Welcome back, fellow soup enthusiasts — we missed you. What a whirlwind of emotions this week has been! From a balmy 50-degree Saturday to unexpected snow on Tuesday, it is amazing how quickly things can change. But whatever the temperature, one thing stays constant: the comfort produced by a good bowl of soup.
This time of year can certainly make a gal feel restless. Between a perpetual midterm season, the upcoming Ides of March, getting ghosted by jobs and watching the sun set during the first half of your 4:30–5:45 p.m. class, melancholia is not only understandable but seems quite inevitable. Dear reader, has the recent cold snap got you feeling blue? Did you slip and fall on the ice and need something to warm you up? Are you anxious about the upcoming time change?
If so, you might just need a warm, gigantic bowl of chili. Mmm — even just typing out the word ‘chili’ evokes memories of seasoned vegetables sloshing around our mouths, spoon already reaching for another bite. Chili, in our minds, equals heartiness. It nourishes and provides you with the vigor and encouragement to keep going.
This recipe has been a staple in Emily’s kitchen for the past year — she’s been freezing it in containers of all shapes and sizes (including, for instance, a tragically forgotten yogurt tub recently excavated from the deep, dark corners of the freezer). A few days before we set out to make our soup, she had just finished off the last of her frozen stash, so it was clearly time to replace it.
Recipe
Unlike the humble tomato soup, chili is much more versatile. Take some beans, a little chili powder, assorted vegetables and a pot, throw it all together and bam — you’ve got yourself a pretty yummy chili. However, we didn’t want to go into this recipe completely on vibes, so we used this recipe as a reference for our soup. Now, remember: Arghya and Emily are both vegetarians, so we used an all-vegetable recipe. Coincidentally, this recipe is also dairy-free if that’s your persuasion. If not, don’t let that dissuade you; read on to see why it might still be worth your time.
The base recipe we used called for onion, bell pepper, carrots and celery. Since we didn’t have the latter two ingredients, we threw in an extra bell pepper to ‘beef up’ the soup — one of the benefits of such a flexible recipe.
After sautéing the vegetables in oil and a bit of salt, we added our spices: garlic, paprika, cumin, chili powder and oregano. Once everything was smelling nice and fragrant, we added (almost) all of the remaining items: canned diced tomatoes, black beans, vegetable stock (thanks, Better Than Bouillon!) and a bay leaf. Then all we had to do was wait about 30 minutes for everything to simmer. We finished off our soup by salting to taste and adding a splash of red wine vinegar — our personal favorite, though pretty much any kind will do.
Pro tip (because we are obviously soup professionals at this point): Make sure you do not forget the vinegar! It really adds a ‘zing’ to the soup. Trust us — we tried it before and after, and it makes a huge difference!
Reflections
This recipe makes a lot of strides on some of the critiques we had about the tomato soup, particularly in terms of substitution opportunities and the simplicity of kitchenware required to create it.
We view chili as a smorgasbord of vegetables with infinite possibilities. In terms of substitution ease, this recipe earned a gold star in our book. While an immersion blender can be nice if you prefer a thicker soup, it’s totally unnecessary.
As for taste — well, I mean, it’s chili. And by that we’re saying it was absolutely delicious. Arghya, of course, recommends making it spicier by adding peppers (ghost, perhaps?). But overall, man did it satisfy our craving for something warm, healthy and nourishing. With the cold weather we’ve been having, we 100% recommend chili to warm you right up.
