Monday, October 05, 2009

Calico Chili Beans

I was talking to one of my young friends this past week. She was canning chili beans using a recipe of mine. I thought... this is a perfect time of year to can them because I have the peppers from my garden and the onions, etc. I call them Calico Chili Beans because I use a 10 bean mix (it actually has 17 different items in it). They are very colorful. I bought this mix from Walton Feed. I have a couple of buckets of them. I will post the recipe at the end.

I love this picture because it looks like I arranged them in a perfect circle. This is looking down into the bucket of beans.


I had to soak the beans over night. I have a HUGE bowl and the 10 lbs. of beans was well below the edge. This morning, the beans were taller than the bowl. :) After I drained and rinsed them, I put them in my big stock pot. I think it holds 34 quarts. This gives me plenty of room to add the other ingredients and stir well without splashing over the edges.

Here they are in the jars before they went into the canner. You will notice you can still see lots of color in them. I used red and green and orange peppers.

Here they are after they are canned.


Marci’s Calico Chili Beans

1. Soak 10 lbs. of 10 bean mix (you can use kidney, pinto or any mixture of beans and legumes you would like) overnight in plenty of water. Drain any excess water off and rinse the beans.

2. Put beans in a large pot. Add 2 gallons of water and heat them up.

3. Add the following:
4 cups bell peppers, chopped
7 to 8 cups of onions, chopped
10 to 12 oz. of Worcestershire sauce
2 large bulbs of garlic minced. (I do mean bulbs and not cloves) You can use 1/2 cup granulated or powdered garlic.
1 cup chili powder
1/3 cup cumin
½ cup salt or to taste
1 cup sucanat (or brown sugar)
1/2 cup of molasses or sorghum
¼ cup dry mustard
Cayenne to taste (I added 2 big spoonfuls)
Sprinkle with oregano

4.Bring to a boil.

5. Fill jars leaving a 1” headspace.

6. Process in pressure canner at 10 lbs. pressure for 65 mins.

I ended up with 7 quarts and 24 pints.

4 comments:

blog said...

Wow! This looks like a terrific recipe. I wish we had a pressure canner to make good use of it! Maybe one day we'll get one... :)

I guess for now we could just scale it down!

Rachel said...

I really like this recipe. I also liked how the beans were a nice reddish color when they were done, compared to the more brown color before.
How many did you end up getting? I think we got like 36.

The K. Family said...

They look really good. Okay, so how do you fix them? Do you eat them the way they are, use them in soup or chilli? I've always wanted to try canning beans so thanks for the recipe.

Barb J. said...

Thanks for the inspiration. I've never canned beans before. I'm going to have to try this!