Ingredients
- 1 diced onion
- 1 diced carrot
- 1-2 stalks chopped celery
- 1/2 diced capsicum (sweet pepper)
- Crush garlic (as much as you like)
- Salt & pepper to taste
- 400-500g beef mince
- 1 tbls tomato paste
- 1 large shake Worcester sauce
- 1 can chopped tomatoes
- 1 can chilli beans
- 1 can capellini/red kidney/butter beans (or cooked lentils)
- 1 tbls smoked paprika
- 1 tbls ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground fennel
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- Sour cream/cheese/guacamole and nachos/rice to serve
Directions (modified from S Arcus)
Slowly fry in a bit of butter and oil in one pan the following:
Onion, carrot, celery, capsicum and as much crushed/finely chopped garlic as you’re into. Add salt and pepper. The idea is not to get much colour on the veges. By slowly, I mean 20+ minutes if you have the time (or longer if your baby wakes up and you forget to turn off the element), so a low-ish heat. This I tend to do and then get a second pan/casserole dish on for the mince.
In another pan in a large drizzle of hot oil in as many batches as you need to:
Brown mince on a medium-high heat. By doing this in several batches rather than in one lot, you get a good sear (and therefore colour) on the mince. While you don’t want colour on the veges, here you do want caramelisation on the meat.
Once all the mince is nicely coloured, return it all to the pan and add the slowly cooked onion/carrot/celery/capsicum mix. Turn down the temp to a medium heat and add tomato paste and cook out for another minute or two, then add a large shake of worcester sauce (I use this as my initial seasoning agent and follow up with salt and pepper later on), chopped tomatoes, chilli beans, canellini/red kidney/butter beans (or cooked lentils), smoked paprika, cumin, fennel, coriander, water/stock (I normally pour water from the kettle into a tin I’ve just emptied and add that with one of those liquid stock sachets if I have them to hand). Stir everything together, and if necessary, add a bit more water/stock and taste for flavour – do you need anything else? More cumin or paprika? Salt or pepper? Worcester sauce?
Once I’m at this stage I turn the heat down to low and let it cook all down for as long as is possible. I’ve been known to get this going in the morning (or the night before) and throw it in the slow cooker once it has all come together into a nice unctuous tasty delight that it is meant to be and gets the saliva glands working when you walk in the door.
The flavours develop really well over a couple of hours, but this can also be done very quickly (just don’t add quite so much water/stock and chop the veges in a small dice or don’t do the veges at all, just the mince, tomatoes, beans, and spices).
Serve with sour cream/cheese/guacamole on anything from baked potatoes to nachoes to rice to pasta.
Recipe from Susan A.