Nick:
We've never made chili before (okay, I've never made chili before; maybe Katie chili-cheated on me), but this is basically what I would expect: Heat oil, add chopped onions, cook, add corn, tomatoes, squash, keep cooking, add water, spicy tomato sauce and vegetable stock, simmer. We also added toasted sliced tortilla shells, which didn't look anything like the little photo on the recipe card.
Katie:
In the Before Times, work used to have a chili cook-off every year. My only knowledge of chili was the kind with lots of beef and beans. I never tried that kind. I did try some sample cups of the work chili which was more varied--chicken fajita chili and I think even an Italian Wedding soup-inspired one--than just the beef-bean kind. Even still, I never had anywhere close to a bowl of chili before. I suppose the prep was about what I expected...seemed easy enough. We still don't have the "salt and pepper to taste" part down as we don't know what anything is supposed to taste like.
Oh I remembered that the beans smelled super bad when we opened the box. Like "should we even include this" funky.
Post-meal thoughts
Hmmm... is this chili? This tasted like vegetable soup. I mean, it's not bad at all, but if you blindfolded me and I took a bite of this, I'm going to say hearty vegetable stew. Chili should be like... thicker? Spicier? It's not soupy, right? I'm very puzzled by this. The tortilla strips were good, but once again I feel like whoever wrote out the recipe should have had us chop an ingredient smaller so it was bite-sized; a six inch long toasted tortilla strip is too much to eat in one bite. It tasted pretty good with the beans, corn, tomato and a tortilla strip all in one bite, but is it chili? I'm going to say no. To improve this dish, I would - you guessed it - order Burger King delivery. Just kidding, I'd make the tortilla strips bite sized. (Although that Burger King does sound pretty good. I think I need more meat in my diet...)
Katie:
I would like to echo Nick's question--is this chili? What is chili? Is it just soup with a bunch of stuff in it? An advanced stew?
I thought this was good but needed more taste. I would have loved some of that plant-based protein and mushroom concentrate from those tacos a few weeks back to add some meaty flavor. There needed to be more flavor, for sure. I even enjoyed the beans, except when I looked at them. If I looked at the spoon, I felt revulsion and didn't want to put it in my mouth. If I paid attention to Midsomer Murders instead, the texture of the beans was indistinguishable from the corn. I'm still not ready to hop on the train to Beanburg and accept beans on all the things, but I'm more at ease with them being included.
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