White Bean Chili

Beans are awfully good for you so I try to prepare them at least once or twice a week. Tonight, when I got home, it was too late to spend too much time in the kitchen. On those days my faithful food storage always comes to my rescue! In the next couple of days I'll talk some more about that, but for now I have a quick white bean chili recipe that was ready to eat in less than 30 minutes.

I ate the lemon garlic chicken's drumsticks, wings and part of the breast yesterday. This evening I cut the rest of the meat off the bones, diced it and set it aside for the chili, while the bones went into a pot with cold water with a peeled onion that was cut in half and two carrots and two ribs of celery, both cut in large chunks. A bayleaf, seven or eight black pepper corns and all this went on the backburner to simmer while we ate dinner and watched a movie. This will be my stock for tomorrow's chicken soup.

Beans and canned tomatoes tend to be fairly high in sodium so I refrained from adding any additional salt to the dish. Make sure you taste the chili before reaching for the salt shaker!

White Bean Chili

2 cups of cooked chicken, diced
1 can of chili ready tomatoes*
2 cans of white beans, rinsed
1 teaspoon of chili powder
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 cups of water

Optional: cilantro, shredded cheese, sour cream, can of green roasted chiles

*if your store does not sell chili-ready tomatoes, substitute for a can of diced tomatoes and 1/3 teaspoon of chili powder.

This is so easy that it's not even funny. If you blink you'll miss it. Empty one can of chili-ready tomatoes and two cans of rinsed white beans into a pan, stir, add the chili powder, cumin and oregano, stir again and taste. Hot enough? Then leave it at that. If not, you may want to add a small can of green roasted chiles or some fresh jalapeño, whatever tickles your fancy. Add one or two cups of water, depending on how thick or soupy you like your chili, stir in the chicken and warm up for about ten minutes over medium heat. Taste again and adjust. Serve hot with some cheese, sour cream and fresh cilantro if you wish, it's pretty good without it too :-)

Actually, it was so good that it was all gone before I could take a picture. Go figure.