(It drives me bananas when I find a recipe online in a blog post and have to scroll for days to find the ingredient list buried under all the narrative about the recipe. So, I'm listing the ingredients first for ease!)
Ingredients:
750 g lean beef mince
1 onion, peeled and chopped
800 g chopped tomatoes (2 x 400 g tins)
800 g kidney beans (2 x 400 g tins), drained and rinsed
75 g tomato purée
2 beef stock cubes
3 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp dried oregano
4 tsp garlic granules
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
25 g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
This recipe gave us about 8 portions of chilli
Method
Chuck all the ingredients in a ziploc bag and stick in the fridge or the freezer.
Recipe Chitty-Chat
If you’re anything like me, you bought a slow cooker with grand intentions of being super organised, meal prepping, and making life easier—only for it to gather dust at the back of the cupboard.
The problem I have with slow cooking is that I either can’t be bothered to brown the meat first (I just want to chuck everything in and forget about it for 4–7 hours) or I follow a recipe that ends up bland and disappointing.
Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe I’m too fussy. But food should be enjoyable, right? So, my slow cooker has been in retirement for the better part of a year.
Recently, though, life has been chaotic. Between running a business, looking after the kids, walking the dog, cooking, and tackling never-ending laundry (seriously, there must be secret people living in my house based on the amount of washing I do), I hit a crisis point. In a bid to regain control, I decided to try meal prepping so grabbed my slow cooker from the back of the corner cupboard and dusted it off.
The First Attempt
A few weeks ago, I tried a chicken pasta soup recipe from Facebook. It was okay, but the garlic flavour was overpowering. So much so that I ended up binning the whole pot because no one in my family would touch it. My slow cooker was almost back in retirement after its brief comeback.
Enter Taming Twins and Dump Bags
I’ve been following the Instagram account Taming Twins for a while now. It’s all about fuss-free family food, and at some point, one of their recipes must’ve caught my eye. While scrolling through their feed recently, I came across the concept of Dump Bags—essentially meal prep for slow cookers.
You prep everything in advance, freeze it (or refrigerate it for a day or two), and when you’re ready, dump the contents of the bag into the slow cooker, turn it on, and forget about it. This is acing meal-prep behaviour. Sign. Me. Up.
A Second Chance: Chilli Con Carne
Feeling apprehensive after my chicken soup disaster, I chose an easy family favorite—Chilli Con Carne. I figured I couldn’t go too wrong with it. This time, I swapped out raw garlic for garlic granules (pro tip: avoid raw garlic unless you’re sure it won’t overpower the dish) and hoped the chili flavours would shine through.
Last week, I prepped the dump bag and froze it. On Tuesday, a typically busy day for us, I decided this was going to be the ideal opportunity to give it a go. I defrosted the bag overnight and, at 7:02 am this morning, dumped it into the slow cooker, popped the lid on, and went about my day.
By 3 pm, the kitchen smelled amazing. It looked great too. All that was left was a taste test. My thoughts? I should have broken up the meat more before cooking because there were a few large chunks, and there was still a noticeable garlic flavor. But overall, it tasted fantastic.
The Real Test: The Kids
At dinnertime, I served it with rice, avocado, cheese, crème fraîche, and coriander. It was a hit! The kids loved it, D loved it and I loved it too. I highly recommend this recipe for an easy family dinner. Taming Twins was right—dump bags are a fuss-free win.
Find the Recipe
For the full recipe for this slow cooker Chilli Con Carne, including top tips, nutritional info, the method, and more, click here.
For more dump bag recipes from Taming Twins, click here.
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