the $120 chili that got me through fellowship

Scroll down if you just want the recipe.

An oxymoron is a combination of contradictory or incongruous words. If you've ever worked in a hospital and thought about why Dunkin' Donuts is in a hospital (not to mention 100 feet away from the cardiology department), you know that "hospital food" is somewhat of an oxymoron. As one of my favorite fellow replies when we ask what's in the cafeteria, the answer is "dog food".

This is not to say that hospital food is disgusting, but most of it is not healthy for you. This tends to fly right in the face of the whole "healing" goals of the hospital, but, hey, the hospital needs to sell food that sells. And traditionally healthy food doesn't sell terribly well. I've written about this before (here) and it's a problem I've been thinking about since medical school.

The answer for myself has been to pack as much food for myself as is feasible. Brown bagging it the way my brown parents taught me to. It's cheaper than eating hospital food and, if done right, it's healthier too.

Not my meal prep. This takes much too much time. I don’t have this much time.

For those of us that get home at 5pm and don't have to be at work until 9am, making fresh food each night isn't that taxing. If you're triggered, I apologize, I really have no idea what its like to get home that early. I don't need to tell you again how busy residency and fellowship is. Both of my parents worked full time when I was growing up so we had leftovers a lot. Think of your favorite indian restaurant dishes instead of meatloaf. Little did I know that millennials have a name for this: meal prep.

My meal prepping journey wasn't straightforward. There were a lot of recipes I tried but few were as efficient as this recipe. One hour of prep yields 12 meals for the rest of the week and a bit of the next. This, combined with my amma's (mom's) dhal recipe had me prepping 20 meals in one day, which was great, because we were working 12 days straight.

A breakdown of the rough costs of each item on the list. The spices are expensive, but definitely worth it. These prices are estimates based on amazon.com’s prices. Your mileage will vary.

This isn't your typical chili recipe since I took some liberties to add in more vegetables and Indian spices to make it more flavorful and healthier. Once the turkey is browned and the vegetables are softened, I throw everything into my instant pot and use the slow cooker function to let the chili cook for 8-12 hours, the longer the better.

For those of you starting from scratch, the slow cooker and all the ingredients costs about $120, but that's to make 12 servings and it includes the cost of an instant pot or slowcooker if you don't have one. This makes each meal cost ~$10.15.

If purchased in bulk, the spices will last you a few rounds of making this chili so you wont have to pay $120 every time you make this chili. Excluding spices from these calculations, the total cost of the ingredients drops by more than half to $38.28 (the meats, veggies, and canned goods are not super expensive) — giving us a low cost of $3.19 per meal, much cheaper than hospital food and much, much better for you.

Here's the recipe:

• 3lbs ground turkey

• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped

• 2 bell peppers, finely chopped

• 3-4 jalapenos, finely chopped

• 6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

• 0.25 cup wochestershire sauce

• 2 boullion cubes

• 28 ounces of san marzano tomatoes, crushed

• 12 ounces of tomato paste

• 14.5 ounces of fire roasted diced tomatoes

• 14.5 ounces of canned corn, fluid drained

• 14.5 ounces of carrots and peas, fluid drained

• 32 ounces of black beans, fluid drained

• salt to taste

• Spices

  • chili powder (buy the stuff from an indian store)

  • garam masala (find your indian friends)

  • cinnamon

  • smoked paprika

  • turmeric

  • coriander powder

  • oregano

  • garlic powder

Directions

1. On medium-high heat, brown the ground turkey, seasoning with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Place the browned turkey into the instant pot/slow cooker.

2. Soften the vegetables (onion, bell peppers, jalapenos, and garlic) on medium-high heat until the onions are translucent. Once soft, dump the vegetable mixture into the cooker.

3. Open the cans and pour the contents into the cooker. Stir in the bouillon cubes too.

4. Add spices. This is the part that’s tricky. My mom tells me she just throws in "a little bit of this and a little bit of that" when she's cooking and I keep telling her its not helpful because I want exact, replicate-able measurements like in chemistry lab. But I've started doing the exact same thing. I'd start with 1-2 tablespoons (this is a lot of food tbh) of each of the spices as a good starting place. It's hard to go wrong as these spices tend to be very forgiving, except the turmeric, don't use too much of that.

5. Set the instant pot to slow cooker, or turn your slow cooker on high for 8-12 hours. I recently made a batch that sat for 12 hours and I am quite proud of how it came out.

And that's it. Once it's done cooking, I dole everything out into Tupperware. Usually half of the batch finds a home in the freezer and the other half gets eaten the week it's made.

I want to hear from you. Let me know how your batch turns out!