I didn’t have black-eyed peas for New Year’s, but I made this homemade chili recipe with scarlet runner beans. I managed to grow only enough scarlet runner beans or Scarlet Emperor Beans for two pots of chili. I also finished off my last two pints of homegrown canned tomatoes. It will be a long, dry spell before more homegrown tomatoes and beans!

Chili with Scarlet Runner Beans

~ Ingredients ~

1 lb. grass-fed ground beef

4 tbl. olive oil

1 medium onion

2 large cloves garlic

1 large turnip

2 large carrots

1 doz. cherry tomatoes

4 Jimmy Nardello peppers

1 cup dried Scarlet Runner Beans

2 pints canned tomatoes

2 tbl. chili powder

1 tsp. cumin powder

1/2 dried Caribbean Red Habanero, optional

salt to taste

~ Directions ~

Wash beans, pour boiling water over to cover, add more water as they swell, let sit for an hour. Alternately, soak overnight. In fresh water, cover beans with water and cook till tender on medium low heat, 1-2 hours. Meanwhile, heat 2 tbl. of the olive oil on medium heat and cook the meat thoroughly. In a separate pan, heat the remaining olive oil and cook the chopped onions till translucent, add minced garlic, then stir in one at a time, chopped turnip, carrots, peppers, fresh tomatoes and canned tomatoes. Cook on medium heat for five minutes. Pour off liquid from meat and add to vegetables. Stir in spices, salt and dried habanero. This was my first experience cooking with my habaneros I grew this year and it did add some heat to the pot. Add cooked beans with liquid, stir together. Simmer on medium heat for 30-60 minutes. Adding 1/2-1c. of tomato paste will make it thicker with richer tomato taste.

Read more about these beautiful beans here. This chili recipe is really more of a stew with the added vegetables, but this gives you an opportunity to use up some of your extra veggies. You can also use the bulb of fennel instead of the turnip. Please let me know if you try it! Thanks for reading!

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