Meals · Soups & stews
Beef chili
The second-most-searched savoury recipe in America, year after year: beef, beans and a proper amount of chili powder, simmered until it thickens itself. This is the pot that feeds a week.
- Time
- 75 min (15 prep + 60 cook)
- Servings
- 6
- Per serving
- 404 kcal
- Protein
- 34 g
Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lb 90% lean ground beef700 g
- 1 large yellow onions, diced200 g
- 4 cloves garlic, minced15 g
- 2 tbsp chili powder16 g
- 1 tbsp ground cumin6 g
- 1 tsp dried oregano2 g
- 1 tbsp paprika7 g
- 2 tbsp tomato paste33 g
- 1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes800 g
- 2 cans canned kidney beans, drained and rinsed480 g
- 1 cup beef broth240 g
- 1 tsp salt6 g
Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.
Steps
- Brown the beef hard in a big pot, breaking it up — let it sit untouched a couple of minutes at a time so it actually browns instead of steaming.
- Add the onion and cook until soft, then the garlic, spices and tomato paste. Fry the paste 1–2 minutes until it darkens — raw paste tastes tinny, fried paste tastes like chili.
- Add the tomatoes, beans, broth and salt. Simmer uncovered 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally, until thick enough that a spoon leaves a trail.
- Taste and correct the salt at the end, not before — the pot concentrates as it reduces.
Do the beans actually matter?
Like every stew, it is better tomorrow. The beans are not filler here — they carry fiber the beef can't, and they're a large part of why chili scores as well as it does.
Alternative
Why this score
solidly fillingNo single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.
Three routes to fullness — one is enough
What pulls it down
Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.
Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2424 kcal goes into the pot, 2505 g of ingredients comes out as ~2000 g of food → 121 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.
Per
- Calories
- 121
- Protein
- (34%)
- 10 g
- Fat
- (30%)
- 4 g
- Carbohydrates
- (36%)
- 11 g
- of which sugar
- 3 g
- Fiber
- 3 g
- Sodium
- 340 mg
Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.
Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.
More meals
Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.