Venison Chili is a meal that you could have anytime of the year! It is extremely simple, cheap to make, and easy to eat. You will want to eat 1 bowl a day. If you start, you wont be able to stop!
This venison chili will be made partly in an instant pot, and partly in a large soup pot. But, you can make it in a crock pot, slow cooker, large pot, or instant pot like we are doing today!
VENISON CHILI IS ON MY TOP 10 RAINY DAY RECIPES
Without a doubt, coming in the house to escape from a rainy, and cold day is perfectly remedied with a hardy bowl of deer chili.
Rich in protein and carbohydrates, this is a comfort food extraordinaire. Being slow to digest, beans can provide you with a steady source of energy all day long. Which can really help on those slow days of inclement weather where your energy seems lower than normal.
Venison is a very nutrient dense, lean, and flavorful organic meat. Many people say they don’t like venison, but that is because they have not tried to like it.
Here on our small farm, I hunt deer during the fall and winter time and that is all the red meat that we eat throughout the year. While I can admit it is much different than beef, it is also much healthier. I personally like venison more than I like beef.
Let just get right into it!
HOW TO MAKE VENISON CHILI
You will need to begin by making up some beans. We like to use a combination of pinto beans and red beans. Pinto beans for flavor, and red beans for flavor and texture. I personally enjoy pinto beans far more than I enjoy red beans so I put a lot of pintos and a little red beans.
Before being put in a pot and cooked, beans need to be sorted through.
The way that you sort through beans is to put them on a plate, and look through all of them to pick out any gross looking beans, or any noticeable clumps of dirt.
Great! Now that you have sorted through your beans, it is time to clean them.
To wash beans you just need to put them in a container, and put some water in the container and agitate it to take any residual dirt off the outside of the beans.
Discard this water and repeat the process as many times as you need to until the water comes out clean. After all, you don’t want any dirt in your beans.
TIPS FOR COOKING BEANS
As an added tip for cooking beans. The general rule of thumb for cooking beans is to put in 1 part beans and 3 parts water.
This means if you put 1 cup of beans in the a pot, make sure and put 3 cups of water to accomodate them. Beans absorb a lot of water while they cook and so this quantity of water us necessary.
Also, beans will take varying lengths of time to cook, so keep checking your beans by tasting them. Once they are nice and tender, they are considered cooked.
If you are having trouble figuring out how to cook beans, follow instructions on you bag of beans.
PREPARE VEGETABLES
While your beans are cooking, you can get some other prep work done so that when the beans are done, you can be ready to throw it all together.
You will be giving your vegetables rough chop! Maybe 1/4 to half inch dice on them.
Chili goes well with quite a few vegetables, but there are a few basics that you are going to want to add in. You can add as much of these ingredients as you have a taste for. You don’t have to measure these vegetables.
As a rule of thumb though, if you are making a small put of chili, 1 onion should do you nicely. On the other hand, if you are making a large put of chili, you might want somewhere between 3 to 5.
The quantity of jalapeños you add will probably replicate the amount of onion you put in as well, if you are making a small put of chili, you could use 1 or 2. If you are making a large pot of chili, you could use more like 3-5.
Now that your onions and jalapeños are prapared, you can get your meat cooked up.
Right here I have some very good quality doe meat. This deer I harvested last hunting season, and the ground meat I mixed with some homegrown pork fat to give extra flavor. You by no means need this addition to your venison, but it is a way to add good flavor and fat with something that I already had too much of.
If you hunt for your own wild game and don’t raise pigs like I do, then you could always by pork fat from your local butcher. Normally they can get it with no problems, and pork fat is normally very cheap compared to other pork products.
Cook it up until it is all brown, and the meat is broken down finely enough. You can leave clumps of ground meat for a good bite of ground venison, or you can break it down to a very fine consistency so that it distributes throughout your chili. Either way is a good way to go.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
After your beans are cooking, your veggies are all prepped, and your meat is cooked, now its time to throw it all together into one big pot to finish up your chili.
You can use fresh tomatoes, but it is easier and just as good to use canned, diced tomatoes.
Put a good amount of diced tomatoes in your beans. For as much onions as you put in, you might want to use about 3 times as much volume of diced tomatoes. Tomatoes are very good in chili, and the acidity of the tomatoes really adds a good bite to the rather one sided flavor of a pinto bean.
Add your tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, beans and venison.
Just look at that beautiful venison! It has amazing flavor and is much healthier for you than beef.
Mix up all of your lovely ingredients!
Now all we need to do is season it up!
There are 4 seasonings we will be using today, most of which will probably be in your pantry already.
Salt
Black pepper
Cumin
Chili powder
If you want to make it a spicy venison chili recipe, you can add cayenne pepper, or red chili flake. Its quite good! This will also have to be seasoned to your liking. Try a little bit, if you need it more spicy, add more.
Now simmer it all together until your onions and jalapeños are cooked and all of your ingredients have incorporated together.
THE DIGS ON DEER CHILI
So I have seen people in the past, adding a whole ridiculous amount of ingredients to deer chili. Now, that is not a bad way to do it, so not to bash the folks working harder than me for their deer chili, but you just simply don’t need all of that to make a good deer chili.
I challenge each individual person to taste, and examine what the seasoning does to the pot of chili. Taste your chili and add some, taste and add some more of it needs it.
Your palate is a very gifted one. Add seasoning NOT until you taste the seasoning there, but until you say, wow that is some good chili! At that point, you have added enough of the ingredient and can move on to the other seasoning.
VENISON CHILI: SIMPLE
Venison Chili is meal that you could have anytime of the year! It is extremely simple, cheap to make, and easy to eat. You will want to eat 1 bowl a day. If you start, you wont be able to stop!
Ingredients
- Pinto beans
- Kidney beans
- Onions
- Jalapeños
- Salt
- Pepper
- Cumin
- Chili powder
- Paprika for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Cook up your beans (follow instuctions on the bag)
- Cook up your ground venison and prep your vegetables
- Throw it all into a pot along with your seasonings stir it up!
- Simmer your chili for about 30 minutes until onions and jalapeños are cooked
- Enjoy!
Notes
Cooking beans is easy! You don't have to follow a recipe to cook beans. As long as you use 1 part beans to 3 parts water, you can cook it in pretty much anything. Soup pot, crockpot, instant pot, slow cooker, pressure cooker etc. You name it, you can cook beans in it. Just keep checking the beans to make sure that they are cooked.
Also I want to add that you can use any kind of beans that you want to. You can use whatever you have around if you don't have red beans or pintos, you can use something else.
Vegetables don't have to be specific! You don't have to use specific vegetables in venison chili. As and ode to the way things used to be, if there is vegetable that you like or have plenty extra of, you can put it in there! If you don't like onions, leave them out. If you really like jalapeños, put extra in. There are a multitude of vegetables that you can put into deer chili. Onions, Jalapeños, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, squash, corn, carrots. The sky is the limit!
You can use whichever seasonings you want! There are a variety of seasonings and flavorings you can use in your deer chili, you can use chili powder, add some cumin, put in some molasses, or brown sugar. If you want it spicy you can add cayenne pepper. Paprika for good looks and a little addition of some smoky flavor. You can use a lot of different things, but chili powder is really a must.
Nutrition Information:
Serving Size:
2 cupsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 600Protein: 24g
I like to put a spin on popular dishes and creating new dishes, using foraged foods.
i hunt, fish, raise many different kinds of animals, and have a wide variety of ways of getting my own food.
i very much enjoy plant, tree, mushroom identification and there uses for food, beverage and medicine.
follow along! as i create dishes using all of the things that grow outside your door.
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