Paleo Chocolate Chili Recipe Review

Paleo Chocolate Chili

I’ve never liked beans — of any kind.  Black, pinto, lima, whatever the hell kind of beans are in baked beans  — doesn’t matter I can’t stand them.  I’ve spent the last 3 years trying to teach myself to like the darn things because they are super healthy, right?   Lentils and I finally reached a level of mutual toleration when I was introduced to paleo.  Imagine my joy to discover that the things were actually bad for you  — Ha!  Take that pesky beans!

Of the foods I’ve never been able to enjoy, chili ranked pretty high on the list.  I could have made a beanless chili before, of course, but it seemed wrong.  I don’t have that fear anymore and I’ve been looking forward to trying it.  I found a number of recipes that looked good, but then I stumbled across a chocolate chili on The Clothes Make the Girl’s website.  Perfect!  It contained two of my favorite things: chocolate and anything other than beans.

To call it chocolate chili is a bit of a misnomer.  Although unsweetened cocoa powder is a flavoring ingredient, there is no chocolatey taste.  Rather than copy her recipe over, I’ll just post the link RIGHT HERE.  Check out her site and other recipes while you are there.  It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite paleo sites.  She also has a new cookbook that I love and will be reviewing in a later post.

I pretty much followed her recipe for this as written.  The only thing I did differently was to reduce the amount of chili powder from 2 Tbsp to 1.5 Tbsp.  I cannot even imagine eating it with 2 Tbsp.  I don’t have a super high tolerance for spicy hot foods and at 1.5 Tbsp my mouth was on fire.  If you prefer milder chili, start out with 2 tsp to 1 Tbsp pf chili powder first.  After it has simmered for a while you can add more to taste.  If you like three-alarm chili, go ahead and load it up!

Overall I give the recipe 2 thumbs up.  I’ve eaten it for the last three days and it is even better on the second and third days.  I like to top it with fresh chopped onion.  Today I added a side of oven baked sweet potato fries. Yummy combo!