Buffalo Chickpea Chili

It’s been unseasonably warm ’round these parts, so what better time to post a good old chili recipe, am I right?! I love chili, and while I enjoy the recipe I’ve made for years, as soon as I saw this one, I knew I had to try it.

This one is called Buffalo Chickpea Chili and is courtesy of one of my favorite food bloggers, Chocolate Covered Katie. Lest you think this chili has chocolate, it does not. Only some of Katie’s creations are chocolate covered.

Buffalo flavor is one of my favorite things. Chances are, if I’m getting lunch somewhere and there’s a buffalo-related item, I’ll probably order it. So when I saw there was a buffalo-flavored chili, it went right onto my “to-make” list.

The chickpeas were an added incentive: not only are they super healthy and delicious, I had two huge containers of cooked chickpeas in my freezer and really wanted to find a use for them. So this was a perfect opportunity.

This chili also stores well in the freezer. Easy weeknight dinners, here I come!

This recipe is très simple. It’s also vegan! One of the things I love about it is you just toss everything into a pot at the same time. No waiting around to add stuff.

FULL RECIPE: Buffalo Chickpea Chili by Chocolate Covered Katie. Go there to see the full directions, but it’s so easy you might be able to just follow them from my blog.

Ingredients

This recipe should make about 6 cups of chili.

I doubled the recipe, so the above photo is 6 containers each with 2 cups of chili. Note: this list of ingredients is for the original, not-doubled recipe.

Spices:

This is what I used. Katie calls for 1 1/2 tbsp of chili powder, but I chickened out and only used 1 tbsp. This wound up being plenty spicy for me, and I like things spicy.

• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1/2 tbsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cumin

And the ingredients (see her post for exact amounts):

• diced tomatoes
• tomato sauce
• chickpeas, cooked or canned
• protein of choice (I used kidney beans and Lightlife three grain tempeh, lightly fried)
• chopped or diced carrot
• diced onion
• minced garlic
• diced celery
• buffalo sauce or hot sauce (I used Frank’s Buffalo Wings sauce)

Katie’s recipe calls for a couple of things I omitted:

• optional corn (I just chose to leave this out)
• cream cheese, such as tjs vegan, OR cashew cream (Katie says this can be omitted, and I just didn’t feel like adding any kind of cream this time around)

Here are all my ready-to-go ingredients. Again, I doubled the above recipe – which I recommend doing if you’d like to have a nice stockpile of easy-to-heat-up meals in your freezer! Just transfer a container to your fridge in the morning, and by evening it’ll be thawed enough to dump into a pot.

THE GREAT DUMP. So easy.

After bringing to a boil, I let it simmer for about 35 minutes.

By the way, I had an extra cup of tomato sauce in my fridge I really wanted to use, so I dumped that in the pot. This might make this chili look slightly more tomato saucey than it should.

Isn’t it pretty?

This recipe is so easy I had plenty of time while it was cooking to do another important task: the dishes.

While both are delicious, this is a much simpler and easier recipe than my other chili recipe. So if you’re short on time, I’d make this one. Most of the work is chopping the vegetables, then just waiting a little over half an hour for it to cook.

You can serve all 6 cups immediately, or do what I do and store it in the freezer. I recommend glass containers. Pyrex is great. I have about 20 Pyrex containers of all different sizes. It’s the best.

The great thing about chili is you can serve it any way you like: over rice, pasta, quinoa; you can sop it up with bread; mix in fresh veggies like spinach, broccoli, cauliflower; top it with cheese, avocado, or anything else you want.

I always have stockpiles of broccoli and cauliflower ready to go in my fridge, so I chose to lightly sautee some chopped cauliflower and use that as a base. I even amped up the buffalo flavor by tossing in some buffalo sauce with the cauliflower.

After adding the chili, I topped it with my favorite cheese-to-go-with-chili, sharp cheddar.

Voila!

Nutrition

My version had 186 calories a cup. (Remember, I used an extra cup of tomato sauce so the count is just a tiny bit more than it would have otherwise been.) Of course, this will vary depending on what you add in terms of your protein and whether you add any kind of cream (which I didn’t).

Here’s the nutrition info from the batch I made.

I have it set as 1 cup = 1 serving, but 2 cups – with some kind of grain or vegetables – makes a good meal. Courtesy of myfitnesspal.

I recommend checking out Katie’s blog if you haven’t already. I keep finding things on there I want to make, and she’s conscious of making sure recipes are both delicious and healthy.

I’ve been loving food blogs lately, so let me know if you recommend one! I love comfort food and desserts, but on the healthy side.

And let me know if you make this chili!