My Recipe for Chili Beans

This is my own personal chili beans recipe.  I have played with it and tweaked it so much but I finally found one that I'm going to stick to.  My husband is a little bit of a weenie when it comes to spiciness, so I had to tone it down a little bit.  This recipe is still spicy though, so he still complains...but he eats it because it's good!  So if you have kids, you might want to leave out the rotel tomatoes and just use basic canned diced tomatoes to cut down on the spiciness.  This recipe is really versatile, so you can add to or take away what you don't like.  One pound of meat doesn't seem like a lot, but it goes a long way.  I never use more than one pound.  For one, I don't want my chili to be OVERLY meaty.  I want to taste the other stuff in there too.  For me, one pound is the perfect ratio of meat to "other stuff."

Nicole's Slow Cooker Chili Beans

1 pound hamburger
1 small green pepper, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 tbsp minced garlic
2 cans Rotel Tomatoes
1 can Hunts Fire Roasted Tomatoes
1 giant can of dark kidney beans (or 2-3 regular size cans)
1 can black beans
1 can pinto beans
1 package fresh mushrooms
2 packs McCormick Mild Chili Mix

Cook your onions and green pepper in a skillet with your garlic until soft.  Add hamburger and brown.  Drain grease from hamburger meat and pour the meat and veggies into the crockpot.  Then just dump everything in the crockpot.  You will want to drain most of the cans of beans.  I leave the juice in with about two of the small cans of beans so that the mixture isn't too thick.  Don't drain your tomatoes.  Chop your mushrooms up and throw in crockpot.  Pour in your two packs of McCormick chili mix and mix everything up very well.  Turn on the crockpot to the low setting for 8 hours and you're done!  You can also add a little V8 or tomato juice later if it still looks too thick, but I wouldn't do it until after it has cooked for a while in the pot.  Crockpots tend to bring juices out of everything so chances are, there will be plenty of juice in there without the V8 or tomato juice.  We like a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of cheese on top of our chili when we eat it. 

The good thing about this, it's packed with protein and is actually low calorie.  The sodium content is pretty high, but you can reduce this by using low sodium ingredients.  You can rinse your beans from the cans, you can choose low sodium tomatoes and low sodium chili mixes.  You can also rinse the canned tomatoes and use low sodium V8 to substitute for the juice that you are losing.  I would recommend making those changes for anyone with high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc.  Other than the salt content, the recipe itself is pretty healthy.  Most of that sale comes from the chili mix, which contains a whopping 490 mg of sodium per package.  That in itself accounts for 980 mg of the salt content in the recipe overall.  Here are the nutritional facts that I pulled from SparkPeople's recipe nutrition calculator about my recipe!

Nutrition Facts User Entered Recipe
12 Servings
Amount Per Serving
Calories		242.5
Total Fat		8.6 g
	Saturated Fat	3.2 g
	Polyunsaturated Fat	0.4 g
	Monounsaturated Fat	3.4 g
Cholesterol		28.4 mg
Sodium		907.4 mg
Potassium		293.3 mg
Total Carbohydrate		27.3 g
	Dietary Fiber	9.4 g
	Sugars	4.5 g
Protein		14.7 g

Vitamin A	5.9 %
Vitamin B-12	14.8 %
Vitamin B-6	7.5 %
Vitamin C	15.6 %
Vitamin D	1.1 %
Vitamin E	0.4 %
Calcium	4.4 %
Copper	7.3 %
Folate	18.2 %
Iron	11.2 %
Magnesium	8.5 %
Manganese	11.1 %
Niacin	10.6 %
Pantothenic Acid	3.4 %
Phosphorus	12.1 %
Riboflavin	8.0 %
Selenium	11.8 %
Thiamin	7.8 %
Zinc	13.1 %

*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.