Recipes, techniques, spices and delicious variations.
Explore recipes ↗Chilli con carne has long been a fixture of British home cooking, and it is also one of the easiest dishes to get slightly wrong. At its best it is a thick, savoury pot of browned meat, tomatoes, beans and warm spice, with enough heat to notice but not so much that you stop tasting everything else. At its worst it is thin, grey and dusty with chilli powder. The difference comes from a few simple habits rather than special ingredients.
These pages are written for cooks in the UK, using ingredients you can buy in any supermarket and measured in grams and millilitres. You will find a classic beef recipe to start from, versions for different appliances and diets, and practical guides on spices, sides, freezing and portions. Every recipe has been checked for quantities, timings and safe food handling.
Made with pieces of chicken thigh rather than mince, chicken chilli con carne has a proper bite to it and cooks noticeably faster than the beef classic. The thighs are seared for colour, then finished in a sauce that has already had a head start, so they stay juicy rather than turning stringy. It serves four and takes about an hour from chopping board to table.
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A good chili con carne needs tender beef, a thick tomato sauce and enough spice to feel warming without drowning out everything else. This straightforward hob recipe serves four, uses easy-to-find supermarket ingredients and gives you a rich, satisfying dinner to spoon over rice or pile onto a jacket potato.
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This slow cooker chili con carne gives you tender beef mince, soft kidney beans and a rich tomato sauce without needing to watch a pan all afternoon. A quick browning step builds the flavour, then your slow cooker takes over: serve it with rice, spoon it over jacket potatoes or freeze a few portions for another day.
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Chilli con carne with rice is a dependable one-pot supper: rich, gently spiced beef and beans served with a separate bowl of fluffy rice to catch every bit of sauce. This version uses everyday UK ingredients and gives you a useful balance of heat, texture and cooking time without making the rice soggy.
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This quick chilli con carne is a satisfying midweek meal, ready in about 35 minutes with straightforward ingredients. Minced beef, kidney beans, tomatoes and a few store-cupboard spices make a rich, gently warming sauce without a long simmer.
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A baked potato topped with chilli con carne makes a satisfying, practical meal: crisp skin, fluffy potato and a hearty, warmly spiced topping. This version cooks the potatoes in the oven while the chilli simmers on the hob, so both are ready to serve together.
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This healthier chilli con carne keeps the familiar warmth and deep savoury flavour, while using lean beef, beans and extra vegetables to make a satisfying meal. It is cooked in one pan, easy to adapt to what you have, and works just as well for a weeknight supper as for batch cooking.
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This vegan chilli sin carne is a comforting one-pot meal built around beans, vegetables, tomatoes and gently smoky spices. It is straightforward to make, easy to adapt to what is in your cupboard, and satisfying served with rice, jacket potatoes or warm tortillas.
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Chilli con carne is rich, savoury and a little hot, so the best things to serve with it either soak up the sauce or cut through it. The simplest way to plan the plate is in three parts: something starchy, something fresh and one or two toppings. Here is how to choose each, whether you are feeding two on a Tuesday or twenty at a party.
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A good chili con carne seasoning mix should give you earthy warmth, gentle smokiness and enough heat to suit your table, without hiding the beef, tomatoes or beans. You can make it with ordinary supermarket spices, but knowing which chilli powder you have and when to add it makes a bigger difference than a long ingredients list.
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A serving of chilli con carne can vary considerably in calories, depending on the mince, beans, oil and portion size. As a useful starting point, a bowl without rice or toppings often comes to around 350–550 calories; the complete plate can be higher once you add rice, cheese or sour cream.
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Chilli con carne freezes well, making it handy to cook a larger batch and save portions for another day. Cool it promptly, pack it in freezer-safe portions and thaw or reheat it safely to keep the flavour and texture at their best.
View recipe ↗Start with the meat. Beef mince with around 10–15% fat is the everyday choice in the UK: it browns well, carries the spices and does not dry out during simmering. Leaner mince works but needs a gentler heat, while chicken thigh pieces give a lighter pot with more texture. Turkey mince is a sensible swap too, as long as you keep the bubbling gentle.
Browning comes first. Beef mince or chicken pieces need a hot, wide pan and a little patience so they take on colour rather than stewing in their own juices. The brown layer left in the pan is where much of the flavour comes from, and the tomatoes and stock lift it into the sauce.
The spices need a minute in the hot pan before any liquid goes in. Ground cumin, smoked paprika, chilli powder and dried oregano are the usual base, and cooking them briefly with garlic and tomato purée turns them from raw and dusty into something rounded. Chilli powder varies enormously between jars, so start cautiously and add more at the end.
Finally, reduce the sauce. A good chilli is thick enough to sit on rice without leaving a watery pool, which means simmering it uncovered and stirring more often as it thickens. Taste it once it has reduced, because salt and heat both concentrate as the liquid cooks away. A squeeze of lime often does more for a flat-tasting pot than extra spice.
If you are new to chilli, start with the classic beef and kidney bean recipe. It is a straightforward hob method that serves four and takes a little over an hour, and every other version builds on it. When time is short, the quick chilli is on the table in about 35 minutes without losing the essentials.
For a hands-off pot, the slow cooker version lets you brown the meat in the morning and come home to a finished dinner. The chicken chilli uses thigh pieces rather than mince and cooks faster than beef. If you are watching what you eat, the healthier chilli keeps the generous feel with leaner mince and more vegetables, and the vegan chilli sin carne replaces the meat altogether with two kinds of beans and plenty of vegetables.
Alongside the recipes, there is a seasoning guide with a homemade spice mix, advice on what to serve with chilli, including rice and jacket potatoes, a practical guide to freezing and reheating, a calorie guide for UK portions and an honest look at where the dish actually comes from.
For four people, a reliable starting point is 500 g of beef mince, one large onion, one pepper, a 400 g tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin of kidney beans and about 200 ml of stock. That gives four generous portions served with rice or potatoes. Allow roughly 125–150 g of raw meat per person if you are scaling up for a crowd.
On the hob, a mince chilli needs about 25–55 minutes once everything is prepared, depending on how long you let it reduce: ten minutes or so to soften the vegetables and brown the meat, then a gentle uncovered simmer while the sauce reduces. Chicken pieces need less time in the sauce; a slow cooker needs several hours but almost no attention. Longer cooking does not automatically mean better chilli, though it does need enough time to thicken.
Tinned kidney beans are already cooked and only need heating through, so add them for the last 10 minutes or so to keep them whole. If you use dried kidney beans, soak them and boil them hard for at least 10 minutes before simmering until tender: raw or undercooked kidney beans are toxic. In a slow cooker, always use tinned or fully pre-boiled beans.
Chilli is a natural make-ahead dish and often tastes better the next day. Cool leftovers quickly in shallow containers, refrigerate within one to two hours and eat within two days. It also freezes well for about three months at −18 °C; defrost in the fridge and reheat once only, stirring until it is steaming hot throughout.
Serve it with rice, jacket potatoes, tortillas or tortilla chips, with one or two toppings such as grated Cheddar, soured cream or lime. A crisp slaw or green salad on the side cuts through the richness, and leftover chilli makes a quick lunch spooned over a baked potato or tucked into a wrap.
Heat is the one thing you cannot take back once it is in the pot. If you are cooking for children or guests whose taste you do not know, aim for a gentle warmth and put sliced fresh chilli, chilli flakes or hot sauce on the table. If a pot does turn out too fierce, stretching it with an extra tin of tomatoes and some more beans works better than adding sugar.
Not really. Its name is Spanish for chilli with meat, but the dish as it is known today comes from Texas and Tex-Mex cooking. The chili queens of San Antonio sold it on the streets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and a San Antonio chili stand appeared at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but no one knows exactly who first made it.
Both are correct. In British English the pepper and the dish are usually spelt chilli, while American English uses chili. The full name of the dish is often written chili con carne, following the Spanish spelling, though chilli con carne is just as common in UK recipes.
A mince chilli on the hob is usually ready in 25–55 minutes once the ingredients are prepared, as long as the meat is properly browned and the sauce has reduced. Simmering for longer can deepen the flavour, but keep the heat low and add a splash of water if it starts to catch.
Yes. Texan-style chilli is often made without beans at all. Leave them out and either add a little more meat or serve a more substantial side, such as rice or jacket potatoes. You may need to reduce the stock slightly, as there are no beans to soak up the sauce.
Up to two days in a covered container, provided it was cooled quickly and refrigerated within one to two hours of cooking. For longer storage, freeze it in portions for up to three months and reheat only once until piping hot throughout.