Recipe: Sweet Amish Chili

Tonight I tried a recipe from a cookbook my family and I picked up at a local Amish store. The recipes we've tried from it so far have been great. Hubby said he wanted chili tonight and I've made chili many times but tonight I wanted something different. The last couple times I've tried it it's either been too bland or too spicy. So I decided to see what this cookbook had. The recipe below makes a sweeter type of chili (which I had never had) and I only tweaked it a little bit to my preferences. I added a jump break because there's lots of pictures! Click "Read More" to...well, read more! :)

First off, you start out with a pound of thawed hamburger/ground beef.

Then add 2 Tablespoons mustard.

Add 1/2 cup brown sugar. (Yum, this definitely adds something to the chili!)

Add 1 medium chopped onion.  

(I chop mine pretty thin and small because I don't like to bite into any big chunks of onion.)

Cook until the hamburger is browned and then drain.

Add 1 pint (2 cups) tomato juice.  

(I did not do this exactly - I added 1 and 1/2 cups tomato juice and a 1/2 can of tomato sauce.)

Don't spill your tomato juice on your cookbook like I did. I am not known for my pristine cooking - I am quite messy!

Then add 2 cans (or 24 ounces) of kidney beans.

Add 1 Tablespoon (approximately) of chili powder and salt and pepper to taste.
(Oops, don't know why the chili powder picture is being odd...)

That's it! It says to simmer one hour but I probably only did for 25-30 minutes on medium/high heat. Here's the finished product, sprinkled with cheese.

Yummy! My only negative thoughts on this recipe would be that it was a bit thin, perhaps because of the tomato juice. To counter that, you might just mix and match tomato juice and sauce like I did. Otherwise, it was great! If you'd like a copy of the recipe (with or without my additions/subtractions) please just comment!