Chili Beans with Corn Chips
A slow-cooked bean chili dehydrated at home, rehydrated in the pot and scooped with corn chips.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 131
- protein
- 31 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 17 min
- water
- 400 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Backpacking
- Thru-hike
- Basecamp
- Bikepacking
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Dairy free
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Dehydrated chili leather, crumbled | 1 cup | one portion of the home batch below |
|---|---|---|
| Corn chips | 1.5 oz | carried in a rigid container or they become dust |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | added at camp, not before drying |
| Textured vegetable protein | 1 kg | home batch: rehydrated before it goes in the pot |
| Onions, finely diced | 3 | |
| Garlic, chopped | 1 whole head | |
| Red bell peppers, diced | 3 | |
| Fresh hot chilies, chopped | to taste | |
| Tomato paste | 1 tbsp | |
| Canned kidney beans, drained | 4 cans | |
| Dried ancho and pasilla chilies | 6-8 total | stemmed and seeded, ground into powder |
| Dark chocolate | 1 oz | |
| Red wine | 1/2 cup | |
| Salt | to taste |
Method
- At home: toast the dried ancho and pasilla chilies in a dry pan for a minute a side, then grind them to powder in a spice mill.
- Rehydrate the TVP in hot water, squeeze it out, and brown it in a large pot with the onion, garlic, bell pepper, and fresh chilies.
- Add the tomato paste, ground chili powder, wine, and beans. Simmer at least two hours, low and covered, until the beans start breaking down. Stir in the chocolate at the end and salt it.
- Blot any surface fat off with paper towel. Fat is what goes rancid in storage, so be thorough.
- Spread the chili thin on lined dehydrator trays and dry at 57C until it is a dry, brittle leather with no soft spots. Eight to twelve hours.
- Crumble and portion into bags, about one cup per serving.
- In camp: add 400 ml of water to the pot with a portion of chili and let it sit ten minutes off the stove.
- Bring it to a boil, kill the heat, cover, and wait five minutes. Add water in small splashes if it is still gritty.
- Stir in the oil. Eat with the corn chips, or crush them in.
The dried chilies and the two-hour simmer are the whole recipe. Ground ancho and pasilla give a deep, raisiny heat that jarred chili powder does not, and the long cook is what breaks the kidney beans down into a sauce thick enough to dry flat. Thin, even leather rehydrates evenly. Chunks stay hard in the middle.
Fat is the enemy of a six-month shelf life, so the oil is blotted off before drying and added back in camp from a dropper bottle. The dark chocolate goes in anyway and stores fine once the surface fat is gone. Corn chips are there for texture: everything else you eat on trail is soft.
Packing
One batch is ten to fourteen dinners. Vacuum seal or use a bag with an oxygen absorber and it keeps six months at room temperature. Corn chips ride in a small hard container clipped outside the pack.
Variations
- Ground beef instead of TVP if you are not keeping it vegetarian. Blot the fat harder.
- Skip the chips and pour it over par-cooked dehydrated rice or into a tortilla.
- No dehydrator: instant refried bean flakes, a spoon of chili powder, and TVP crumbles gets you most of the way in one pot.
https://slowerhiking.com/recipes/dehydrated-chilli-bean-corn-chips