Give Chili Triple The Flavor By Starting With This Affordable Jarred Cooking Base

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Chili is a cozy comfort food that seems to get more popular in winter, but can be enjoyed any time of year. Chili recipes and methods vary greatly from one person to the next, from slow cooker recipes to quick-cook versions, but the dish often has a tomato base. If you typically use canned tomatoes, you're not necessarily doing it wrong, but you're missing out on the flavor that comes from another tomato-forward base: sofrito-style tomatoes.

Sofrito is essentially a blend of various vegetables and seasonings that are slow-fried in oil to create a delicious aromatic flavor profile. The sauce originated in Spain hundreds of years ago, and today it's especially popular in Dominican and Puerto Rican cuisine. As a chili base, the sofrito should be combined with crushed tomatoes or a tomato puree. You can purchase jarred sofrito on Amazon for ease, or Goya even makes a jar of sofrito tomato cooking base sold at most major grocery chains, so you don't need to put in any additional effort. Once you have the sofrito sauce set, you can then incorporate your other favorite ingredients into the chili.

The reason sofrito makes such a perfect chili base comes down to its own base ingredients. Bell peppers, onions, and garlic are three essential ingredients in the mixture, along with other add-ons like cilantro, lemon juice, and vinegar. The exact ingredients vary by recipe, but these are what help it integrate so well into chili. If you're making a pot of chili, add a cup of sofrito to ensure that fragrant, deep flavor shows through. Sofrito is often used as a base in many dishes, so it should be used as such here and added before you add any other meat or veggies that would go into standard chili. 

By cooking down the sofrito ingredients or letting the pre-cooked base simmer before anything else is added, the vegetables soften, the seasonings blend, and the result is a hard-to-resist flavor combination. Everything in sofrito also complements tomatoes, so combining the two in chili feels like a no brainer. Plus, most of the ingredients in sofrito can also be found in chili. Other chili add-ons, like ground beef and black beans, work well with sofrito, too. It's one of those secret chili ingredients to ensure you get maximum flavor in every bite.