Hello Foodies!
Today I have created a homemade vegan Spanish-style chilli con carne with potatos! I have been having some cravings for some of the early season potatoes but I wanted them with a sauce, but nothing too heavy because of the summer heat.
The meal I pictured in my head you can see in the title picture. You have some tasty new season potatoes with a light summery chilli sauce. With this heat, we don't want to eat anything too heavy, but here we can still get that satisfied feeling from the potatoes.
What I also love about this dish, is that it is also grain free so we can get some wholesome food inside us and not worry about any side effects.
First up I did an ingredients check. I know normally you would have red-ish beans in chilli, but I also love these dark black beans. I am often buying them from the shop advertised as "black beans" but they are more red than black. They are smaller than the larger red beans you can get and I love them with my Mexican-style salads that I do.
First I chop half an onion into slices. I don't want it diced this time as I want to bite into a piece of onion. I put in the pan and add a nice helping of olive oil. I chop up a red pepper, first into the big pieces shown here, and then into further slices as you see in the pan below. In the meantime, I put on some early-season potatoes to boil.
I add the chilli spices to give it a nice chilli kick plus a little more olive oil so that it will fry nicely. I fry it until they start to go soft and caramelise a little. I then add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
You can see here I refill the tin halfway with water and add it in too. I also put in a few spoon of the delicious black beans. I put in too few for my liking. Mental note to self, add more beans next time! lol
I have also added a generous helping of tomato puree to give some thickness and more flavour to the sauce. I also crush one clove of garlic for some extra flavour!! A quick taste test says to add more spices!! I then add a tablespoon of brown sugar plus some Vegeta. I remember to put some salt in the boiling potatoes too.
No chilli would be complete without some sweetcorn. I have bought some corn on the cobs fresh and ready as an evening snack and decided to add some to the chilli! I mix it all together and it is looking pretty good!! Not long to go now.
I dig up this colourful knife and check the potatoes. They are still too hard. I want the potatoes soft but not too soft that they collapse. Once done there are two variations of the dish that I imagined and I decide to do both of them! The first variation is to eat it in a jacket-potato style by cutting the potatoes open and then pouring the sauce on top.
That is the Dallas shot. If you don't know what Dallas is, then click here.
You could add beforehand some margarine to melt over the potatoes if you want it a little more oily. I didn't go for that here. The final variation, and the varation I have had in my head for a couple of weeks is the more spanish-style variation where you use smaller potatoes (or chop the big ones smaller like I did here). You then mix them in with the sauce first and serve it up as a dish.
I am not kidding you, it tastes as good as it looks in these shots, even JR wouldn't be complaining about eating this dish.
Full ingredients list:
- Black beans
- 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
- 1 pepper
- 1/2 onion
- Chilli con carne spices
- Fresh sweetcorn
- Tomato puree
- 1 clove of garlic
- 5 large potatoes
- Sprinkling of Vegeta
- Tablespoon of brown sugar
Thanks for reading.
All photos are my own.
Heart graphic used from source