Spatula Diaries: Cooking chili with the kids

Photo by Maggie Heyn Richardson

Teaching kids how to make four-ingredient chili

Fulfilling my pledge to teach my children to cook this summer, I grabbed the youngest (the only one I could find at the time), and said, “let’s cook chili!”

He was game. Doing something without his older brother and sister to boss him around sounded appealing, so off we went into the kitchen to make our family’s signature four-ingredient chili.

It’s fast, simple and homey, and we eat it year-round, even in stifling 90-plus degree weather.

The speed and ease of this one-pot dish makes it the perfect thing to cook with an 8-year-old who’d rather be playing super heroes or tracking box turtles. Plus, he likes it, so he was motivated to help me complete it in time for dinner.

It gave me an opportunity to show him how an onion is diced. Together, with my hands on his, I taught him to cut it the way Chef Instructor David Tiner once showed me while I was interviewing him at the Louisiana Culinary Institute. My son added the onions to the pot with the ground beef, and then broke up the meat with a wooden spoon. I drained off the fat, and then he added the tomatoes, beans and spices, and tasted it for seasoning. Stealing pinches of shredded cheese kept him occupied between steps, and our chili turned out great.

Four-Ingredient Chili*
Serves 4-6

1 ½ pounds ground sirloin
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 28 oz. can whole tomatoes
1 15 oz. can kidney or pinto beans, drained
2 ½ teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons salt

*Yes, I cheated. There are seven ingredients on this list, but dry spices are likely already in your cabinet.

Over medium heat, add sirloin to a Dutch oven, and break apart. Immediately add onions and cook together until meat is evenly browned. The rendered fat will cook the onions nicely. Once the meat is browned, drain fat and return meat to pot. Add tomatoes to a food processor and puree quickly until mostly smooth. (You can buy pureed tomatoes, but I like this better. It’s a quirk of mine.) Add tomatoes and beans to meat, stirring to combine. Add dry seasonings and let simmer for about 20 minutes. Serve with shredded cheese, avocado, sautéed corn, diced onions, sour cream, cilantro, Saltines, corn chips or other garnishes.

Maggie Heyn Richardson is a regular 225 contributor and the author of Hungry for Louisiana: An Omnivore’s Journey, a new book that explores the history of eight of Louisiana’s most emblematic foods. Follow her on Twitter, @mhrwriter.