Easy chili recipes are essential for getting affordable, hearty and delicious meals on the table as the weather cools. Everyone needs an easy chili recipe or two for tailgating, weekend gatherings and family dinners.
Beans or no beans? Meat chili or vegan? Tomato based chili or white chili? Bring the heat or keep it mildly spicy?
There are as many ways to make chili as there are people who enjoy making and eating it. Homemade chili recipes can use a variety of ingredients and come in at all different heat levels.
Classic chili recipes can simmer on the stove or in the slow cooker all day long. Or you can create a delicious flavor profile to have on the table in 30 minutes.
People get pretty passionate about their homemade chili recipes. Some are pretty unbending about their chili points of view. But, around here, we love to experiment! I love to try new recipes and experience flavors I’ve never had before.
If you’re an adventurer, who hates boring and loves to bring excitement to the table, you’re going to love this collection of 21 Easy Chili Recipes I’ve curated for you.
These are recipes from some of the top bloggers on the Internet. Once you’ve tried their homemade chili recipes, you’ll understand why! So go explore. Be bold. Create awesome chili, my friend. These recipes are everything you need. Enjoy!
My easy chili recipe is one of those simple dishes that makes getting weeknight dinners on the table an absolute breeze. You'll only need 6 ingredients and 30 minutes to serve your family one of the best chili recipes. It's medium spicy and there are lots of tips for adjusting the heat level to suit whoever you're cooking for. Top with sour cream and/or your favorite fixins'. Great for family dinner, tailgating and potlucks!
Creamy White Chicken Chili is a favorite, back-to-school, fall and winter meal. Easy, delicious and 30-minutes to the table. A satisfying comfort food dinner!
This thick and hearty vegetarian chili is smoky, slightly spicy, and so satisfying. Packed with vegetables, two types of beans, and warm spices, this easy chili recipe is the perfect healthy comfort food. With just 10 minutes of prep time, you can place it on the stove and pick up that book you've been neglecting while your dinner simmers away.
Poblano Chicken Chili is studded with chunks of tender chicken and pops of sweetness from corn. This easy chili recipe isn’t quite like any you’ve ever tasted. The soup starts with dry Great Northern Beans that are pressure cooked in a slurry of mildly spicy poblano peppers, some jalapeno, onion, garlic, chicken stock and some of my favorite savory herbs and spices. I don’t think you will ever have experienced beans with more deep, rich flavor! Delicious!
Get a healthy and filling dinner with minimal cooking time when you make instant pot turkey chili. It's moderately spicy, just lightly sweet, and full of beans and lean protein.
This thick, savory, slightly spicy Black Bean Pork Chorizo Chili has three types of pork – pork roast, bacon, and chorizo – as well as black beans and a little bit of chipotle for a slight kick.
This delicious one-pot keto white chicken chili recipe is comfort food at its best. It’s a healthy creamy chili that can be prepared on the stove top or in a crockpot!
This classic Mexican chili con carne made with ground beef, spices, and vegetables, including onions, peppers, garlic, two kinds of beans, and corn, has a rich, savory flavor that is comforting and filling.
This pumpkin chili has all the best flavors of fall! It's plant based and packed with nourishing beans and vegetables. It's such incredibly easy chili recipe to make.
BEST Easy Sweet Potato Chili {Vegetarian/Vegan} | Large Batch Recipe!
This sweet potato chili is healthy, hearty, and full of cozy flavors. It's an easy chili recipe that makes a large batch and also tastes delicious as leftovers.
Beefy, hearty, and a little bit spicy - this is a surprisingly easy chili recipe for your cast iron dutch oven, and perfect for cold days. This one-pot meal recipe can be easily doubled, and freezes very well to save some for later.
Keto Cincinnati Chili is packed with the delicious flavors of the classic recipe but without the carbs! Learn to make Skyline chili (Cincinnati 5-way Chili) the low carb way.
Cheesy Black Bean Chili is the perfect chili recipe! It's full of smoky paprika, chili powder, a little cumin - and best of all? Cheese! I promise you'll love this chili recipe!
This Creamy White Chicken Chili will warm you up on a cold day. It is a perfect entree to feed a crowd or take along in your slow cooker to a party or even tailgating. It's one of the most delicious white chili recipes.
Got vegetarian guests? This chili is perfect for them, it's bursting with umami flavor and has a secret ingredient that makes it insanely good! No one will even miss the meat when they're enjoying this delicious vegetarian chili.
Three Bean Chili is a delicious weeknight meal and awesome as leftovers. Great for packing into containers and taking to work for lunch.
The best Taco Tuesday recipe for soup season! Make this chunky taco chili recipe with black beans, corn, green chiles, and a dollop of sour cream on top.
Helpful Tools for Making Easy Chili Recipes
- Stock Pot [affiliate link] – Perfect for simmering on the stove top all day. Choose a stock pot that can accommodate the batch size you’re making.
- Dutch Oven [affiliate link] – Some prefer a heavy duty Dutch Oven for making classic chili recipes.
- Slow Cooker [affiliate link] – I LOVE my slow cooker(s). Yes. We’ve already discussed that I have a problem. lol But, a slow cooker is an excellent tool for tossing together easy recipes that can cook away all day long while you get on with life – Your house smells great and very little hands-on time is required. Slow Cookers for the win!
- Instant Pot [affiliate link] – If you want to start from scratch and be the most economical, dry beans are the way to go. An Instant Pot can cook them in a fraction of the time and pressure cooking infuses flavor deep into your ingredients for an explosion of deliciousness when your classic chili recipe is done.
- Bowls [affiliate link] – Deep and wide to hold the maximum amount of delicious chili and maybe some cornbread croutons!
- Ladles [affiliate link] – The easiest way to move scrumptious classic chili from the pot to your bowl. They come in all sizes, stainless steel or silicone and some even have built-in spoon rests. So many choices!
Choosing the Right Ingredients
Ground Beef
If you’re a meat in your chili kind of cook, then ground beef is a common ingredient for a chili recipe. Unless we’re grinding our own ground beef (and most of us aren’t), there are a few tips that can help you find the most fresh and flavorful ground beef when you’re shopping.
- Check the Sell By Date on the ground beef package, obviously. Buy the freshest available.
- Check to see if the ground beef package says where your meat was sourced from or how it was raised and fed.
- Pick a good fat to lean ratio in your ground beef for the best flavor. 80/20 is usually my favorite.
- Ask for “store trim” ground beef. “Freshly ground” doesn’t always mean fresh. Store trim means that the meat was ground in the store, with fat trimmings from other cuts of meat. The plastic will be pulled tight across the surface and touching the ground beef in the package. The meat will be will be bright pink with flecks of white. If it’s not store trimmed ground beef it has likely been received at the store in large chubs, reground and then packaged. It is “freshly ground” for a second time and not the freshest meat you can buy. This double-ground ground beef is also more pasty in texture and produces dense burgers.
Peppers
Choose chili peppers to suit the heat tolerance of the people you’re cooking for. Chili peppers come in many varieties, heat levels and forms. Do some research and see where different chilies fall on the Scoville Heat Units chart. You can use fresh chilies, canned or jarred chilies or dried and ground chilies when preparing a classic chili recipe. Always use safe handling practices when working with chili peppers.
- For Milder Chili consider using bell peppers, poblano peppers, ancho or even Anaheim peppers. Chili powder and ancho chili powder also fit in this heat level.
- For Medium Heat range you’re looking at jalapenos, chipotle chili powder, guajillo chile powder and guallijo peppers.
- For Spicy Heat that gets your attention try serrano chilies, chili de arbol peppers, and cayenne pepper.
- And then you can get so hot that the flavor of your chili is lost behind the heat. Be careful when using Thai peppers, habaneros, Scotch bonnets and ghost peppers. Create a good balance with the heat you bring so the delicious flavors aren’t smothered out.
Beans
You have so many options when choosing beans for chili. The time you have for cooking can affect your choices. And so can the type of chili you’re making.
- Dry Beans are great for long, slow simmers on the stove top or in the crockpot. You can also cook dry beans in a fraction of the usual time if you use an electric pressure cooker. Even then, dry beans will take longer to cook than buying them canned.
- Canned Beans are more expensive than dried, but still reasonably affordable. You can usually find more varieties of canned beans, than dried too. Find a brand you like and trust and stick with it.
- You can use all one kind of bean in your homemade chili recipe or you can do a combination. I love mixing it up and having several types of beans. It adds color and variations in texture.
- A Note about Kidney Beans: Kidney beans are considered a traditional chili bean, though they are probably my least favorite. Kidney beans have tougher skin and to me, seem harder to digest. Kidney beans are also not suited to slow cooking without boiling them on the stove first. They contain high levels of PHA (a kidney bean lectin) that can cause food poisoning symptoms if not handled properly. Dry kidney beans must be boiled hard for 10 minutes to destroy the PHA. After that, the kidney beans can be added to a slow cooker chili recipe. So, while kidney beans are one option, they are not usually my first choice.
- Some of the beans I like best for homemade chili are:
- Red Beans
- Pinto Beans
- Black Beans
- Cannelini Beans
- Great Northern Beans
Tomatoes
In any recipe, freshly diced tomatoes are always the first choice for delicious flavor. But, when tomatoes are not in season you can still enjoy the rich, acidic and savory flavors that tomatoes bring to chili.
Many people opt for canned diced tomatoes or diced tomatoes with chilies to add to their homemade chili. Those are certainly quick and easy options. And, they’ll even make a good chili.
But for truly exceptional chili, I tend to bypass the diced tomatoes and go for whole peeled tomatoes in a can.
Diced tomatoes are usually cut from seconds and leftover bits and pieces that weren’t high quality enough to be used as whole canned tomatoes.
Compare and contrast the color and texture of diced tomatoes with whole tomatoes and I think you’ll see what I mean. Diced tomatoes are paler and contain more light colored stem ends. whole tomatoes are bright red and super flavorful.
Diced tomatoes are also treated with calcium chloride to firm them up and keep them from breaking apart in the can. That also prevents them from breaking down when you cook with them. If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t get a tomato based sauce to cook down, diced tomatoes may be your issue.
To use whole tomatoes as a substitute for diced, in a chili recipe, I simply crush the whole tomatoes in my hand as I’m adding them to the pot. The crushed pieces will break down as they cook and make flavorful smooth sauces and broth.
More Easy Recipe Ideas
About Glenda
I believe cooking from scratch doesn’t have to be complicated and that YOU can do it. My simple recipes, tutorials, and cooking tips will help you get weeknight dinners on the table with less stress. Forget takeout or the drive-thru. Let me show you how to make homemade easy. Read more...
