I made this chili exactly by the recipe (with the omission of meat) and found the flavor to be quite bland. I do not like spice at all but I didn't expect it to be so bland. I pretty much doubled all the spices in the recipes, which ended up being a perfect compromise. I omitted the meat so added more vegetables such as carrots and some mushrooms cut up very small. All in all I will keep this in my rotation.

Reviewed On: Nov. 21, 2010

I started out with good intentions of just following the recipe as directed but it just didn't seem to be quiet right. It was very thick with the three cans of crushed tomatos. I had to add two cups of water to get the consistency right. The vegetable proportions were way off in my opinion. With the amounts the recipe calls for you could hardly tell there was any in the chili. I ended up adding an additional 1/2 onion. It still didn't seem to matter. If I make this again, I would add an additional medium size onion and an additional green pepper. I did make a few alterations to the recipe a, which I did not take into consideration when rating this recipe. Just a few personal touches I thought of along the way. I added four stalks of celery and a bottle of Samuel Adams beer. I also added extra chili powder and some cayenne pepper for an extra kick!

Reviewed On: Oct. 19, 2008

The mixture of flavors in this recipe were great. The black beans were a great addition to a traditional vegetarian stuffed pepper. The only reason I gave it four stars is because I had to make one alteration. I mixed tomato sauce in with the black beans and rice to give it a nice moist texture. As the recipe called for I also poured some over the peppers at the end. If I did not add tomato sauce to the filling I think the peppers would have come out very dry on the inside.

Reviewed On: Jul. 27, 2008