Chili Soup

This recipe has been sitting in my drafts’ folder for close to four months. While the recipe itself is well tested and damn near perfect, I could not for the life of me come up with a decent intro.

No stories were good enough. No words did it justice.  

So I am just going to quote the DNCE song, Cake by the Ocean – “It’s delicious”.

Enjoy.

Chili Soup
Serves 6
25 minutes prep time
30 minutes – 2 hours cook time (if you have the time, let it simmer).

2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
3 Teaspoons dried chili flakes
2 Onions
2-3 Large cloves of garlic
2 Teaspoons smoked paprika 
1x Chorizo sausage
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
400 – 500gms ground beef mince
1x 400gm can crushed tomatoes or 4 - 6 large, overly ripe tomatoes
2x 400gm can beans (kidney beans are the classic but I’ll often use a combination of them and white beans).
800ml beef stock
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup corn kernels

Place the oil in a large pot or casserole dish and turn the heat onto low. Place the dried chili flakes in the pot and stir into the oil. While the oil and chili flakes infuse, dice the onions and garlic. Make sure to stir the chili flakes so not to burn.

Once the chili and oil have been infusing for around two minutes, add the diced onion and garlic. Slowly sweat the onions. They should go a beautiful orange colour when mixed through the chili infused oil.

While the onions are cooking, finely dice the chorizo and add to the pot. Once the onions have gone translucent and the chorizo has released some of its fat, remove from the heat and stir through the paprika. 

Once the paprika is combined, move the onion mix to one side of the pot, turn the heat back onto medium and add the ground mince. The reason for this is to give the mince as much space to brown as possible.

With a wooden spoon, break the mince up so there are no lumps and it can cook evenly. I like to add a little bit of salt and pepper to the mince at this stage, but when cooking for children, I try and refraining from adding any extra salt.

Once the mince has started to brown all over, stir through the onions. Fat should naturally come out of the meat as it cooks, so there should be no need to add any extra oil. When the meat is brown all over, add the Worcestershire sauce, stir through, and then the tomatoes (either canned or freshly diced). This is the perfect recipe for getting rid of old tomatoes that have gone a bit squishy. Just remember that when using fresh tomatoes over canned, you need to let them cook for around 10 minutes, slowly, with the lid on to let all the juices out.

Lastly, add the kidney beans, beef stock, tomato paste and corn kernels. Make sure you stir everything together before leaving to simmer on a very low heat. While you could probably get away with leaving it for only 20 minutes to half an hour, the longer you give it the nicer it becomes.

I like to serve topped with cheese and sour cream, it can also be very nice with fresh coriander and spring onions diced on top.