Roast a butternut squash and plop it under a big scoop of black bean chilli and you’ve got yourself dinner. The black beans are soft and savoury, the butternut squash sweet and somewhere between creamy and juicy and there’s just enough spicy tomato in there to add the requisite acidity and cut through the sweetness of squash and blandness of beans. Throw on something green like parsley or cilantro to garnish (the chilli, I mean) and voilà. (Who says, voilà, by the way? In Quebec, everyone just says, “C’est ça,” which translates to “that’s it.”)
Choosing a Black Bean Chilli Recipe
My go-to bean cookbook (and hence chilli cookbook) is Easy Beans by Trish Ross. It’s an oldie (2008), but a goodie.
A second choice is Oh She Glows’ Angela Liddon’s vegan chilli recipe where I sub out the pinto and navy beans for black beans.
How to Choose and Roast Squash (and the differences between butternut, buttercup, acorn, delicate and sweet mama)
To cook the sweet potato or squash here, I just cut whatever squash I have in half (butternut squash is milder and more liquid than super dense Sweet mama or buttercup and Delicate and Acorn are somewhere in the middle with more of a caramel flavour), scoop out the seeds, and roast the squash cut-side-down on a roasting pan for about 40 minutes at 385˚F or so (it’s doesn’t matter as long as it’s over about 350 – it’ll just take longer), or until it starts oozing caramel and is tender inside. Then I turn over the squash to let the pieces cool slightly, scoop out the flesh (or not; butternut squash has a very thin skin, so if it’s organic, I just eat it) and pour the chilli over top.
Highlights of this recipe:
It’s cheap, it’s healthy and it’s fast if you use canned beans (or a pressure cooker for the chilli).
Let me know how it works out!
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