Here is just about everything you will need for this yummy Chili.

Start off by adding the full bottle of beer into your slow cooker. If you can’t have beer, substitute with some beef stock… one 12oz. can will do it.

Salt and pepper! On the left you see kosher salt. On the right one dry Ancho Chili. This gives the chili a real depth of flavor.

Open up your Ancho and remove some of the seeds, it has a lot of seeds, they aren’t all needed here.

You want to rehydrate the pepper in the beer while you prepare the other ingredients.

Here are your dry spices… You are going to add these in with your Ancho so that they can also have a couple minutes to rehydrate.

These measurements don’t need to be exact… although I will list exact measurements in the recipe down below… Here is your cumin.

Cayenne pepper… I put in just a big pinch of this because of cooking for a mixed crowd. With chili I would prefer to supply hot sauce as a topping than have someone not be able to enjoy it because it is too hot for their palate, including my kids.

Smoked paprika is really nice here. (sorry for the fuzziness, don’t know what happened there!)

And last but definitely not least, the chili powder… necessary for any chili!

So your pot should look like this…

Turn your slow cooker to high.

I made Shepard’s pie earlier in the week and browned up a bunch of ground beef… set half of it aside and made less work for myself on this particular Sunday… If you have one of those cool slow cookers that allows you to brown meat or you use my method of having pre-cooked ground beef, then this meal becomes a one pot meal! If not, you should brown up some ground beef in a skillet and add it in here.

Add in some kosher salt.

Mix everything in together and move on to preparing your fresh ingredients.

Dice up your onions.

In this method, it is not necessary to pre cook your onions, however if you are browning your meat same day, it would not hurt to add these into your skillet… But as you can see, I did not turn on my stove for this recipe.

Here is where you control the heat in this dish… You can choose to leave the seeds in your pepper which will significantly increase the heat level in this dish… I was making the chili for a mixed crowd, so I decided to keep the heat low and remove the seeds.

Peel some garlic… no need to chop.

Add in jalapeno and garlic.

I found this bell pepper, isn’t he cute? You’ll want to cut it in half, remove the seeds and stem and chop it up.

From here on you are literally just dumping ingredients in till your slow cooker is all filled up! Two cans of diced tomatoes.

Get a good strainer set over a sink and pour each can of beans in one at a time.

Start by rinsing your Pinto Beans.

Next your cannellini… And this is meant to go in no particular order. Also, you can use whichever beans you like… I chose the ones I chose for a couple of reasons though… I like the creaminess of Pinto and Cannellini… I also like the variety in color.

Black beans are chosen for both color and flavor and they are a very traditional addition to Mexican foods of all kinds.

Add all these into the slow cooker. (It’s already starting to look pretty!)

We are using two kinds of kidney beans, both for color and tradition.

I also like the large red kidney beans here.

Add the kidney beans in and that’s the final addition!

Now we mix… So pretty!

Once everything is well mixed in, cover and cook on high for 8 hours… That’s it.

At this point, check for salt and spice… Add more kosher salt if needed. If you feel it needs more spice add in either a few dashes of hot sauce or cayenne pepper.I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the necessary toppings to this warm bowl of goodness!

You need to have some sour cream at the ready, some cheddar cheese, and some tortilla chips… I also like to have chopped scallions and hot sauce available for people.