Easy Homemade Chili, covered in cheese

Easy Ground Beef Chili Recipe

This is a very easy chili recipe that you can cook on the stovetop with any decent sized pan. Preparation is quick and painless, but if you want this chili to turn out great, you should give yourself time to cook it for a while.

Easy Homemade Chili, covered in cheese
More cheese than chili

Ingredients for Easy Ground Beef Chili

  • One pound of (preferably lean) ground beef
  • Three to four large tomatoes
  • A large onion
  • Celery stalks
  • Anywhere from one to three cups of kidney beans
  • Chili powder
  • Oregano
  • Thyme
  • Cayenne pepper
  • Two to four fresh jalapeno peppers
  • Two or three garlic cloves
  • One can of beef soup stock

How to Prepare an Easy Ground Beef Chili

In your frying pan, heat a tablespoon of oil on medium to high heat.  Once your pan and oil preheat, add your ground beef.

While you’re waiting for the oil to heat and the beef to brown, start chopping up all your vegetables and your garlic.

Once the beef has browned, throw in your chopped celery, a fairly finely chopped onion, and two or three crushed garlic cloves.  Cook until the onion begins to soften.

Now add everything else.  For your spices, a good guideline is one tablespoon of chili powder, oregano, thyme, and cayenne pepper.  But like I said, there really isn’t a “wrong way” to flavor a chili.

Cover and cook for a minimum of one hour over low heat. There is pretty much no way to cook a chili for too long, as long as you’re simmering at a nice low temperature.

When it comes down to it though, you should just buy a slow cooker and cook a larger quantity for much longer.  Most of the time a recipe of this size is meant to be for between four and six people.  I’d recommend keeping it to yourself, or maybe sharing with one person maximum.

Tips for Making Chili

  • If you don’t like kidney beans you can substitute them out for more ground beef.
  • Seriously, cook this thing at low heat for a really long time. It’ll just turn out better if you’re patient.
  • If you premake a batch of chili powder it can simplify the chili-making process as well as be used in other recipes.
  • Every time you make a bowl of chili, cover the whole thing with cheese. As pictured above.

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