The Best (and Easiest) Ground Beef Chili and Red Lentil Soup Recipes

[Music] today on America's Test Kitchen Julie and Bridget cook up the ultimate ground beef chili Adam shows Bridget his top food processor picks and Aaron Wow's Julia with a red lentil soup with North African spices it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen [Music] ground beef chili is the Rodney Dangerfield of the chili world it's no respect no respect Wow for most people ground beef chili is a little more than various cans of this and that seasoned up with some stale old chili powder there's not much chili love going on there mm-hmm but for this chili we tore the recipe a part of the seams and uncovered something huge ah it's gonna rock your chili world and believe it or not starts with the chili that's you well this is a real chili this is a hand show chili which is a dried poblano chili and this makes all the difference when you make a chili if you make your own chili powder it's very easy it just takes the chili to the next level so reach when you buy dried chilies you want to look for ones that are bendable like this if their rates stale and dry and they snap apart it's old and you don't want that they don't have enough flavor when they're old okay so she's prepped dried chilies if you just want to tear them apart and get rid of that woody stem and any seeds that are inside I usually just kind of shake out there we go few seeds are okay but most of the seeds just fall right out and then for the rest of the chili we're gonna walk over to this pot and we're just gonna turn it up into pieces that are about inch inch and a half in size and in here I already have some others so this is a total of six ancho chiles and now we're gonna toast them over medium-high heat we're gonna toast them for four to six minutes so you start to smell them and at no point to this pot be smoked in so if you see it smoking pull it off the heat and save those chilies all right I'm leaving you in charge I'm on chili alert you are all right so now on to the main ingredient in our chili it's beef and here we have two pounds of ground beef and this is 85% lean and that's crucial for chili because you want that extra fat to help flavor the chili and keep the meat moist as it cooks and 85% lean is often called ground chuck that's right and so to help this meat really maintained its moisture as it simmers we're gonna add some special ingredients we're gonna add a little water 2 tablespoons of water a little salt this is a teaspoon and a half of salt but here is the special guy this is baking soda and this is three-quarters of a teaspoon of baking soda so that baking soda does two key things one it helps that meat hold on to moisture so that it stays good and juicy during the simmering time and two it helps the meat brown more quickly we often think of baking soda being added to things like cookie dough to help it brown faster but as Julie mentioned we add it to me we also use it on roast chicken helps that skin brown quickly and even stir-fry soak the meat in a solution of water or salt and baking soda and it Browns just like that mm-hmm so I'm gonna dissolve all this in the water mmm that looks pretty good now we're gonna have this 2 pounds of ground beef so now I'm just gonna toss this all together make sure that baking soda salt mixture really evenly coats the meat we're gonna let this sit on the counter for about 20 minutes all right now how our chili is doing over there I can start to smell them they smell good oh they smell great yep I think they are good to go oh nice all right we're just gonna take these out of the skillet and add it right to a food processor because of course we are gonna turn this into chili powder all right so these chilies have been cooling I want to point out how crisp they are and how quickly they will break down into a nice chili powder oh yeah and obviously we're gonna add a few more ingredients to help round out the flavor starting with tortilla chips this is an ounce of tortilla chips and classically chiles thickened with masa but rather than track down masa we're just gonna add some tortilla chips which helps thicken the chili and also help bulk up the mixture in this food processor so this will grind it down evenly so it's a twofer now we're gonna add some more spices and here we have 2 tablespoons of ground cumin it's tablespoon of ground paprika tablespoon of garlic powder tablespoon of ground coriander along with 2 teaspoons of dried oregano and here's a little kick 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper oh we go oh yeah last but not least a little thyme and this is a little unusual but it adds a nice floral note that you're not expecting this is just 1/2 a teaspoon of dried thyme now we have to grind this for a while prostate it's about two minutes but we're looking for a nice finely ground powder all right let's take a look here and see what we got Oh first thing you notice is that's oh yeah yeah so I'm looking for big pieces of Chile's left on and I'm not seeing any it looks pretty finely ground so I think we're good to go Oh smells great yeah obviously a very different playing field when you make your own chili powder this thing has a real flavor all right so it's gonna set this aside in a bowl and now we're gonna process some tomatoes for our chili and this is a 14 and a half ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes and juice we're just gonna process them for about 30 seconds until they're nice and smooth so I'm just gonna let them hang out in there while we get cooking so in this pot here I have a tablespoon of vegetable oil if you could please put that over medium-high heat we're just gonna get that pot hot while I chop it onion and so to cut an onion first I cut down going right to but not through that root end and then I slice in the other direction again right to but not through that end and then last but not least you slice down into a nice chop how's our oil looking is it looking pretty hot and a little shimmery it is definitely shimmery all right so now I'm gonna add this onion and I love using these bench scrapers because it's a really easy way to move food around from the cutting board to the stove we're just gonna cook this over medium-high heat until it's soft and that takes about four or six minutes all right so those onions are nicely softened now we're gonna add some garlic and this is three minced cloves of garlic we're gonna let it cook for about a minute you can really start to smell that garlic mmm that smells pretty good now we're gonna have the beef so very often recipes will tell you to add it in batches and to brown it you don't want to crowd the pan I am crowding the pan but it's okay it's gonna Brown anyway because of our baking soda trick it's very crowded mm-hmm so I'm just gonna cook this breaking up the meat into small pieces until it's nice and brown on the bottom of the pond that takes about 12 to 14 minutes oh it smells beefy oh definitely and tons of color in there I actually was doubting Julie a little bit on that whole baking soda to brown track you see all that ground beef is beautifully Brown mm-hmm and some of that beef has rendered its fat which makes it a perfect time to add our spice mixture because most of these spices are oil soluble not so some Chipotle's mm-hmm as you know Chipotle's are smoked jalapenos and they're quite spicy so you can add 1 to 2 teaspoons of this I went all in 2 teaspoons for us I can take it spicy yeah just has a really nice smoky flavor we're gonna stir this for a minute or two really - bloom those spices before we add the rest of the ingredients and I have to say that was quite a bit of chili powder the homemade chili powder that you added there you know sometimes you see chili recipes that only add a tablespoon or two of chili powder this is putting the chili first beef goes in the backseat that's right Oh kind of just want to eat it right now me too but we're not so now I'm gonna add some liquid this is just 2 cups of water so this is a 15 ounce can of pinto beans and I'm also gonna add the canning liquid because that liquid is the cooking liquid and it has good flavor and it will help thicken up the chili and we have Texas on line 2 to talk about being this that's ground beef chili that's true always has beans so no controversy here no mmm I'm gonna add just a little bit of sugar this is 2 teaspoons of sugar last but not least our tomatoes right from the food processor all right let's give this a good stir now that's starting to look like chili doesn't it oh it just looks good so we're just gonna bring this to a simmer and then we're gonna cook it in the oven it's really gonna need one and a half to two hours of simmering time in order to turn tender cooking a ground beef and a chili for one and a half to two and a half hours sounds like a long time and it is but that is on purpose you know most recipes will take a recipe for ground beef chili and only cook it for a half an hour maybe 45 minutes you really do get tough pieces of meat in the chili this helps that beef to break down and all the collagen that's in the beef turn to gelatin much more tender chili that's right so I brought this up to a simmer now I'm gonna put a lid on it and we're gonna cook it in the oven a low oven 275 degrees that meat is tender and again that's one and a half to two hours so that chili was in the oven for two hours and then I've let it sit here uncovered for about ten minutes just cool off a bit before we eat it you notice it's got that layer of fat on the top now you might be tempted to take it off but don't do it leave the fat because remember those spices are oil soluble so a lot of their flavor is in that fat if you skim it off you'll lose flavor but also the Chili's gonna taste too lean so stir it in we do not want lean chili Julia no I'm also gonna finish it with a little bit of vinegar this is two tablespoons of cider vinegar and of course we're gonna season it with a little salt this is what it needs it's a little salt she's ready yes oho you're gonna like it I'm gonna put a little extra in your bowl because once you start eating this stuff it's kind of hard to stop all right so now toppings I'm gonna start with a little bit of chopped fresh cilantro and a little bit of minced red onion and here we have some shredded cheese and some diced avocado a little dollop of sour cream and to finish this a spritz of lime juice oh this is like no ground meat chili you've ever had before serious respect this choker I mean it is so much like the chunk Chili's you know where we cut up a whole chuck roast into big chunks it's got that same developed flavor yeah the sauce almost has that gravy like texture of that real Texas chili all in all this is excelente so you don't have to sacrifice flavor for convenience with ground beef chili Nick's pre-made chili powder and make your own toast ancho chiles on the stovetop and then process with spices and tortilla chips now for tender beef at baking soda when you Brown it and then build the chili sauce and cook it in an oven for up to two hours until rich and thickened and don't forget to serve with plenty of toppings there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen the very best ground beef chili seriously mm-hmm a good food processor can handle so many kitchen chores from slicing vegetables to meeting bread dough so Adam is here to help us pare down the results of our kitchen testing and show us which food processor works best pears maybe the one thing we didn't test processes I gotta get back to work so Bridgette you know that a food processor sees a lot of action here in the Test Kitchen and in home kitchens we've tested them before but there are a lot of new models on the market we have a lineup of eight different models here they're all full capacity which means 11 cups or more and the price range is from $60 for that one way down there to a high of $300 ok job number one for any food processor is chopping and we had four different chopping tests we made mirepoix which is that mixture of carrots onions and celery that flavors so many soups and stews in this life we minced parsley we ground almonds and we chopped up raw beef with butter to make hamburger meat for mirepoix you want nice even crisp cuts and you want a uniform size to the pieces that it creates some of these were able to do that some gave us like a vegetable slushy that was pretty disappointing and we figured that had to do with two different factors the first is the responsiveness of the pulse control a pulse is really just a second or two some of these machines would stop spinning the blade the second testers removed their fingers from the pulse button other ones would continue spinning for another second or two doesn't sound like a big deal a second or two but when you consider that a pulse is just a second to begin with and another second on top of that you get like a hundred percent more processing than you really want so you get that slushy kind of texture the second factor was the distance between the blade and the side of the bowl and the bottom of the ball in our lineup that distance ranged from three millimeters to ten millimeters yes we measured it difference and those tighter tolerances mean there's more contact between the blade and the food and you get crisper cuts let's move into slicing those tests were russet potatoes and ripe plum tomatoes and we're gonna do a little testing right here and now goodie we wanted nice crisp slices and you are gonna one those Tomatoes right through the finger okay what was I saying about nice crisp slices that's what some machines gave us this is what a really good performer gave us let's just compare right here there we go I've got tomato gloop and tomato slices - which is the winner which is the loser so you know we were looking for nice crisp cuts that has to do with how sharp the slicing disk is from there we moved on to mixing tests we made mayonnaise to test the emulsification we made pie pastry we cut fat into flour and we made double batches of really sticky pizza dough there was also an interesting test there we took a cup of yogurt we put in measured amounts of blue food coloring and yellow food coloring and we ran them until the yogurt turned a nice uniform green and there was a big difference some of these machines achieved a nice uniform green color in 25 seconds some of them never did it at all even after a minute there were still streaks of blue and yellow testers were also looking for these to be fairly easy to clean some of the machines like that red one there had a lot of nooks and crannies in the ball and in the lid and the pusher to put the food through those would trap food they just made cleaning more of a chore than it had to be some of them had nice broad smooth surfaces that were a lot easier to clean and by the way the work bowls on most of these are dishwasher safe but the blades you should always wash by hand because you want to keep them nice and sharp exactly so this was the winner this model is the Cuisinart custom 14 food processor it's $199 it's hard to fault its performance the blades are nice and sharp it's only got the three basics but you can buy some extra blades if you want them the pulse feature is responsive the bowl is well-designed and easy to clean it's really the food processor to beat and I know that this is the workhorse in our Test Kitchen definitely well there you go our winner is the Cuisinart custom 14 food processor at $199 lentils come in a rainbow of colors from the bluish looking Dupuis lentils down to green and red and even white lentils but the interesting thing about the red lentils is that their skins have been removed see here if you take a brown lentil and you crack open the outer shell you see that red lentil center starting to shine through so without their skins the red lentils are able to cook through more quickly and break down to a creamy consistency that's perfect for soup enarans here to show us how it's good I am Julie red lentil soup is one of my all-time favorite recipes and this recipe in particular is super easy if you'd never cooked lentils before red lentils are the one tools to start with it's a gateway lentil but those are beginners my first lentil yeah so let's get started so right now I have two tablespoons of melted butter unsalted it's over medium heat we're just gonna start by sweating one large onion that has been chopped fine so I noticed you said sweat not saute and I'm guessing you said that I'm herb I did Julia we don't want any color on your onions we're gonna soften them so we're gonna add a teaspoon of table salt the salt is gonna extract the moisture from the onions and it's gonna help the onions to soften more quickly and it's also gonna hinder browning we're just gonna let this cook for about 5 minutes Julie until the onions have softened and they start become translucent okay so those have cooked for about five minutes now we're ready to add our spices so we were inspired by the North African spice blend and as you can see in front of me we have a bunch of different spice and fuel and there is a method to the madness so we have a grouping of spicy ingredients warm ingredients citrusy and earthy ingredients so some of the combination of flavors when they meld together they make that make that flavor beautiful yes so we're gonna start by adding a quarter teaspoon of black pepper a little heat yes quarter teaspoon of ground ginger for heat pinch of cayenne clearly more heat now we're adding an eighth of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon which is very nice and warm and we're gonna add 3/4 of a teaspoon of coriander that would be citrusy yeah exactly and also 1/2 a teaspoon of cumin what's really beautiful you cook this for another two minutes we're just gonna let those spices bloom and that's gonna really extract the volatile oils and intensify the flavor now two minutes seems like a long time to bloom well there's a lot of spices here and we're actually cooking over medium heat it's gonna go kind of slow like we just want to draw out those flavors so next we're gonna add 1 tbsp of tomato paste and we're gonna add one clove of minced garlic we're gonna cook this mixture for one minute what we really want to do here is we want to cook out that tomato paste so it's gonna go from red to brown intensifying the tomato flavor and just developing an extra richness it's gonna give our soup more complexity hmm and I noticed you're stirring it a lot you're making sure that the Fond that's starting to build on the out on the pan doesn't burn exactly yep I'm scraping it up and I want all that tomato paste to really feel that heat and cook out all right so now we're moving on to our liquid ingredients we are using four cups of chicken broth and two cups of water now a lot of recipes call for straight chicken broth but we found that it just added too much chicken flavor and it just dominated the other flavors so this recipe is easy you're just adding stuff to the pot there's no hands in or out it's just add add add add add add like this right now we're gonna add one and a half cups of red lentils during our testing a lot of recipes called for less lentils per liquid and it was just too thin so we wanted more body so we actually increase the amount of lentils so that it was the perfect consistency at the end now we're just gonna bring this up to a boil and we're gonna cut it down to a simmer they're gonna cook very quickly even about 15 minutes and we actually want them to break down and thicken the soup for us and look at thickened nicely all on its own all on its own those lentils really broke down and did their job as you can see the lentils kind of sunk to the bottom and the liquids at the top but we really wanted like a homogenous texture from the top to the bottom so we tried a few different things tried putting it in the blender in the food processor which of course worked but for such a simple soup we didn't want to dirty any unnecessary appliances we also tried boiling it vigorously and that worked but we scorched the bottom in the pot and then we just tried stirring it with a wooden spoon and that worked but it took a while so we decided to swap the wooden spoon out with a whisk you're just gonna whisk its I'm just gonna whisk it for 30 seconds oh you can see that just thickened it right and that's it and smoothes it out how easy was that now we're gonna season er soup North Africans I use a lot of lemon juice we're gonna add two tablespoons of lemon juice and the lemon juice is really gonna take all the spices and just make them pop I'm gonna stir that in anything you ever cook you show his taste before you serve it mmm I'm just gonna add a pinch that's all it needs all right so I'm gonna put a lid one more thing we thought that our soup needed a little bit of richness we're gonna make a really simple garnish she's got going on here melted butter melted butter makes everything better doesn't it so there's two tablespoons of melted butter we're gonna add 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of dried mint really I'd mint it's like very unusual for us to actually call for in any of our recipes but it's very typical to the region it really lifts the soup and we're gonna add 1 teaspoon of paprika wow what an interesting combination yeah that's great you just wait you just wait that kind of looks like you could drizzle it on anything and I need it and that's it that's our garnish that was as simple as can be I know that was simpler than the soup it's that time oh what a beautiful color - it just makes this dish look so beautiful even more beautiful than just a soup itself and we're gonna garnish this with a little bit of fresh cilantro just like for that fresh herbal note Wow so elegant looking oh that's amazing well the consistency is smooth but there are just little bits of lentils in there and I like that combination of textures get that little little bit kick of heat okay yeah I liked it yeah well it really is the spices that really elevate that red lentil into a really elegant soup nicely done Erin thank you thank you for a fast and easy lentil soup use red lentils build serious flavor in the pot with an onion a few spices minced garlic and tomato paste simmer the red lentils in a combination of broth and water for just 15 minutes and finished with lemon juice and a little butter and there you have it a terrific recipe for red lentil soup with North African spice you can get this recipe all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website America's Test Kitchen calm this is amazing thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 192,607

Rating: 4.9204383 out of 5

Keywords: best ground beef chili, red lentil soup, food processor, easy ground beef chili, chili with beans, vegetarian lentil soup, easy lentil soup, best food processor, food processor reviews, cuisinart food processor, chili, soup, stew, cooking, easy, recipes, vegetarian, vegetrian recipes, americas test kitchen, cooking show, foodtube, beef, lentil, lentil soup

Id: 5Ibi0ctX_1U

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018