Love the combination of black beans and sweet potatoes. Create a complete meal by scooping some black bean chile over sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes could be roasted, mashed, or baked. They all work.
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Place about 5 - 6 cups of water in a large bowl with 1 Tbsp. coarse salt. Stir to dissolve the salt.
Add the beans and let brine 4 hours.
Add 5 ½ cups vegetable broth to the pressure cooker with the beans and start heating the broth and beans while you chop the vegetables.
Vegetable broth – I don’t make vegetable broth from scratch. I use water and a vegetable bouillon base (5 cups water to 1 tsp. base). Between the brine and the base, you’ll find that you won’t need to add additional salt to the finished chili, that is unless you like food really salty.
Chile powders – As you can see from the recipe, I don’t use a chili powder blend but rather several different chile powders and other spices and herbs. By using the discrete components of a blend, you can create a flavor profile that best fits your palate. Therefore, rather than grabbing a bottle of “chili powder”, grab all of the “chile powders” you have in your pantry and create your own.
The Sweet Potato – The sweet potato can be baked, microwaved or mashed. Here’s a quick & easy mashed sweet potato recipe.
For the baked sweet potato, scrub it, poke a couple of times with a fork, coat the outside with oil or butter, and roast in a preheated 400°F oven for 40 – 45 minutes or until done.
For the microwaved potato, scrub, poke a couple of times with a fork, and microwave on high for 3 minutes. Turn over and microwave for another 3 minutes or until done.
Recipe author: MJ of MJ's Kitchen