Chili soup

Lietuviškas šios sriubos aprašas čia.

There are lots of chili soup recipes which slightly differ from each other. I believe all of them are good, because this is the soup you can easily adjust according to your taste or your fridge content...

This soup is written specially for Remco. Remco is our Holland friend, which doesn't like cheese and beans. But he was so impressed by the flavor of this soup, that he decided to make it without those ingredients.

You will need:

• 0,5 kg ground meat - I usually use half N half (another option: chopped beef)
• 2 big sweet peppers - any color
• 0,5 kg raw tomatoes
• Canned tomatoes in their own juice (optional)
• 2 big onions
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 chili peppers or some chili powder (or both)
• 1 can of kidney beans (or the same amount of cooked beans or any other canned beans: white, brown, in tomato sauce,etc.)
• your favorite meat spices
• dash of salt
• sweet pepper powder
• spices you like - I usually use oregano and basil
• freshly ground black pepper
• olive oil

You can also add some lemon juice or peaces of apple, if you wan to get more sour taste.

Recipe:
Bake chopped onion and ground garlic for about 2 minutes in a pan with olive oil. Add ground meat and bake another 5 minutes, add chopped chili pepper or chili powder, your favorite meat spices, diced into cubes sweet peppers. Bake for another 10 minutes and pour the mass into a soup pot. Add diced into cubes pealed raw tomatoes, diced canned tomatoes (make sure no skin is left) and it's juice. Add some water (the amount of water depends on how thick you want your soup to be). Bring to boil and simmer on a low heat until the peppers are soft (about 10 minutes), in the end add prepared washed beans (if you use beans in tomato sauce - don't wash them), season with some oregano, basil (or another spices of your choice), add salt and black pepper to taste. Cook another few minutes on a low heat.

You can add some ground cheese into your plate. Delicious with garlic bread or any other bread with crispy crust.

If you are living in Holland (just like me), you may wanna change the preparation method. Meat in the Netherlands is very watery because of the climate. When you start baking it in the pan, the meat releases lots of water which leaves your meat boiling in the water instead of baking. This is what I do: Bake your vegetables separately from meat (just like in the recipe). Bake your meat in the other pan, pour the water off as soon as it is released from the meat. Season after pouring the water off - not before.

Eet smakelijk! :)

Here are 3 easy ways to peal your raw tomatoes:

http://toriavey.com/how-to/2012/04/how-to-peel-tomatoes/