Friday, January 9, 2009

A Guide To Your Chili Vegetarian Recipe

By Diana Pells

Chili is now an accepted mainstay of vegetarian cooking. A true chili vegetarian recipe cook however, knows that there is more to just randomly adding any kind of chili pepper. There are some things that you need to take into consideration with your chili vegetarian recipe.

Know Your Chili

Of course, the amount of chili in your vegetarian recipe will be determined by your capacity to withstand its hotness. The question however is how to find out if there is too much in your chili vegetarian recipe. One basic step is to know your chili peppers. It is a fact for example that bell peppers and pimiento provide no hot taste at all so you can basically add as much as you want in a dish. Habanero and santaka chilies however are among the hottest so you would do well to add moderate amounts in your chili vegetarian recipe. The famous jalapenos are only about moderately hot and are often the favorite ingredients in a chili vegetarian recipe.

Rev Up on Moderately Hot

Increase chili peppers in the middle or lower range of hotness if you can't take habaneros that are too hot. It is a fact that a chili vegetarian recipe is packed with full flavor which means that you need less of salt, sugar or other sources of flavor which are not healthy in large amounts.

Another reason why you should increase chili intake is because it contains antioxidants which help clean up your system. They are also natural pain killers that do not dull all of your vital senses.

Handle Chilies Properly

Chilies do not just burn the tongue but the skin as well. Handle chilies only with your bare hands if you only have a small quantity to cut. Handling lots of chilies for a flavorful chili vegetarian recipe can burn your skin. It makes better sense to use cooking gloves with lots of hot chilies. Make sure too that the juice of chili peppers never find its way into your eyes. Chili juice on your eyes can be a very painful experience. You can also keep your skin and hands off chili peppers by grinding them instead.

Manage the Heat

If you can't handle too much hotness from the chili, you can always remove the chili seeds and the white membrane before cutting and adding to your chili vegetarian recipe. Tomato sauce is also said to be effective in helping lessen the hotness of chili.

If the heat is already burning in your mouth, you should avoid beer and other beverages. While people still popularly use water to kill the fire of a chili recipe, yogurt and milk seem to be more effective.

Mix with Other Tastes

Chili goes well with garlic, beans, onions, tofu and tomatoes. Just make sure that you mix your ingredients well so that the chili flavor does not stick in just some parts of the recipe but watch out for burned ingredients. Experts advise though that ingredients shouldn't be mixed all at once since this could kill the hot taste. Sauté the spices gradually to release the chili oil that holds the secret to its hot taste. Depending on the dish, you can serve a chili dish the next day to give time for flavors and tastes to mix.

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