Thursday 22 May 2014

Black bean and sweetcorn chilli

I think we sometimes get into a rut with chilli dishes. I have  a tried and trusted version that I've been cooking since I was at University, 40 years ago. I can do it almost with my eyes closed, it's familiar comfort food and most of the time I see no reason to change it.

But this time  I fancied a change, and I had a tub of cooked black beans in the freezer (you could use a tin) so this is what I came up with:



Ingredients to serve 4:

1 tin (400g-ish) of black beans, drained,  or around 250g of cooked beans
1 large tin sweetcorn kernels, drained
250 ml tomato sauce - I used a home made sauce from the freezer, but you could use a ready made sauce or the same amount from a  tin of chopped tomatoes (oh, what the heck, use the whole tin, you'll only leave it lurking in the fridge if you don't! You'll just have a bit more gravy.)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbs vegetable oil
1 teaspoon chilli powder
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano (dried seems to work better than fresh in chilli)

Heat the oil and fry the onion gently until soft. Stir in the spices and oregano and cook, stirring, for another 2 minutes. Add sauce, beans and  sweetcorn and mix well. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Taste for seasoning - if your corn and beans were canned in salted water and you used a ready made sauce, you may not need any: add if necessary.

I served this with brown rice, grated cheese, green salad, tomato and red onion salsa and a crude guacamole (just avocados roughly mashed with lime juice and salt)


I'm joining in with  the Extra Veg challenge which this month is hosted by Allotment2Kitchen and run by Utterly Scrummy and Fuss Free Flavours


2 comments:

Shaheen said...

Thank you Jane for sharing your newer version of Chilli with me for #ExtraVeg. I have a trusty chilli recipe that I made all the time, but agree, sometimes its nice to change it a bit. And served with brown rice - even better.

Elizabeth said...

MMm I love chilli. We had some just a few days ago (I'm in a being frugal emptying the freezer phase) using beef steak cubes instead of mince, but like yours there was plenty of cumin. I did have a tin of black beans - never thought to use them! Love that idea! Your meal looks so tempting!