You know when it’s fall. The crisp, chilly nights practically beg you to snuggle up inside with a hot bowl of chili that warms you from the inside out while you watch the leaves fall.
It’s still hot out??
Or when it’s the middle of September and it’s still like 85ºF outside but you decide to make chili because it’s September (dang it!), and that means it should feel fall-ish. And so you make said chili in the hopes of coaxing fall to hurry it up and stop taking its sweet time.
You may regret sweating your life away when you insist on wearing your cable knit sweater in the mid-September heat, but I can pretty much guarantee you won’t regret making this chili.
The Instant Pot: a kitchen game-changer.
It comes together in record time thanks to the Instant Pot (one of our fave kitchen gadgets). You cook the bacon, brown the meat, saute the veggies all in the Instant Pot, and then dump everything back in there and pressure cook for 30 minutes. And voila, chili that only took one pot to prepare instead of multiple pots. And about an hour to prep and cook start-to-finish, but tastes like it has been slow cooking all day.
Smoke on smoke on smoke.
Triple the smoke factor: bacon, smoked paprika and liquid smoke plus the subtle sweetness from the sweet potatoes and the spice from the jalapeños…party in your mouth. This chili uses bison, but you could totally sub ground beef or even turkey if you prefer. I love using bison though because it’s lower in fat and calories but higher in protein than even 90% lean ground beef. But it’s still packed with flavor as opposed to ground turkey (which is lean but tends to be drier and much less flavorful than beef).
No-soak dry beans.
This recipe uses dry beans which are a favorite in our house. They are so cost effective and an excellent source of plant based protein. While the package will tell you that they require soaking overnight, this recipe is the bomb because you just dump them in and let the Instant Pot work it’s magic.
Make this, friends. And join me in beckoning fall.
[cooked-recipe id=”1955″]
