14 Valentines - Enough For All Recipe 3: Vegetarian Paprika Chili
For 14 Valentines
A Note on Real Paprika:
Personally, while I love flavor spices, I can't eat hot-spicy foods. They cause me physical pain. But that's no reason not to eat chili!
I'm part Hungarian, so I was raised on the rich flavor of real Hungarian paprika. If you haven't tried yet, I heartily recommend it. No, paprika from Durkee or other such worthy American brands does not count. To quote mosellegreen , "I always thought you just used it to make stuff red". Real Hungarian sweet paprika is versatile and wonderful, not to mention reasonably priced, and if you try using it, I suspect you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Of course, if you prefer, you could always just use chili powder. Hey, tastes differ.
Vegetarian Paprika Chili
This recipe is vegan-friendly
1 can of kidney beans
1 can of diced tomatoes or 2-4 tomatoes chopped into chunks
2 tsp sweet paprika or to taste (I recommend a Hungarian brand such as Pride of Szeged, American brands tend to lack full flavor)
OR Chili powder to taste
Water as needed
Take a nice deep frying pan big enough to hold all the ingredients or, in a pinch, a pot, and put it on the stove on medium heat. Open cans, and drain and rinse the beans. Do not drain off the juice of the tomatoes. Place the beans and the tomatoes into the pan, and stir from time to time until hot. Slowly sprinkle in the paprika or chili powder.
Here's the hard and important part: stir it in slowly and thoroughly. Do not allow the spice to just sit on top dryly and burn. Make sure it is completely absorbed by the beans and tomotoes mixture. Keep an eye on the chili and do not allow it to bubble or burn. You want a stew-like texture but not a thick sludge, so feel free to add more water as needed. You'll know it is done when it has a stew-like texture and a rich, fully cooked smell.
Feel free to add more paprika or chili to taste if you feel it needs more. Also, you may prefer a more bean-filled, less tomatoey chili, in which case I suggest getting a slightly larger can of beans than tomatoes. Ominivores, you can easily modify this by simply adding about a very small hamburger's worth of ground beef and allowing it to cook in the bean / tomato mixture- trust me, it will stretch far.
Goes well with rice or corn muffins. Personally, I use the Jiffy corn muffin mix, because it is extremely cheap ($0.80 at my local store) and extremely tasty, not to mention easy to make.
Makes four full-meal servings and freezes and reheats very well.
Cooking with Paprika
If, when cooking, any of the paprika turns black, that means it's starting to burn and that's a bad sign. If any of it turns green-black (It sounds odd, but trust me, you'd know it if you saw it) that's very bad, and it's probably burned to the point that it doesn't taste very good. If you are at an early stage of a meal (say, frying onions or mushrooms) and can afford to discard it, discard it immediately. It will taste better and your tongue will thank you.
Don't be scared by this, though. As long as you don't have the heat super-high and you make sure to thoroughly stir paprika into whatever sauce or stew you're using it in, paprika doesn't usually burn.
ETA: Although it is called "sweet" paprika, it has no actual sweet flavor at all, it's a strong savory flavor. It just means a paprika that is all flavor, no heat. There is such a thing as Hungarian hot paprika, but for obvious reasons I can't eat it. Even people who like hot things like both though, because the "sweet" paprika gives a good strong burst of flavor that isn't masked by the heat.
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