Yesterday I’d planned on trying out the new Mr D’s Thermal cooker that we bought at the Peterborough show, but as I only pretend to be able to cook I didn’t have any chilli powder in the house so it was postponed until after a visit to the shop.  We bought it because it seemed like a really good idea and we like warm food which is easy to prepare.  Our usual fare is meat, potatoes and salad when we are travelling and we don’t have an oven so this seemed like an alternative.  We absolutely love tagine so I will be trying that next and this seemed cheaper than having the oven on for 4-6 hours (both in the motorhome and at home) and then taking 3 days to get the tagine pot clean again!

So today was the big day, I got all of the ingredients out for a fairly standard chilli which I found online rather than go all out on a Thermal cooked venison chilli which I found online (I always find venison a bit deer… I’ve been using that joke for years and I’m not stopping now!).  Of course now I’m writing this I have rediscovered the Chilli in Mr D’s own cookbook but that has extra things like chorizo, beer and cornflower in it which I’m not that fussed with.

So the starting ingredients are:

Oil (to fry the onions in)
1 red pepper – oops forgot to buy that so will be leaving that out…
1 onion (I used medium size)
2 garlic cloves, peeled – can’t be bothered with that faffing so have a tube of garlic instead
1 heaped tsp hot chilli (or 1 tbsp of mild which is what I bought as I’m not keen on really hot)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp gound cumin
500g lean beef

I chopped the onions nice and small and fried them until they got a bit soft and then added the garlic, chilli, paprika and cumin and let that “sweat” for a few minutes.  Then I added the beef and browned that until there was no pink left.

2nd half ingredients:

1 beef stock cube
200-250ml hot water (depends on how runny you want it) – alternatively use 125g passata for a deeper tomato flavour
400g can chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp sugar (which I haven’t included)
2 tbsp tomato puree (which I forgot to add and is definitely needed!)
410g can red kidney beans (I had a 215g carton of pre-cooked beans so used that which was very adequate)

Next I crumbled the beef stock into the hot water and added it to the pan, then added the can of tomatos, the marjoram and sugar (or you can add a cube of dark chocolate which adds richness to the chilli apparently). Then the tomato puree and the kidney beans.

Bring it all to the boil and simmer for about 10 mins before moving across to the thermal cooker.

Once the chilli was boiling I prepared the rice which is 1 cup rice, 2 cups water and a pinch of salt.  Add this to the top pot and bring to the boil and simmer for a couple of mins before also adding to the thermal cooker.

Voila – the chilli is now cooking so I’ll let you know how it turns out.

UPDATE*** The chilli was very lovely and the rice was very fluffy indeed – would highly recommend it!