Last week over on Twitter, vegan comfort food emulator Thee Burger Dude  (@TheeBurgerDude) wondered how much vegan chili he could make for $36. I didn't follow enough of the conversation to figure out what made him ask that, but it got me instantly obsessed with how much vegan chili I could make for $36. A few years back my colleague at the Philadelphia Weekly, Randy LaBosso wondered, in a series of articles, how well he could live on some small amount of money — it might have been $40 a week. And, you know, whenever someone on the Internet does something like that, you're always smacking your head at how you could do it better and I'm going "Randy! Let me tell you about lentils!" 

I'm fortunate to live in a part of Philadelphia which has an enormous amount of food options and that's not the case everywhere. Many American's live in food deserts where their options for shopping are very limited. For this, I shopped at two different places, Sprouts Farmers Market for bulk spices and Aldi, for almost everything else. There are a few places that I didn't try that might have been able to save me more money, such as our vegetable trucks and the dollar store (critically, I think the zucchini and squash might have been about 25% or so less expensive at a vegetable truck). Also, if I'd been able to go in on this with other people, I think I could have gotten the beans cheaper in larger amounts by shopping at some of our international stores that supply restaurants in the area.

So, all this is predicated on a) having places to shop and b) having the time to go to those places. 

TL;DR

I was able to make 72 cups of vegan chili for $36. People on the web say that a serving of chili is one cup, but that seems small. I think it's more like two cups. But the bottom line is that you can have a decent meal for a dollar. I also have a lot of carrots, spices, and textured vegetable protein left that will make the next batch less expensive.

One cup of vegan chili. It was very good. I think two cups is a more reasonable serving size.

Ingredients

Critical to this are dried beans, the bigger the bag, the cheaper they are per ounce. So I went with 32 oz bags. For some reason, the red beans were twice as expensive as the black and pinto beans, but I think three different beans is important to texture. To this I added yellow squash, zucchini, and carrots and "rewards" — something to break up the textural experience, and then some canned extras, yellow corn, crushed tomatoes and Textured Vegetable Protein (which is amazing stuff — it arrives dry and you just put it in liquid to reconstitute it). This keeps it from being boring because, for me, it has to be worth eating also. The TVP was the most expensive item, but if you get it in bulk, you'll have it for next time. You could also substitute it for more vegetables, but I think it makes a big difference. Spices were chili, cumin, and Better that Bullion Vegetable, which is a great umami flavor. You could also use soy sauce since the Better than Bullion is one of the more expensive things here, I think it's worth it thought.

I like to have an assortment of beans you could also put chickpeas in here — which I think are great. 

Cooking Methods
I used an Instant Pot because we have one, but you could also do it in an ordinary large pan or dutch oven — you just need to soak the beans overnight first. 

I mixed the beans into quasi 4 cup mixtures (32 ounces of beans is actually more like five cups) and put them in the instant pot with 12 cups of water, then added all the spices (I used 3 tablespoons of Better Than Bullion, 3 tablespoons of cumin and 2 of chili powder) plus 1/3 of a can of crushed tomatoes and set it for 38 minutes.

Mix and match the beans however you like.

It takes a while for the Instant Pot to get up to steam, so it's probably more like an hour's cooking time. (If you're cooking them on the stovetop, start tasting them at 45 minutes after simmering, it might take as long as an hour and a half.) When the 38 minutes was done, I chopped the carrots, squash and zucchini, and cooked them in a frying pan. I sautéed the carrots for about five minutes on their own before adding the squash and zucchini and letting it go for another five or so minutes until everything has some bite but is otherwise soft. Then I released the remaining steam from the instant pot, added the dry TVP and corn (drained), stirring it in (this lets the TVP soak up some liquid), then added the cooked vegetables and stirred it in. 

That's it. Probably 20 minutes prep time and an unattended hour of cooking time. 

I need better lighting in my kitchen if I'm going to do this.

We'd been making a lot of chili during lockdown because all the ingredients are shelf-stable and available in bulk, so we'd had a lot of practice at this — one pot will literally feed two people for more than a week, it's tasty, it freezes well, and, it's inexpensive. 

Here's our breakdown. You could save money by leaving out the TVP and the Better Than Bullion flavoring and add more vegetables, but I do think they add significantly to its final success. 

Here's my price breakdown for what's in here. I think we probably could have done better on some of the vegetables but I'm really happy with the prices for the corn and the crushed tomatoes. On the whole, I think this is pretty good.

Also, I did write this vegan cookbook, Cooking With Roswell, which has more stuff in it. All of which is vegan, all of which is easy. You should get a copy.