Vegetarian chili con carne recipe - Cheap Meal Ideas
How to make a versatile vegetarian chili con carne that’s budget friendly and easy to make.
My complete recipe to a deliciously moreish vegetarian chili con carne that’s easy to make, perfect for big family dinners, Friday feasts and Mexican meal times. Most importantly, this recipe is cheap. A budget friendly meal idea that isn’t just another boring stew.
Cheap doesn’t mean trash
Inflation is through the roof, people can barely keep there heating on, money is scarce and yet food prices are higher then ever before. It’s affecting all of us and one big expenditure we can try to bring down is food.
The issue is cheap food usually is boring food. The last thing you want when trying to stay motivated through difficult times is to be eating the same old bland food day after day.
Which is my motivation behind this series on Smartblend. A new category for cheaper recipe ideas, recipes that are budget friendly, will last awhile or feed a big family without breaking the bank.
I can’t do much as a food and drink blogger to help advise you on finance or generating wealth, but what I can do is give you inspiration and hopefully get you excited about food whilst saving a little bit of money.
This Chili con carne is the perfect recipe to kick start this new foodie category here on Smartblend. I’ll aim to bring you as many recipes I can so do check out the budget friendly recipes tap here to see what else I may have posted since the release of this recipe.
Nacho Style Chili con Carne
The secret to the deliciousness of this recipe, at least from my point of view, is that it’s Nacho styled. It’s a combination of my favourite Mexican food - nachos, with something that is a bit more sustainable from a nutrient basis - chili con carne
Because lets face it, Nachos are delicious but as a main meal it doesn’t really offer much. Having the rice base really adds some carbs to this meal which might not help you with that six pack goal, but will be sure to fill you up for a good long time.
Talk about filling
I mean, talk about filling, I can eat like there’s no tomorrow, you will be surprised just how much food I can gobble back.
Infamously an older women once accused my partner of not feeding me at home because of how much food I was eating at an all inclusive airport lounge.
Yet if there’s one thing that does fill me, it’s this. By anyone’s standards I have small portions of this veggie chili con carne and yet it still puts me into a food coma afterwards.
Vegetarian
At this point I feel like I shouldn’t even have to mention it but yes, this Chili con carne is indeed vegetarian with the use of Quorn meat free mince.
I know, i know. ‘Chili con carne’ means ‘chili with meat’. Maybe I should change the name to ‘chili non carne’?
I’ve been vegetarian since the day I was birthed into this delicious world and so all the recipes here are either fully vegetarian, or pescatarian as I did start eating fish back in my teens.
Chili con carne might be naturally a meaty Mexican meal but believe me when I say that although you can swap the vegetarian mince for meat mince, you won’t want to and you will not be missing the meat.
Versatile
Purposely i’ve created this recipe to be quite stripped back, although it might seem like a lot with all the spices, rice, nachos and chili con carne, it’s actually quite straight forward.
This is for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to be able to leave room for your own additions, maybe you have some mushrooms or bell peppers in your fridge that need using up, you can totally add it to this dish without changing anything.
I like to think of this recipe as my pre-weekly shop meal as you can add whatever you have laying around in your food cupboards or fridge into it without it standing out as a last minute thought.
Which not only is great for the planet and makes you feel like a waste free super human, but it also once again saves pennies.
It means you can keep on bulking out this chilli con carne without spending any extra money.
It also means that this recipe is both a base for getting creative and a complete meal at the same time. Which means it’s super accessible.
The ingredients listed should be able to be cheaply bought at an store in any town, and if there’s something that you can’t get, easy substations can be made.
If Quorn suddenly upped there price 30%, I’d just skip the Quorn mince and use mushrooms. If white onions were more expensive then red, I’d use red, and vice versa if red onions were more expensive.
Vegetarian chili con carne
Ingredients
Instructions
- Add a generous amount of cooking oil to a large frying pan on medium heat, once hot add the chopped onion and fry till soft, about 5/10 minutes.
- Whilst the onions are frying, rinse your rice with cold water then add to a saucepan or rice cooker. Cheaper rice cookers like this Russell Hobbs one on amazon will work brilliantly without breaking the bank.
- If using a saucepan, add water so it comes to 1 inch above the rice level, bring to a boil then add a generous pinch of salt and a teaspoon of paprika. Cover and simmer for 9 minutes. After 9 minutes take it of the heat but keep the saucepan covered, allow the steam to finish cooking the rice.
- Once your onions are cooked, add in your plum tomatoes and use the back of a spoon to break them apart. Plum tomatoes are cheaper then chopped tomatoes and work a great.
- Add your Quorn mince and stir through, allow the mince to cook for 10 minutes whilst intimately stirring so it doesn’t get stuck to the bottom of the pan.
- Fill your now empty tomato can half way with water and dump it into the tomato mince mix along with the beans.
- Season with 1.5 tablespoon of paprika,1.5 teaspoon of cumin and cayenne pepper and a generous pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer to thicken, this should take a further 10 minutes.
- Once your vegetarian chili con carne has thickened and is cooked through, taste and adjust the seasoning to your liking.
- To serve, fill a bowl with rice, top with the chilli con carne, a dollop of sour cream, grated cheddar cheese and stick tortilla chips around the bowl.
Notes
Variations
Instead of Quorn mince, you could fry down some mushrooms, onions, and carrots for more of a veg packed chilli.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
738.15Fat
22.18Sat. Fat
4.58Carbs
113.9Fiber
17.27Net carbs
96.63Sugar
6.83Protein
27.76Sodium
1035.55Cholesterol
9.27The nutritional information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
Hi, I’m Cameron, guv’nor of Smartblend. If you liked this then you’re in luck, I have a bunch more recipes like it. I share only vegetarian and pescatarian food recipes, cocktails, and drink guides with a sprinkling of wellness and mindful drinking. If that sounds like you, then stick around!
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