Recipe Thursday

A couple of weeks ago we had a diocesan youth gathering at our parish. Andy and I were the ones organising the night and we decided that we wanted to invite the L’Arche crew over, we’d make some soup for them, and watch a movie. We had a great time, made tons of soup for them (so much that they might get sick of it), and enjoyed movie theatre-style popcorn while watching Pay It Forward. The following is one of the soup recipes that we used, and which I love. It’s tasty, hearty, and vegetarian. As like most of my recipes, it hails from allrecipes.com 🙂

The Best Vegetarian Chili in the World

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon salt
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 (4 ounce) cans chopped green chile peppers, drained
2 (12 ounce) packages vegetarian burger crumbles
3 (28 ounce) cans whole peeled tomatoes, crushed
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 (15 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can black beans
1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn

Notes:

I do not use the ‘vegetarian burger crumbles’, which really sound gross to me. Instead I use either 1 cup of raw quinoa (cooked prior) or 1 cup of brown rice (again, cooked prior). This helps ensure that you still get a full protein out of the meal (the rice when mixed with beans or the quinoa on its own).
I also prefer to use dried beans, soaking them overnight to the roughly equal quantity one would get in a can