Cooking: Vegan Chili

Cooking has been my salvation and so essential to my well-being this past year, and I especially am at peace when I'm undertaking this activity to feed other people.  I also needed to shrink my pantry and freezer a bit.  And so I pulled out all the dried chilies (New Mexican and Guajillo), cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, pinto and kidney beans, soy chorizo and nopales.  First task was to soak the dried beans.

Next I removed the stems, seeds and inner membranes from the dried chiles and boiled them with the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.  I then pureed it and set to boil on the stove.

I'm all about flavor galore in chili.  I chopped onions, garlic, green bell pepper and raided my spice cover for it all to go into the chili.

I  also chopped tomatoes and then continued simmering.  I don't brown the soyrizo beforehand with the aromatics because it sticks to the pan and just add it to the sauce directly.

 

All in all, I was pretty pleased and thought the vegan chili pretty tasty.