Quinoa Black Bean Chili

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Quinoa Black Bean Chili

There are a lot of quinoa black bean chili recipes online, and in cookbooks. Of course, chili is not something that I grew up with - it is an acquired taste for me. What I have noticed is that chili is a slow cooked soup. I have also noticed that a lot of recipes call for canned beans, canned tomatoes, ready made chili powder, and things like that. I am not a slow cooker person, but more of a quick fix person :-) I don't use anything canned either. So what I have tried is to give the slow cooker feel by using VitaMix blending. Also, instead of using ready made chili powder, I used roasted garlic, oregano, sweet peppers, and red chilly powder. Then I added them while blending in my VitaMix.

Meanwhile, crush garlic, chop onion , dice sweet peppers, quarter 1 tomato and chop the remaining 2 tomatoes.

Heat olive oil in a deep sauce pan and saute garlic along with cumin and oregano till garlic is slightly browned

Transfer to VitaMix jar along with quartered tomato, diced sweet pepper, 2 big scoops from the cooked black bean , red chilly powder and vegetable broth. Start with speed 1 and increase to 10 and high and blend for couple of minutes till you get a silly smooth puree - this is the soup base.

Now to the same saucepan add chopped onion and saute till slightly golden. Add chopped tomatoes, cooked Black bean and quinoa, pureed soup base and salt. Mix well and give a quick boil and adjust taste . You don't need to really simmer for a long time since VitaMix blending is already giving the slow cooked feel to the soup.

Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve.

* Note: I make my vegetable broth by pressure cooking my left over vegetables towards the end of the week, pressure cooking them with enough water and then straining them. I don't add salt because I like to control the amount of salt when I make soup.