Delicious healthful chili? You can do it | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Delicious healthful chili? You can do it | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Posted on: Wednesday, December 13, 2006

TASTE
Delicious healthful chili? You can do it

By Elaine Magee

Q. This chili is so bad for you that at our house, we make it only once a year, at our "Killer Chili" party. It is too high in fat, sodium and carbs. Do you have suggestions on how to modify it so that we might enjoy it more often? Thanks!

A. Trust me, it's not the carbs! The carbs are coming from one of the most nutritious plant foods: beans. Let's see what we can do with some of the high fat and sodium ingredients, though:

Use maybe 4 slices of very lean turkey bacon.

Use a less-fat turkey kielbasa-type sausage. There are some nice lean options out there, instead of the Italian sausage.

Use 1 pound of super-lean or extra-lean ground beef instead of 1 1/2 pounds of hamburger meat.

To reduce the sodium, I'm cutting out the 1/2 teaspoon called for and using a low-sodium tomato paste. There's plenty of sodium in there without this extra.

Everything else can stay the same, because the rest of the ingredients basically are spices, vegetables or beans.

Look at the nutritional analysis below and compare this to the regular version which (per serving) contains around 600 calories, 39 grams of fat, 15 grams saturated fat, and 1,500 milligrams sodium. Impressive!

NONKILLER CHILI RECIPE

4 slices less-fat turkey bacon

8 ounces less-fat turkey sausage, without casings

1 pound extra-lean ground sirloin (around 6 percent fat)

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 green pepper, chopped, with stem and inside removed

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 seeded jalapenos, chopped (optional)

1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon dried oregano flakes

1 (8-ounce) bottle taco sauce of choice

1 (12-ounce) can low-sodium tomato paste

2 cups nonalcoholic beer, ordinary beer or water

1 (16-ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained

Cook turkey bacon in large, nonstick frying pan until crisp. Then crumble into and set aside. Cut sausage into bite-sized pieces (without casings) and brown in same pan as turkey bacon. Set aside.

Add ground sirloin, onion, green pepper and garlic to same pan and cook over medium-high heat until beef is browned.

Stir in sausage, along with chili pepper, chili powder and oregano. Stir in taco sauce, tomato paste and beer or water. Bring mixture to a boil, cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Stir in beans, cover and simmer 30 minutes more. Serve each cup of chili with a sprinkling of crumbled turkey bacon.

Makes 6 servings.

Per serving: 320 calories, 27 g protein, 33 g carbohydrate, 9 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 3.4 g monounsaturated fat, 2.1 g polyunsaturated fat, 72 mg cholesterol, 7.3 g fiber, 980 mg sodium. Calories from fat, 25 percent. Omega-3 fatty acids, .3 g; Weight Watchers points, 6; Omega-6 fatty acids, 1.5 g

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