Ground Beef Chili Recipe with Beans

Olive oil. Medium heat. Diced peppers in first—they need time to actually soften, not just warm up. Three cloves of garlic’s not enough. Use four. The chili powder is your backbone here, and 35 ml sounds specific but it’s just how much you need to not taste like tomato soup with meat in it.

Why You’ll Love This Ground Beef Chili

One pot. That’s the whole thing. No baking dishes, no transferring, no cleanup parade. Tastes better the next day. Probably the day after that too. Cold from the fridge it’s still good, though that seems wrong. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes total, and most of that is just sitting there while it simmers. Actually comfort food, not the idea of it—the kind you make on a Tuesday and eat straight from the pot while standing in the kitchen. Spicy but not aggressive. The heat builds instead of hitting you at the start. Tabasco at the end lets you control it.

What You Need for Homemade Chili with Ground Beef

Red bell pepper, one. Diced. The seeds come out—they’re bitter and gritty otherwise. Medium onion, finely chopped. Not minced into nothing, but thin enough that it disappears into the chili by the time you’re done. Cubanel chili or a jalapeño, diced. Seeds out unless you want it aggressive. I use the cubanel when I see it, but honestly a jalapeño works every time. Olive oil. 25 ml. Not a guess. That amount matters for browning the beef without it sitting in grease. Lean ground beef. 800 grams. The leanness keeps it from breaking into greasy chunks—the texture stays right. Garlic, four cloves, minced. Not three. Four. Chili powder. 35 ml. This is the thing people get wrong. They use a teaspoon and wonder why it tastes like tomato stew. Use what the recipe says. Ground cumin. 3 ml. Barely anything. Changes everything. White beans and kidney beans—one can each, 540 ml, drained and rinsed. Two types because one type tastes like one note. Two types makes it interesting. Diced tomatoes. The 796 ml can. Canned’s better than fresh here. The juice is what you need. Ketchup. 20 ml. Sounds weird. It’s not. Rounds out the acid, adds depth you can’t identify but you taste it. Tabasco. To taste. Not the whole bottle. Salt and pepper. You’ll add it twice.

How to Make Ground Beef Chili That Actually Works

Heat the olive oil in a pot. Medium heat. Let it get warm before you add anything—rushing this part means the peppers steam instead of soften. Red pepper in. Onion in. The cubanel or jalapeño. Six minutes. Watch it. The onion should go translucent. The peppers should start to collapse slightly. Doesn’t take longer. Ground beef goes in now. Break it up with a spoon as it hits the heat. Don’t leave it in clumps—you want it distributed through the vegetables, not forming one dense mass. Garlic at the same time. Chili powder. Cumin. Stir until everything’s coated. Let the spices toast in the oil for maybe 30 seconds. That’s when the kitchen starts smelling like chili and not just like browning meat. Cook the beef until it’s no longer gray. Seven minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper now—not at the end. It needs time to work in.

Tomatoes. Beans—both kinds, drained first. Ketchup. Stir it all together. Bring it to a simmer—you’ll see movement at the edges of the pot, small bubbles pushing to the surface. Lower the heat. Way lower. This goes 50 minutes basically untouched. Stir once every 15 minutes or so, just enough to make sure nothing’s sticking to the bottom and caramelizing into bitter. The color darkens. The smell gets deeper. The liquid reduces but doesn’t disappear—it should look thick but still loose enough to spoon, not a paste. Taste it around 45 minutes. You’ll know when it’s done because all the separate flavors start becoming one flavor. Taste it. Add salt if it needs it. Add pepper if it needs it. Tabasco to your heat level—start with a few dashes. Stir. Taste again.

Ground Beef Chili Tips and Common Mistakes

Don’t skip draining the beans. The liquid they come in is starchy and thick. Your chili becomes glue instead of chili. The beef needs to brown before everything else goes in. If you dump the tomatoes on raw meat, it steams. Browned meat has texture. Raw meat that gets boiled doesn’t. Fifty minutes is the minimum. Some people think 30 is enough. It’s not. The flavors haven’t married yet. Give it the full time. Brown the spices for those 30 seconds—it sounds small but it changes the taste from flat to warm. Ketchup feels wrong until you taste it. It’s not sweet. It adds a depth of tomato flavor you’d have to hunt for otherwise. Make it the day before if you can. Seriously. The flavor deepens overnight and the chili tastes bigger. If you need it today, eat it today. It’s still good. But tomorrow it’s better. One pot means one pot to wash. That’s the appeal.

Ground Beef Chili Recipe with Beans

By Emma Kitchen

Prep:

25 min

Cook:

50 min

Total:

1h 15min

Servings:

8 servings

Ingredients

• 1 red bell pepper diced and seeded
• 1 medium onion finely chopped
• 1 cubanel chili or 1 jalapeño diced, seeds removed
• 25 ml olive oil (1 2/3 tbsp)
• 800 g lean ground beef
• 4 cloves garlic finely minced
• 35 ml chili powder (2 1/3 tbsp)
• 3 ml ground cumin (3/4 tsp)
• 1 can 540 ml (19 oz) white beans drained and rinsed
• 1 can 540 ml (19 oz) kidney beans drained and rinsed
• 1 can 796 ml (28 oz) diced tomatoes
• 20 ml ketchup (1 1/3 tbsp)
• Tabasco sauce to taste
• Salt and pepper as needed

Method

1. 1 Heat olive oil in large pot over medium heat.
2. 2 Add diced red pepper, onion, and cubanel or jalapeño pieces. Cook until softened, about 6 minutes.
3. 3 Add ground beef, breaking up with spoon, along with garlic, chili powder, and cumin.
4. 4 Cook until beef browns evenly, around 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
5. 5 Pour in diced tomatoes, white and kidney beans, and ketchup.
6. 6 Bring mixture to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to low.
7. 7 Simmer uncovered for 50 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.
8. 8 Adjust salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce to taste.
9. 9 Serve hot, ideally with toasted bread or side of choice.

Nutritional information

Calories

350

Protein

30g

Carbs

30g

Fat

15g

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Frequently Asked Questions About Chili Recipe with Ground Beef

Can I use a different type of bean? Black beans work. Pinto too. The texture changes a bit—kidney and white beans hold their shape better, so if you swap them they might get mushier. Not bad. Just different.

How spicy is this chili? Not very. The jalapeño or cubanel are mild. The chili powder’s spicy but it spreads across the whole pot. The Tabasco at the end is where the real heat lives. Control it there.

Can I make this in a slow cooker? Yeah. Brown the beef and vegetables on the stove first—same steps—then dump everything in the slow cooker and let it go for 4 hours on low. The texture’s softer but it tastes right.

What if I don’t have cubanel chili? A jalapeño works. A serrano’s hotter. A poblano is milder. Any of them do the job. Or skip it entirely and add more Tabasco at the end.

Can I freeze it? It freezes fine. Three months easy. Thaw in the fridge overnight, reheat on low heat until it’s warm through. Doesn’t taste like it was frozen.

Do I need lean ground beef? Leaner’s better—the texture stays right instead of getting greasy. But regular ground beef works. Just drain some fat off after it browns if it looks like it’s swimming.

Can I use fresh tomatoes instead of canned? Not really. You need the juice that comes with canned. Fresh tomatoes are mostly water that cooks off. You’d end up with barely any liquid and burnt tomato flavor at the bottom.