Living for 30+ years in the Upper Midwest gave me an appreciation for “stick to your ribs”, “old fashioned” slow cooked comfort food. It’s a “fix and forget” meal which you can’t resist the temptation to fuss around with all day, making repeated trips to the slow cooker to taste, burn your lips and tongue and minutely adjust seasoning or temperature.
The results are always delicious. Why? Well, because all those repeated trips to check the pot are where the love goes in. It’s where the anticipation builds. The aroma of the stick-to-your ribs dinner has taken over the kitchen and is wafting out to the rest of your home. Your belly starts to growl just a bit well ahead of dinner time. Why? Because a slow cooked dinner is intoxicating. You just can’t wait. But you know you have to.
Making chili is at least a half day process and it doesn’t matter if it’s red chili or this “white” chili. The actual preparation doesn’t take all that long but letting all the ingredients slowly cook and marry together is what takes a while. And I’ve never had the patience to just leave it along to do that. I’m constantly fussing with it, stirring, sniffing, tasting adding a bit of this or a bit of that.
One of the things I like about this meal is that it’s different from tomato based chili and can still generate all the flavor of chili. It’s also a good way to get rid of a few pieces of lonely, freezer-burned chicken that have been hanging out in the back of the freezer for too long.
Recipe: White Chili or Chicken and Bean Soup
Summary: Here’s a “stick to you ribs” different take on chili–White Chili. It’s simple, tasty and cheap.
Ingredients
- 1 lb chicken meat—shredded or chopped
- 2 cans navy/northern beans
- 1 medium onion diced
- 1 cup celery diced
- 1 jalapeno pepper diced
- 2 cups chicken broth (low sodium)
- 2 cups (more or less) water
- 2-3 minced cloves garlic
- Salt, white pepper, oregano, cumin, coriander
Instructions
- Get out your slow cooker, sauté pan, cutting board and knife.
- Chop the onion and celery.
- Prep the chicken—I like to just throw it on my grill for a bit to cook it about 2/3 done. Saute onion, celery & garlic over medium heat for 3-4 minutes—add the chopped jalapeno too.
- Put the chicken broth and water into the pot. Add the vegetables. Add salt, white pepper, oregano, cumin and coriander. How
much? Enough. Go light for now, and then every once and a while taste the soup and adjust the seasoning. - Then add the chicken to the pot. (I toss pieces of grilled chicken whole into the pot and remove it a couple of hours later to peel off the skin, pull out the bones and chop it up and then return it to the pot).
- Add beans. Bring to a simmer and let the whole thing bubble gently for a couple of hours. When to serve it? When it’s ready or when you’re ready to eat. You’ll know.
Preparation time: 20 minute(s)
Cooking time: 3 hour(s)
Number of servings (yield): 8
When to serve it? When it’s ready or when you’re ready to eat. You’ll know. Serve with cornbread or biscuits or saltines or, like I did here, with “Mama Stella’s Stuffing Bread”.
This is a kind of interesting twist on chili. Give it a try. It’s different. And you can always call it Chicken and Bean Soup. Either way, it’s tasty and it’ll warm you up.
The Cheap Bastid Test: I used about 1 ¼ lb chicken at $1/lb or $1.25 total. I also used 3 cans of beans at $.65 each for $2. The veggies set me back about $1 and I used half a “box” of broth or $.50 worth. Total cost of this is about $4.75 if my arithmetic is right. It’ll feed at least 4 people with leftovers for lunch.
That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!
