Chili with pinto beans

I think a direct substitution would be fine. I've seen pinto bean chili in cans at Whole Foods. I've never tried it, but I'm sure it's similar to the other.

I usually use Bush's chili beans (canned). They are a smaller bean than the kidney bean. The label lists 'small red beans' on the ingredients. It's the same bean used in red beans and rice in southern dishes. It makes a delicious chili. Do you know what it is about kidney beans that cause a problem and could you substitute red beans?

That sounds promising! I don't know what it is about kidney beans, no, I'll ask her about the "small red beans".

Or you can make the chili without beans.

http://www.g6csy.net/chile/recp-texas.html

You may want to serve it with a vegetable tray and Texas Toast.

I agree with J_B, sozobe. I always use chili beans when I make chili. I like them much better than kidney beans and you can get them either spiced or not. Good luck with your chili!

Pinto beans would be just fine in chili, but I think she's pulling your leg.

About kidney beans, you mean? She has quite an impressive list of no-no's, that was just one of 'em.

If you do end up using pinto beans, I wonder if you should cook them less? Would you use canned or soaked/dried beans? I'm thinking pinto beans might get mushy if you cook them for a long time, but I don't know how long that would be.

I meant, it sounds like this person is creating an allergy or something, for anything she doesn't happen to like. I prefer pinto over kidney too, but. . . .

I think I'd use canned, but that's another thing I'm not sure of. (I went to the Bush's Beans site to see if I could find out anything more about those small red beans, and saw that they have canned pinto beans just like the canned dark red kidney beans that I always get. I like plain, then adjusting spices to taste in the actual recipe.) It doesn't need to be cooked for long, about 25 minutes after everything is combined, I think.

I don't care much for kidney beans either, Roger. What were some of the other foods on her list, Soz?

I perfer pintos, canned would be the easist but dry is fine, soak a few hours and rinse well. use more salt than for kidney beans.

That's helpful, thanks!

I really like canned pinto beans, use them all the time when I am making kitchen soup... (cleaning the fridge).
I much prefer the flavor of pinto beans to kidney beans.

I do like to cook beans from scratch, using dry beans, sometimes. I tend to let them soak overnight, rinse several times, sometimes rinsing them during the soaking time.

There is another trick, which is to bring a pot of water and beans to a boil, shut the fire off immediately after it starts to boil, keep covered with lid for two hours. This apparently works as well as soaking overnight.

Yeah, you can make great soups from refrigerator scrapings. Hard to find a good descriptive name for the concoction, sometimes.

This isn't a chili recipe, but it's quick, delicious and great on a low sodium or low carb diet.

Turkey and Bean soup
1 small onion, chopped
1 Tbs olive oil
1 pkg (20 oz?) ground turkey
1/2 tsp crushed dried thyme leaves (or 1/4 tsp ground thyme, 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme)
1 can low-sodium chicken broth (or homemade, of course)
1 can petite diced tomatoes, without added salt
1 can canneloni beans, rinsed
black pepper

Heat olive oil in a 3qt sauce pan and saute onions until soft but not brown (about 3 mins). Add thyme and pepper and saute another minute or two. Mix ground turkey into the onions and cook over med-high heat until no longer pink (about 5 mins), add chicken broth and tomatoes with the juice. Bring to a low boil, add the rinsed beans. Reduce heat to medium and cook until beans are heated through (about 5 minutes). DONE!

It only takes about 20 mins start to finish and it's delicious. You can add salt if you aren't salt restricted. I also add one or two tsp of HerbOx 'very low sodium chicken bullion' to punch up the poultry flavor. You can add celery and carrots at the beginning for extra veggies.

I bet she just doesn't like kidney.

A direct substitution will work fine, in fact, I prefer pinto or small red beans over kidney beans.

Get this - I've not been able to find dried small red beans in Michigan. Canned yes, but not dried. How weird is that? I was recently in Texas and brought back four bags of 'em - my friends thought I was nuts.

But we all love red beans and rice.

The no-no here is putting beans in chili. You Northerners are weird.

Yeah, that's the other thing. I like chili with no beans too.

cj, you can get them in IL. Do you ever get over here? I can relate to bean searching. My mother used to ship me yellow-eyes from New England so I could make baked beans.