Boppy's White Bean Chile - People's Choice Award

From the Kitchen of Ken Wulf, J&K Certified Organic Meats LLC

There are several versions of this tasty soup but this one is for both dry beans and canned beans. Try to find organic ingredients wherever you can.

First, get a nice 20-quart stock pot. A smaller pan will do but you might have to cut up your chicken for, say, a 10-quart stock pan.

Next, go out and buy a chicken. I grow my own (J & K Certified Organic Pastured Chicken). It is the best.

Put about ten quarts of water in the stock pot, put the chicken in the pot and cook at a medium boil for 30 minutes. Take the chicken out, pull the meat off the bones and put the bones back in the stock and boil for fifteen to twenty minutes more. Remove bones and run the stock through a sieve or colander to remove any solids from the stock. This stock can be used for a lot of dishes - it is simple and very healthy. Pour your stock into a bowl and let it cool, then remove all the fat (if you want to). I don’t usually remove the fat. I feel that it lends a buttery quality to the stock and, being organic, has no chemical residue.

Now that we have stock and meat, let's look at all the rest of the ingredients.

The rule I use to figure out how much chile to make is 2 cups of stock per person and 1 can of great Northern White Beans per 4 cups of stock (2 cans, if you like more beans). If you use dry beans, soak them overnight and cook them separately and add as many as you see fit.

You will need some things, so I will set this up for four people:
10 cups of chicken stock
1 chicken, 4 to 5 pounds
2 cups or more of onions (either green onions or yellow Spanish)
1 whole bulb of garlic, separated, peeled and smashed, then sliced
4 stalks of celery cut in ¼ inch pieces
1 1/2 of a bag of frozen sweet corn
3 or 4 carrots sliced
6 16 oz cans of great northern white beans or any beans you like, drained.
One pound of dry beans, cooked and drained
1 large can of garbanzo beans
1 T of black pepper
1 or 2 Jalapeño peppers, chopped, seeds and all
Salt to taste (put the salt in last as beans will suck up a lot of salt and you feel like the taste is not there that you want from your salt). I don’t measure to the great degree so use you own good judgment as to what you like.
I put about 1 or 2 T of dried sage
Cumin. I mean five or six tablespoons of cumin. Even more ground cumin - at least half of the bottle. I can tell you from experience that the beans will absorb a lot of flavor.

Well then, let’s get that wonderful chicken stock boiling, making certain to have enough room left in the pot for all the goodies going in.

First, add your celery and carrots, wait five minutes, then add the chicken meat. Next, add Sage, Cumin, Black pepper, Cumin, Jalapeno and Cumin.

Bring back to a boil for ten minutes or so until the carrots and celery are soft, turn fire down to a simmer, add your beans and onions, salt and serve. Do not overcook - all the beans have already been cooked - they only need to warm up. If you use scallions, add them at the end just before serving, to retain their color and taste. Always taste before you serve and freshen your herbs so they taste bright and alive... and put in all the love you can.

I like to serve this with a standard corn bread made with raisins, hickory nuts and a can of whole kernel corn added to the off-the-box recipe from Quaker Oats Company.

I hope you enjoy this prize-winning recipe, or use some of my ideas to make up your own.

Keep it simple and fresh and you can’t go wrong. Good Eating. Ken.