Chili ~ Chili ~ Chili

My church was having a fundraiser and a lot of people were asked to bring chili. I figured that since it was a youth fundraiser and I'm the Youth Pastor's Wife I should probably be one of the people to bring chili, so I volunteered myself. Later on that day, I had one of those lightbulb moments (aren't those great??) and I realized, oh yea Katie, you've never made chili before and you have no idea how to do it either. So of course, in my panic, I called my mommy. She told me to just go and get one of those chili seasoning packets from WalMart and follow the directions and everything would be fine. That's exactly what I did, except the chili turned out much, much better than I ever expected. Not to toot my own little horn, but, my pot of chili was the first pot to be completely eaten. I was overjoyed :). So now I will share my little recipe with all of you.

Ingredients (not real sure on the ounces of the cans, just read the back of the chili seasoning packet):
-2 lbs. ground hamburger meat
- 2 normal size cans pinto beans
- 2 normal size cans diced tomatoes
- 2 little skinny cans of tomato juice
- 2 chili seasoning packets

First, I browned my hamburger meat. I had only browned hamburger meat one other time previous to this one so I browned one pound at a time :). However, this ended up being an excellent plan which I will explain later. After my hamburger meat was browned, I put in lots of seasoning. This includes: Cavender's Greek Seasoning, Garlic Pepper, Garlic Salt, Pepper, Salt, and Minced Onions that you can find over by all the other seasonings. This makes a huge difference in the amazing flavor of the meat. Next, I got a paper plate and put two papers towels over it and poured my browned and seasoned meat onto the paper towel. I let it cool and little and then picked up each end of the paper towel to where there was a little pouch of meat. I squeezed the paper towel against the meat to get all the grease off of it because to me, there is nothing worse than greasy hamburger meat in my chili...ew. Brown the other pound of meat, season it, squeeze the grease off of it, and put it to the side.

Second, I got my pot and poured in my two cans of pinto beans and two cans of diced tomatoes. I added the hamburger meat and chili seasoning packets and it was at this point I realized my chili wasn't juicy enough so I poured in the two little skinny cans of tomato juice into the pot as well. Since you seasoned your meat so well, it's really not necessary to season the entire pot of chili. You let all of this boil for about 10 minutes and then serve it. CAUTION: IT WILL BE HOT BUT DELICIOUS!!!

Here's the beautiful finished product:

Hope you enjoy!!!