One of the few ‘ready meals’ I make in big batches and freeze. While it does rob it of a little heat, you can always add fresh chilli either at the end or during the reheating, and it’s best cooked for a long time – so making batches is the right thing to do.
Prep: 30min Cook: 100min Cool: 90min
Ingredients
1.5 kg venison mince
3.5 l passata or 9 tins of chopped tomatoes
8 onions, diced
4 carrots, diced or grated
3 tins of kidney beans washed well
12 chillies, chopped, ideally two types
1 tblspn cumin
1 dstspn paprika
1 dstspn fresh ground pepper
1 dstspn salt
50ml olive oil
75g dark chocolate (optional)
Method
- Add the olive oil and onions and carrots to a large pan and cook until the onions start to turn translucent and soften.
- Add the venison, and cook until the venison mince is browned and starts giving up juices.
- put the cumin, chilli, pepper and paprika into the pot stirring well. After about 30 seconds you’ll smell the change in the cumin and chilli –
- Immediately add the pasata/tomatoes, stir, bring to the simmer then turn right down (3/10 on induction), with the lid nearly on and cook for 90min stirring occasionally
- If you’re adding the chocolate add it now grated and stir through.
- Add salt to taste, and check the depth of flavour, add more cumin if needed, and more chilli until it’s almost too hot for your taste.
- Place the pot to one side, off the heat, stir through the kidney beans and leave to cool before bagging as 400ml potions (you should have 10-12 of these)
Serve with rice (brown rice is good), sprinkle extra chilli if you want it or black pepper, then grated cheddar, then sour cream, and finally a dust of paprika.
Venison is the king of meat for chilli in my eyes, you can use beef mince, but venison packs a greater flavour. If you use beef add a couple of stock cubes and halve the salt to get more flavour in there.
The chocolate add an extra layer to the taste, it also tones down the chilli a little, so mix it before you test for heat. And talking of heat, I tend to use whatever chillies I’ve grown. My ideal is 2/3 cayenne and 1/3 a hotter variety like a pubescens chilli. Or if I buy them in then a couple of scotch bonnet. Mixing chillies really improves the flavour as each pepper is distinctive, but you have to taste it through the heat to really get that.
If you’re not a fan of hot you can reduce the chillies, but to keep the flavour I would add a couple of finely chopped sweet peppers with the onions. Marconi peppers for preference but red bell peppers will do just fine. That’s a personal taste thing, I think Marconi peppers go better with chilli hotness than red bell peppers, and green peppers would be the wrong taste.