Walt Disney's Chili and Beans

This recipe is from Mickey's Gourmet Cookbook from 1994. I've been wanting to try a new chili recipe and I haven't cooked anything from this book yet. I think I gave this book to my grandmother for her birthday when I was in college (might have been the earlier edition). I couldn't find it when she passed away so I ordered another copy from half.com.

All of the recipes in the book are from restaurants in the Disney restaurants, except of course the one I picked. This is supposedly Walt Disney's personal chili recipe. I have never used dried beans before and that was an adventure. The recipe calls for 2 pounds of ground beef and 2 pounds of dried pink pinto beans. I think it has to be a typo because after soaking the beans overnight, you're supposed to put them in a 2 quart sauce pan with 2 inches of water covering the beans. There's no way that you could possibly fit that many beans in a 2 quart sauce pan, let alone add two inches of water to it. So, I had to fill the 3 quart sauce pan up with what looked like half of the beans and I discarded the rest. Then I just barely had enough room at the top for a little under 2 inches of water. At the end when I combined the meat with the beans, it seemed like there was a high beans to meat ratio, maybe 60 percent beans and 40 percent meat. If I made it again, I would definitely use less beans.

I thought it tasted alright. You have to cook the beans with onions for 2 hours and simmer the meat with garlic, celery, canned tomatoes, chili powder, paprika, and thyme for an hour. Then you combine everything for another 30 minutes. I got tired of waiting after two hours and just combined everything and made a bowl for myself. I suspect it will taste better tomorrow. I think it's a decent recipe and it's pretty healthy.

I Googled "Walt Disney Chili and Beans" and several different recipes came up. This site has the closet to what is in the book: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/15/WaltDisneysChiliAndBeans65030.shtml



This is what it looked like when I combined the beans and the meat mixture->

This week I weeded one cookbook off my shelves. I'm getting rid of Willard Scott's All American Cookbook. Most of the book is made up of anecdotes and the few recipes that are in it don't appeal to me. They seem to be a little unhealthy, too.