Roasted Vegetable Chili

(Photo by Taste of Home)

It's probably heresy to some people, but we do enjoy a good meatless chili from time to time.  When our family was here visiting from out west, we  had a number of different get-togethers with friends and relatives so they could see everyone they hoped to during the visit.

One Friday evening we had a fun get-together with old friends.  Our daughters and their sons had grown up together; now, all are married and have kids.  So we ended up with a group of 25 people which included a large number of young children.  The other ladies were going to help with the food, so I decided on a menu of different kinds of chili, cornbread, and raw vegetables with dip, along with apple desserts to end the  meal.  One lady brought a classic chili, another a white chicken chili, and I decided to make a roasted vegetable chili.  I thought I had tried a recipe for one and liked it, but do you think I could locate that recipe? 

I ended up doing a Google search and finally settled on this recipe:  Roasted Veggie Chili from Taste of Home.  As you can see, it makes a large amount.   In fact, I could see quite quickly that it wasn't going to fit into my largest kettle, so I changed quite a few things about the recipe, but people did enjoy it.  We had enough left for another meal, and served that the night before our family traveled back to Nevada.  It made a nice easy meal following a busy day of packing and preparing for an early morning departure and a long day of flying.

Here are the changes I made to the recipe.  First of all, I used well-drained canned whole kernel corn rather than using fresh or frozen, and it worked fine.  I cut the chicken broth way back, to about 1 quart rather than four, which seemed like an awful lot.  I didn't want to go to the trouble (or calories) of thickening the chili with the butter and flour as specified,  so I thought cutting down on the broth would make it thicker.  It still turned out quite thin; in fact, people thought it was more like a soup than a chili, but after chilling and reheating the second time I served it,  it was thick and chili-like, so I guess I would recommend making it a day ahead and then reheating.  It was more flavorful after a few days, also.  Even though there is chili powder, cumin, cilantro and cayenne in this, the flavors didn't really assert themselves until the second time around.  (I did cut the cayenne down to about a half teaspoon or less.)  I didn't have any tomato puree, so substituted a 28-ounce can of "kitchen-ready" crushed tomatoes in heavy puree.

All in all, we really liked this and I would definitely make it again when there is a large group of hungry people to feed on a fall or winter evening!