Vegetarian chili (the reheatening)

What? Vegetarian?

I have friends who are extremely bad at eating meat. So bad, in fact, that they're not often seen around our apartment for dinner, despite being engaging folks with whom I enjoy hobnobbing.  I decided to remedy this by trying my hand at making a vegetarian (vegan, even!) friendly recipe, albeit one that has plastered all over it "HOW TO MAKE THIS TASTE BEEFIER!"

I started from a Cook's Illustrated recipe, and I'm posting largely because:

1. while it was in fact a tasty recipe, it was sorely under-spiced (huge surprise there)
2. the step-by-step instructions were inefficiently - perhaps even extremely poorly - ordered!
3. I need to post some pictures of cats

I'd like to make this again but without stupidly wasting a bunch of time, so here, presented in all its basic glory, is the recipe!

dot likes to help.

Ingredients
 Salt
1 lb. (2.5c) dried beans (use whatever kind you want to put in a chili!)
6 dried ancho chiles (CI calls for 2. Go cry into your maple syrup pail in Vermont, you wusses)
6 dried New Mexican chiles (again, CI tells you to use 2. TWO. This is gruel and unusual punishment (see what I did there aaahhahah))
1/2 oz. dried shiitake mushrooms
4 tsp. dried oregano
1/2c walnuts
1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes
3 tbsp. tomato paste
4 jalapeno chiles, stemmed, seeded, and diced (or more, WHY THE HELL NOT)
6 garlic cloves, diced
3 tbsp. soy sauce
1/4c vegetable oil
2 lb. onion, diced
1 tbsp. ground cumin
7c water (or unsalted vegetable stock)
2/3c medium-grind bulgur
Garnishes:

• 1/4c chopped cilantro
• cheese
• sour cream
• lime

chester, giving zero fucks about vegetarian ANYTHING

Steps

Man, the way this recipe was laid out seriously irritated me.  Even re-reading to sort out the order is making me twitch. Don't they have editors? Isn't recipe creation their job? ANYWAY. This recipe easily feeds 6-8, and takes about 5 hours from start to finish.

• Pre-heat your oven to 300F.
• Rinse the beans, removing any non-beans or bad beans.
• Bring 4 quarts water, 3 tbsp. salt, and beans to boil over high heat. When it reaches a boil, remove from heat and cover. Let stand for 1 hour.

~~ While the beans stand ~~

• Stem and seed the anchos and New Mexican chiles. Put them on a baking tray and toast them in the oven until fragrant and puffed, about 8 minutes. Remove & let cool. This is the last use of the oven, unless you're using a dutch oven and baking the chili.
• Using a food processor or spice grinder, process the chiles, shiitakes, and oregano until finely ground (note, medium sized flakes aren't going to ruin anything here as they'll be cooking for at least 3 hours)
• Dice the onions. I actually only used 1.5 lb. of onion. 

When the hour is up, drain the beans and rinse them well.

make sure you have a nosy cat on hand to inspect all steps of the process.

• Heat oil in a large (at least 5-quart) heavy-bottomed pan (or dutch oven) over medium-high heat, until the oil is shimmering (yes cwage, this is a thing).
• Add onions and 1.25 tsp. salt. Cook until the onions start to brown, about 8-10 minutes. 
• Lower heat to medium and add the ground chile mixture and cumin. Stir for about 1 minute.
• Add 7 quarts water and beans.
• Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce to a bare simmer (or put in the oven). Cook for 45 minutes.

~~ While the chili simmers ~~

• Toast the walnuts. I did this in a dry pan over a medium-low burner, YMMV.
• Process toasted walnuts in a food processor until finely ground (it will look a bit like couscous)
• Drain tomatoes and reserve tomato juice. I used 1 can of normal store tomatoes and 1 jar of stewed tomatoes which were probably the most awesome things I've tasted all spring!
• Crush or dice the garlic.
• Stem, seed, chop the jalapenos (wear gloves! I didn't, and then rubbed my nose, and this was pretty exciting for about 15 minutes)
• Combine tomatoes, jalapenos, garlic, tomato paste, and soy sauce. The original recipe calls for a using a food processor to combine coarsely chopped jalapenos with already-diced tomatoes until the tomatoes are 'finely chopped'. If you process the mix long enough to integrate the jalapenos, you've pureed the tomatoes, so I think these guys are smoking something. Anyway, use a food processor if you want - I did - or just dice everything by hand and mix it up with a damn spoon in a bowl and save cleaning a bunch of plastic parts that you got dirty by pressing a button for all of 30 seconds.

~~ When the 45 minutes are up ~~

• Stir in bulgur, ground walnuts, tomato mixture, and - if needed - reserved tomato juice. I didn't need it!
• Cover and return to a bare simmer (or put back in the oven). Cook for 2 more hours, or until beans are fully tender.
• After 2 hours, remove from heat, uncover, stir, and let stand for 20 minutes before serving.

 Garnish with anything and everything!

I didn't take any pictures of the chili while cooking it, so here's one of the chili poured over scrambled eggs for breakfast the following morning!