beef curry
2. Paleo recipes: beef curry updated
3. Paleo recipes: chilli and lime prawns
4. Paleo recipes: basic arrabiata with beef mince