Nutrition
Calories: 485kcal | Carbohydrates: 50g | Protein: 41g | Fat: 2g | Fiber: 28g
This Chili recipe has a lot of flavor, is easy to make and great for meal prepping.
Servings
Ingredients
- 3 batches High Protein Vegan Bacon Bits
- 1 Red Onion finely diced
- 1 bulb Garlic minced
- 2 cans Black Beans 15 oz can, drained and rinsed
- 2 cans Pinto Beans 15 oz can, drained and rinsed
- 1 can Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes 28 oz can
- 1 jar Mild Salsa 16 oz jar (you can use something spicier if you want)
- 1 can Green Chilies 4 oz can
- 2 Green Bell Peppers diced
- 1 1/2 cup Frozen Corn
- 1 cup Nutritional Yeast
- 1 tbsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tbsp Onion Powder
- 2 tbsp Chili Powder
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Make the "bacon" bits per the recipe link above
- In a medium heat pan, saute onions until translucent. Add garlic and saute for another 2-3 minutes.
- Add garlic and onions to Crockpot. Turn to medium heat setting.
- Add the crushed tomatoes, salsa, green chilies, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder and chili powder to the crockpot and stir well.
- Add the beans, green peppers and corn; stir.
- Allow to cook for 3 hours on medium, stirring occasionally.
- Serve with the "bacon bits" on top. Can also add vegan sour cream or shredded cheese.
Equipment
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Notes
Soy-free Option:
- Follow the soy-free option instructions for the high protein vegan bacon bits.
Did you make this recipe?Mention @proteindeficient.vegan
I came up with this High Protein Southwestern Chili, because normal chili feels like a fall dish, but the southwestern spin on it makes it feel like I can eat it whenever I want!
This is a great recipe for meal prepping. You can make a really large batch of it and then just take it for lunch all week long. Chili seems to be a great meal for everyone in the family too! This is also a Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB) dish and you won’t need to make any substitutions. I personally like to add vegan cheese and vegan sour cream to the top of it and scoop it up with tortilla chips, but it still tastes amazing on its own!
I think this is also a really great recipe if you’re trying to incorporate more plant-based meals into your diet. This would be a great Meatless Monday meal for the entire family. This could easily be made gluten-free if you substitute the soy sauce for coconut aminos in the High Protein Bacon Bits recipe; that’s the only ingredient in here that is not gluten-free.
Ingredients
- High Protein Vegan Bacon Bits – firstly, I’d like to apologize for linking a recipe inside of a recipe, but I really like to keep the recipes clean looking, and not all jumbled so that they stay easy to use. For this recipe, I used three batches of the high protein vegan bacon bits recipe that’s linked above. This is a super easy recipe to make. It uses TVP for the protein source. It’s also a really versatile ingredient that you could use on other things, like a high-protein salad or loaded fries! Sometimes when I making the bacon bits recipe, I make a really large batch so that I can use it in other meals throughout the week!
- Red onion – you could use a different color onion if you like. I typically try to use red onions when I can because I heard they were healthier but feel free to use your favorite kind of onion.
- Garlic – I like to use fresh garlic in this. If you don’t have fresh garlic, you could always just use a little bit more garlic powder instead.
- Black Beans – I use the no salt added canned black beans, because it’s just easier! If you want to use dry black beans, make sure to prepare them before hand, however you do that. I am lazy and can’t really give you direction on that.
- Pinto beans – I use the no salt added canned pinto beans for this recipe. You could use dry pinto beans and re-hydrate them if you want, but I just think it’s quicker to use the canned beans.
- Canned fire-roasted crushed tomatoes – you could come up with your own crushed tomatoes and fire -roast them if you’re feeling really ambitious, but I prefer to use the canned variety. It really does save a lot of time do use canned vegetables and beans for this recipe. You basically just dump cans of stuff in the Crockpot and wait for it to cook.
- Mild salsa – I am a little bitch so I can only handle mild salsa, but if you like spicy stuff, feel free to use medium salsa or even whatever you guys call hot salsa? I’ve never bought anything spicier than salt, so I don’t even know what that would be called.
- Green Chilies – I used a 4 ounce can of mild green chilies.
- Green Bell Peppers – I like to use fresh green bell peppers; we will dice them for the recipe. You could use a different color of bell pepper if you want but I really like the flavor of the green for this recipe.
- Corn – I really like to use frozen corn for this, so I don’t have to, like, cut off corn from a cob. I do think you really need corn for this recipe since it’s southwestern, plus who doesn’t want to eat corn? It’s just a big lump with knobs. And it’s got the juice! I can’t think of a more beautiful thing!
- Nutritional yeast – if you haven’t cooked many vegan dishes, you might not know about nutritional yeast, but this is a really great ingredient to get a cheesy savory flavor into any dish. It’s also incredibly high in protein on a calorie basis. Nutritional yeast is a shelf stable ingredient that you can purchase at most grocery stores. If your grocery store doesn’t have it, you can also purchase it online. Some of my favorite brands are Braggs, Frontier, and Bob’s Red Mill. I personally think you should add nutritional yeast to this chili, but if you don’t want to, just note that the calories and macros will change from what’s listed in the recipe., and it won’t taste as yummy!
- Garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, salt – these are the seasonings that I used for this southwestern chili. We have already added some pretty big flavors with the salsa, green chilies and the bacon bits, but I think these additional spices add a lot of flavor and work well with all the other ingredients. You can modify these as you see fit.
Instructions
- Up first, you’re going to make the bacon bits per the recipe link above. I like to make three batches of this for this High Protein Southwestern Chili recipe. If you don’t want that many bacon bits, you can use less, just note that your calories and macros will change versus what’s listed in the recipe card.
- In a medium-heat pan, preferably nonstick, sauté the onions until they’re translucent. This should take about 3 to 5 minutes. If you’re not using a nonstick pan, make sure you use some oil so that you don’t have onions sticking to your pan. You also want to make sure you’re regularly stirring the onions so they don’t burn or stick. If you don’t feel like dirtying another pan, you could also just add these to the Crockpot that you’ll will be using and cook them before you add the other ingredients. I like to use the pan because it just takes less time.
- In the pan with onions, add the minced, garlic and sauté for another 2 to 3 minutes, stirring regularly.
- Turn the Crockpot to the medium heat setting. Add the cooked garlic and onions to this Crockpot. If you’re using the Crockpot to cook your onions and garlic, do this for a little bit until they’re translucent and cooked.
- Next, add the crushed tomatoes, salsa, green chilies, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder and salt to the Crockpot and stir them well. I like to do this first before adding the beans so that the seasoning is well mixed into the actual sauce part of the dish.
- Add the black beans and pinto beans, green peppers and corn and stir well.
- Cook for about three hours on medium heat, stirring occasionally. If you’re cooking this on low heat, you probably want to cook it longer than three hours. Cooking it longer will only make the flavors better, as long as you don’t overcook it and cook out all the liquid. Note that this is a very thick chili, because I hate soup and therefore I do not like a lot of liquid in my chili. So if you like a thinner chili, you might wanna add more tomatoes or some water to thin it out.
- Once the chili is cooked, we’re going to serve it with the vegan high-protein bacon bits on top. You can also top it with vegan sour cream or shredded cheese. I like to save the bacon bits separately and add them in right before I eat it, so they don’t get soggy, but this is just my preference. I also really like eating this chili with tortilla chips.
Silly Little Haiku
Southwestern Chili
It has vegan bacon bits!
Not just a fall dish
Author
Protein Deficient Vegan
