Chili Spaghetti

I got the idea to make Chili Spaghetti from my Mom. It was always one of my favorite meals she would cook for me. The perfect mix of spice and tastiness!

For years I didn't pay attention to how she would make it, and assumed that she spent hours slaving over it. However, when I cooked it a few weeks ago I discovered just how easy it was to make.

This is what you need to make Chili Spaghetti:

2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion chopped
1 package Chili spice mix
2 15 oz. cans tomato sauce
2 14.5 oz. cans diced tomatoes
2 15.5 oz. cans kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
1 or 2 boxes of spaghetti (depending on how many people you are serving)

Toppings:
Grated cheddar cheese
Jalapeno peppers
Sour cream

There isn't too much prep work involved with this recipe. The only prep work includes browning your ground beef and chopping up the onion. Once that is finished you take the ground beef, the chopped onions, chili packet, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes, put them in a pot and simmer for one hour over medium heat. You can simmer even longer if you like, as the longer it simmers, the more concentrated the flavors become. The most important thing is to make sure you have a pot that is big enough. I sort of lazily looked for a big pot and determined that the pot seen below was the biggest.

As you can see, space was very limited. By this point, I hadn't even included the kidney beans which was the last step in the process. Silly me, I tried adding the kidney beans in this and began to have a bit of an overflow problem. Finally, I did one more search for a bigger pot and came up successful!

After adding the kidney beans you simmer for another half hour and then the chili is ready to eat. While the chili is simmering you cook the spaghetti as directed on the box. When that is complete you spoon out your spaghetti and place as much chili over it as your heart desires! One thing to keep in mind is the jalapenos. I put in a decent amount of jalapenos but didn't put too much as I didn't want to make it overwhelmingly hot. They are just as good to add as toppings later. For our sides I kept it pretty simple, as we had salad and Texas Toast garlic bread, neither of which involved any real thought on my part. When I become more confident in my cooking skills I would like to try making garlic bread on my own.

I thought it came out very well and everyone seemed to enjoy. I liked that when making this you could pretty much concentrate on one thing at a time, and because of this never felt overwhelmed. Now that I know how easy it is to make I figure to make it often. Even better, if you end up of having a ton of leftovers like I did, you can freeze the chili and enjoy it another time!