I am always searching for ways to cut out red meat from our diet. I’d love for my entire family to be as passionate about vegetables and a plant based diet as I seem to be, but that’s just not happening.

So, I create things like this instead.

Another driving force of mine is finding ways to add more beans into their diets as well. I don’t think there is a person on the planet that can argue how good beans are for us but I know that I certainly don’t eat them every single day, do you? Well here’s an easy recipe that will get the fiber and protein into your diet without the red meat.

It’s what I call Healthy Chicken Chili.

It uses ground up chicken that is stuffed like a sausage would be. This is what the package looks like if you’ve never bought it.

The ingredients are: Skinless chicken, red peppers, green peppers, water, seasoning (sea salt, spice, turbinado sugar) Pork casing.

(The casing gets peeled off before cooking in case that freaks you out like it does me).

Now here’s the beautiful part about this recipe. It is totally customized to your taste buds. For example:

Diced tomatoes – I used plain no salt. However, you can use roasted garlic. You can use fire roasted. You can use salted.
Chili powder – I used 2 teaspoons. However, if that’s too hot, use less. If you like it hotter, add more.
Cumin – same as the chili powder. If you like more of a Mexican flavor kick up the cumin.
Chipotle Chilies – now here is where you can run into some trouble. These babies are extremely potent. Not hot hot, but smokey hot. If you use too many they can actually ruin the dish. Be careful with these. I used 1 chili and that was plenty smokey for me. They have a similar taste to smoke paprika if you’ve cooked with that before.
Beans – if you don’t have black use red. If you don’t have pinto use black. It’s all good.

NOTE:

I did not include the sodium content in the nutritional information because it’s very difficult to provide that in recipes that call for canned products. There are too many factors that can change it. I could not find ‘no salt’ black beans or homemade chicken broth as an option, therefore the information would be incorrect.

Obviously it’s best to use NO SALT canned products because the salt in chili can be off the charts and that’s not what we want. So please try to make it a habit to use not only ORGANIC beans and tomatoes, but the NO SALT version as well. You can always add salt to taste according to your preference.

Also, by using chicken sausage in lieu of ground beef we cut the calories from 440 per serving to 221; the fat from 26 grams to 8.5, saturated fat from 10.5 to 1.5; and the cholesterol from 72 mg to 37 mg.

Healthy Chicken Sausage Chili

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Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Yield: Serves 8

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Ingredients

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1 cup onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, (dry roasted in pan with skin on for 3–4 minutes then peeled and minced)
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 chipotle in adobe sauce, minced
1 package al fresco chicken sausage, casing peeled and chopped
1 can chili beans in sauce (I used hot)
1 can pinto beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed
1 can black beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed
1 (15 0z) can diced tomatoes with juice
1 cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon paprika
1–2 teaspoons chili powder
1 Tablespoon pure maple syrup
⅛ teaspoon cinnamon
sea salt to taste
pepper to taste

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Instructions

Take 2 or 3 whole cloves of garlic and put them in a small saute pan over medium heat. No oil. Let them brown for approx. 4 minutes flipping them occasionally. Take off the heat and bring to a cutting board
Cut up the onion, chipotle chili, and smash the garlic with the side of a knife. The garlic should come out very easily. Mince the garlic.
Remove the casing from the sausage and chop up into small pieces.
Heat the oil in a large pot or Dutch oven until warm. Add the onion and saute over low/medium heat until translucent. Approx 4 minutes.
Add the garlic and chipotle chilies. Saute another minute more.
Add the chicken sausage and brown for approx. 4-5 minutes.
Add all the rest of the remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat for 2 hours.
Serve hot topped with sour cream, shredded cheese and a side of cornbread.

Notes

Nutritional information is approximate. I did not list the sodium content because it’s too difficult to provide an accurate estimate with canned products. Please use NO SALT canned products whenever possible and add natural sea salt sparingly while cooking.

Calories 221; Fat 8.5 gr; sat fat 1.5 gr, Cholesterol 37 mg; Carb 24; Fiber 7.3 gr; Sugar 3.5 gr; Protein 13.9 gr