Vegan Sweet Potato Chili with Mulato Peppers

A one-pot chili recipe that is as healthy as it is tasty! This hearty vegetarian bean chili is packed with vitamins from sweet potatoes and shepherd peppers and elevated by mulato peppers.

In this house we only serve up recipes that are low-effort (easy to make) and high-reward (tasty and nutritious).

Chili belongs in the category of ultimate low-effort high-reward meals. If there was an ultimate competition for low-effort high-reward meals, chili would rank in the semifinals at least. Chili is in regular rotation in our household because it:

• comes together in one pot
• hits all the macros (carbohydrates, fat, protein, fibre)
• hits many micronutrients (vitamins and minerals)
• is infinitely customizable
• is a good way of using up sad looking vegetables
• uses common pantry items
• makes great leftovers, and
• is so tasty!

In this post, I discuss:

Ingredients in my Vegan Sweet Potato Chili with Mulato Peppers

Here are some of the key players in my vegan sweet potato chili recipe with notes and comments.

Nutritional notes

Sweet peppers: Did you know that peppers are super high in vitamin C? I used shepherd peppers in this recipe, which are similar to bell peppers in nutritional value and taste. One serving of shepherd peppers have 210% of your Vitamin C daily value (“DV”).

Sweet potato: I love sweet potatoes. They are so versatile and nutritious. Don’t peel your sweet potatoes! Not only will you be saving a step, thereby reducing effort and time, the skin of sweet potato is particularly rich in fiber and nutrients. One medium sweet potato (with the skin) gives you 154% of the DV for provitamin A (which your body converts into vitamin A), 31% of the DV for vitamin C, and 15% of the DV for potassium (source).

Different types of chili and peppers

Along with fresh sweet peppers, I use three different types of hot chilli peppers in this chili recipe: dried mulato peppers, dried round chilli peppers, and fresh Thai red peppers. The star of the show are the mulato peppers, which gives my vegan chili rich, chocolatey notes.

Kenji López-Alt on Serious Eats says the key to great chili is to mix and match from an array of dried chiles “like a 1990’s mix tape”. He divides dried chiles into four broad categories: (1) sweet and fresh, (2) hot, (3) smoky, and (4) rich and fruity.

Mulato peppers belong to the “rich and fruity” category. Visually, they are dark brown and wrinkly when dried. Mulato peppers impart a complex flavor with fruity and chocolate notes.

To complement the mulato peppers, I used dried round chili peppers, which are commonly used in South Asian cuisine. Mine was labeled as Gole Mirch Surkh, but these small round peppers are also known as boriya red chili, gundu chili, mundu chili or simply “whole red round chili”. These dried peppers are red, round, and the seeds make a rattling sound when the pepper is shaken.

Third, I had some Thai red chili peppers languishing in the fridge, so I threw some in for extra heat.

Along with hot chilli peppers, I also used fresh shepherd peppers, which are sweet and not spicy at all. These long peppers come in an array of colors such as dark purple, yellow, red, and orange. I know them as shepherd peppers but they are also marketed as Sweet Twister peppers. They taste like bell peppers, but have thinner flesh and less seeds.

Chili substitutions

• Mulato chili: use ancho, pasillo, guajillo or any other type of dried Mexican chili.
• Round chili: use any type of spicy/hot dried chili, or omit if also using a fresh spicy chili like Thai red chili.
• Thai red chili: use any type of fresh hot chili, or omit of also using a dried hot variety.

Rehydrating dried chiles – the proper method to the very lazy method

Some of this may be sacrilegious – if you are a chili enthusiast or your grandmother has instilled in you the proper way to process chiles, maybe avert your eyes from the lazy methods outlined below.

The go-getter/proper method ??

The proper method to rehydrate dried chiles for Mexican cooking is to first, clean, de-stem and de-seed your chiles. Second, toast the chiles in a pan or skillet on medium-high heat until fragrant but not burnt. For large chiles like mulato, make sure each side is toasted. Toasting or dry roasting peppers enhances their flavor because certain compounds are only released at high heat. This can be done in a pan, over an open flame, or in the oven. Third, soak the toasted chiles in boiling or hot water. Finally, once the chiles have softened, blend everything up and add to your recipe.

The somewhat pared down method ?

If you want to eliminate some steps, you can skip the de-seeding (but do not skip the de-stemming) and then proceed with the above method. The seeds of chili peppers are edible and only removed because of perceived textural unpleasantness. However, this won’t be a problem if you have a high-powered blender or food processor.

My research on whether the stems of chiles are edible is inconclusive. While some cultures eat chili leaves, I have not found any instances of people intentionally eating chili stems. As well, some varieties appear to be slightly toxic.

The very lazy method ? ?‍?

Sometimes you just want to throw everything into a pot and then collapse onto the couch or the floor. If you are short on time or energy, skip the de-seeding and the toasting. Yes, toasting spices enhances flavor, but even the laziest method of rehydrating chiles will yield a better pot of chili than a chili recipe which only uses dried chilli powder. In short, remove the stems from your dried peppers, soak in hot or boiling water until soft, then blitz until smooth.

Writer’s note: chili, chilli, or chile?

I didn’t realize until I started writing this post how many variant ways there are to spell the word “chili” and how, without even knowing it, I alternated between the various spellings with no logical system! At first, my default spelling of the word referring to the spicy pepper was “chilli”. I thought, wrongly, that “chili” referred to the spicy stew dish and “chilli” referred to the pepper. To add to the confusion, the plural of the word is sometimes spelled “chilies”, sometimes “chilis”, and sometimes “chiles” (also, sometimes “chillies” and “chillis” ?).

Apparently, the different spellings derive from transcription of the Nahuatl language word for the pepper, which eventually became “chilli” in British English and “chili” in American English (source). For this post, I have used the American spelling of “chili” to refer to both the pepper and stew, and the plural “chiles” (for no good reason, except, it makes sense to me, linguistically – I think?)