Best Damn Weeknight Chili (2024)

Here’s a chili recipe that quick to make and loaded with delicious, hearty flavor and ingredients. You don’t have to spend all day prepping or cooking. This simple recipe can be enjoyed in about 30 minutes.

We all love a good bowl of hearty chili. But chili making can be a complicated process that usually requires a lot of preparation and hours of slow cooking. Not this recipe! We’ll use fresh ground beef and a few pantry ingredients to whip up a whole pot of delicious chili that be easily be enjoyed as a weeknight meal.

What is Weeknight Chili?

You’re at the office and text your loved one or family member at 3:00 in the afternoon… “What are we doing for dinner?” Often the reply is “I don’t know, what do you want?”, or “I’ve had a long day and don’t feel like cooking a big meal”. Well, we have everyone taken care of with this super easy chili recipe. There’s no prepping the ingredients or making a huge mess. We’ll use fresh ground beef, some canned beans, and a few special ingredients to make a hearty, delicious chili that’s actually perfect for any night of the week (weekends included).

Ingredients

Our weeknight chili will be loaded with fresh ground beef and delicious beans. We’ll use two kinds of canned beans – black beans and red kidney beans. For our base we’ll use some beef broth, 2 cups will do, and a 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes. I like to get the low sodium versions of the beans and tomatoes. The sodium in canned goods can add up quickly, and we’ll get plenty from the broth.

Now for the fun part – the seasonings. We start simple enough with a couple of tablespoons of chili powder. We’ll punch up the savory flavors with some onion powder and give it some deep smokey notes with smoked paprika. Smoked paprika is such a wonderful ingredient and is perfect for our chili recipe.

What’s the secret ingredient?

Now, let’s make it all “next level” with our secret ingredient – coffee. Yep, we’ll add a half cup of brewed coffee to our chili. Don’t worry, it won’t make the chili taste like a weird gourmet coffee. Rather, the coffee works to bring out the deep flavor notes of all the other ingredients. If you still have some coffee in the coffee pot from this morning – perfect! Use that. Finally, we’ll give our chili some vibrance with a little cider vinegar, black pepper, anda 4oz can of green chiles.

Preparation

As mentioned earlier, this chili is meant to be easy. Prep includes draining and rinsing both cans of beans. This is simple enough by dumping them into a mesh strainer and running under a little cold water. Then, in a Dutch oven or medium pot, brown the ground beef. Once it’s browned, drain any fat and add all the other ingredients. Give it a real good stir for a couple of minutes over a medium flame until it comes to a boil. Then, reduce the flame to low and simmer the chili, covered, for about 25 min minutes. Stir occasionally.

Guess what? You’re done!

Serving

It’s always a good idea to let the chili cool down a bit before enjoying. If it’s too hot, you won’t taste all the good flavors. Feel free to add some additional goodness with some shredded cheese, sour cream, onions, chives, or any other of your favorite chili toppings.

Make it Your Own

Here’s one of the great things about this recipe… you can really customize it however you like. Add some frozen or canned corn, hot peppers, fire roasted red peppers, or any thing else you like. We usually always have these ingredients in the pantry and they keep with the theme of “easy”.

If you want to add some fresh chopped onions or peppers, best to sauté them first for a few minutes to get them a bit tender before adding to the chili to cook.