I was at a potluck gathering of Old Order German Baptist Brethren a couple of years ago (more about the gathering tomorrow) and I spied a lot of chili steaming on one of the tables. I sampled it and found it to be quite tasty, so I tracked down the cook who made it. It tasted vaguely like pizza in a pot.
🍲 What is Pizza Chili?
I tracked down the woman who made the pizza chili. She was a kind, quiet polite woman who was nice enough to share her recipe with us. I asked her what it was called and she was like "This? This stupidly easy pizza chili?"
What happened was she needed to make a pot of chili for the gathering but realized she was out of tomato sauce, so she was trying to think of a way to improvise. Her solution: pizza sauce and salsa. I might have been sorry I asked, but it was so good.
The cook used her own homemade pizza sauce and her own salsa. So when using 4 "cans" of pizza sauce, I would get as close to a quart as you can in the amounts, because she would have been using quart jars.
📋 Step-By-Step Pizza Chili
With the beans, she said just to experiment, but she used some navy beans, northern beans, chili beans, so you can adjust the bean amounts as you prefer. For beans she would not have used home-canned, so when it says "cans" in the rest, just gets your standard store-bought cans and drain.
The meats are another area where you can and should experiment. This cook only had deer burger and sausage on hand, but you can use blends of other meats including hamburger if you don't have venison on hand. Adding some pepperoni would also be a fun twist to make this even more like pizza in a pot.
While you can experiment with this recipe and tailor it to your taste, the cook did tell me that the cumin was a key ingredient. So don't mess with the cumin and you'll have an awesome chili!
I apologize for the poor photo above, I was shooting fast and the light was low. But the pot out front was the chili at the German Baptist gathering. The other photos was when I tried making it.
Another optional ingredient to sprinkle over the chili is cheese and if you really want to go the pizza route, make it mozzarella cheese!
🥣 More Amish Chili Recipes
🖨️ Full Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 cans of pizza sauce
- 6 cans of different kinds of beans
- 1 pint salsa
- 1 1 /4 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons cumin
- 2 small onions, chopped
- 4 pounds sausage
- 2 pounds deer burger
Instructions
- Brown sausage and deer burger.
- Dump the meat into a large stockpot, and add rest of the ingredients
- .Simmer on low for a good hour or until heated through.
- Spoon into bowls and serve topped with mozzerella cheese.
susan greenoe
In the stupidly easy pizza chili, you have 1 1/4 cup but no ingrediant
Kevin
Oops, thanks, Susan, I fixed it! Should have been 1 1 /4 cup brown sugar
Don Mcgowan
How many servings in this pizza chili recipe. Seems a lot.
Kevin Williams
Thanks, good question, I should have addressed that. It is a lot, probably 20 servings, you can cut it in a half.