Easy White Bean Chicken Chili– Healthy Recipe

White bean chicken chili offers a way to use inexpensive ingredients, leftover chicken, and vibrant flavors for a cozy, easy chili recipe that is a little different from more traditional chili recipes. This white bean chicken chili is a quick meal idea that is also gluten free, grain free, GAPS diet adaptable, and gut friendly.

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In the quest for easy yet delicious, affordable, and nourishing meal options, this easy white bean chicken chili recipe is near the top of my favorites. Anytime the kitchen is stocked with essentials, white chicken chili is simple to pull together!

Another big upside to this recipe is that people enjoy it! It can be spicy or mild; either way, it is bursting with warm, cozy flavor. I like to make a big pot and either freeze some for another day or treasure up some popular leftovers for the next day. When someone goes looking for it before lunch time, I know the recipe is a keeper!

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What if beans aren’t a happy food for me?

As much as beans are loved in certain sections of the cooking and eating world, they can cause trouble. Serious trouble, in some cases. Not just “the musical fruit”, but a pretty miserable fruit.

For some people, there may be no way to comfortably consume beans without significant healing first. (Beans are an advanced food on the GAPS diet for this reason.) It just isn’t worth it!

However, there are ways to make beans more digestible and mitigate the potential for trouble from them for many of us! Here are the strategies I find helpful in keeping beans as a happy part of our diet:

Choose your beans wisely

While choosing high quality, organic beans is always a good idea (goodbye, glyphosate!), you may find some benefit in selecting less starchy varieties of beans. Especially if you are prone to digestive problems from beans, it may be worth exploring which beans work well for you.

Gut and Psychology Syndrome, the earlier GAPS book, offers guidance as to which beans to consume (and how to prepare them) in the advanced stages of the GAPS diet. Like much of the information in her books, the advice Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride offers about beans may be helpful to those who are not on the GAPS diet as well.

She recommends certain beans that are lower in starches, because they are easier to digest and do not feed pathogenic bacteria as much as starchier beans. While one bean can seem pretty much like another, this may not be the case. I have noticed that more sensitive members of my family seem to do much better when I stick with these recommendations. There may be something to them!

The recommended soup beans are navy beans, lentils, lima beans, and split peas. Green beans and fresh peas are also on the thumbs-up list, but I don’t use those in chili! Again, the starch content is the reason for this recommendation. Dried beans still need to be prepared properly.

How to prepare beans for digestibility and maximum nutrition

If you find beans to be problematic, it probably isn’t your imagination! There are scientific reasons beyond just the starch content that beans can be hard on your poor tummy.

Lectins in beans can be hard on our digestion. Lots of foods have some lectins, and they aren’t “poison”, but beans have enough to give some of us trouble. Happily, we can reduce the lectins pretty easily. I will tell you how– it’s not hard!

Phytic acid in beans (and nuts, seeds, and grains) can rob us of minerals and disrupt enzymes we need for digestion. For this reason, some people call it an “anti-nutrient.” Not what we want if we are trying to improve our health, or even just maintain it! We can combat this fairly easily as well; read more here.

You need to start this a day before you plan to have the soup.

Here is what I do:

1. Sort the dry beans and put them in a large bowl with filtered water to cover by 3 inches or so. Add a couple of tablespoons of whey or apple cider vinegar.
2. Cover and set aside at room temperature. I usually try for 24 hours, but if all I can manage is 12 hours, I do that! If I let them go longer than 24 hours, I drain and add fresh water. They will swell, split, and likely begin to sprout if you leave them long enough. If you see little tails growing from your beans, be of good cheer– they have sprouted, and sprouting makes them better for you!
3. Cook the beans very thoroughly. The traditional (and GAPS-approved) way to cook them is to drain them, rinse them, and cook them on the stove, or maybe in a slow cooker, until they are very soft.

*It is possible to purchase previously spouted beans and skip these steps. They are more expensive, but maybe it is worth it to you.

Consider pressure cooking– or not!

If you are familiar with the GAPS diet, you know that pressure cooking is absolutely not done. Cook those beans on the stove!

We are not strictly on the GAPS diet right now, and I use my own mashup of the GAPS method of preparing beans and a pressure cooking hypothesis. In short, pressure cooking may offer extra effectiveness at reducing anti-nutrients. It is also convenient and fast, at about 20 minutes for a big pot of beans.

Either way I cook the beans, I like to prepare a large pot and freeze some of them for future meals. It is not unlike cans of beans, and I freeze them in quantities similar to a can. Preparing the beans is not difficult at all, but it requires some planning, time, and effort. Keeping some conveniently prepared beans is economical both in money and time and effort.

Minimize the beans

Much as I love beans, and although beans provide some nutrition, I don’t make them the focus of the chili. Yes, they are there in significant quantity. However, unlike some chili recipes, they do not form the bulk of the ingredients. They balance out with plenty of meat and vegetable matter. That way, there is less for the more sensitive of us to deal with!

How to Make White Bean Chicken Chili

I invariably use leftover chicken. Usually, I am trying to use up boring chicken left after making GAPS meat stock! Even though we aren’t exactly on the GAPS diet, I still make and serve a lot of meat stock. Any leftover chicken will do, or you could cook some chicken in a slow cooker or on the stove. Shredded is nice, but torn-up chicken is just fine. So, if you need to cook some chicken, do that first.

Chop up your onions, peppers, celery, and garlic. Sauté all of it until soft.

To your cooked veggies, add the chicken, cumin, and oregano. Pour in the meat stock or broth (water works also!), and stir in the beans that you prepared beforehand. (If you aren’t concerned with making your beans easy to digest, feel free to use 2-3 cans of beans! Drain them first.)

While your chili comes to a simmer, prepare some toppings. While you don’t strictly need any toppings, they add a lot of flavor, some extra health benefits, and further minimize the impact of beans. Some of our favorite toppings:

• shredded cheese
• sour cream
• chopped cilantro
• sliced green onions or any other fresh onion slices
• pickled or fermented onions
• fresh or fermented jalapeño slices
• any salsa you want,perhaps even fermented salsa
• avocado slices or guacamole

Once the chili has simmered for a bit, taste and adjust the salt and other seasonings. Let everyone heap on their favorite toppings for a chili feast!

Is White Bean Chicken Chili GAPS Compliant?

It can be! Pay attention to these details to make a GAPS chili:

• stick with navy beans that have been soaked and cooked on the stove
• beans are an advanced, full GAPS food, not for early stages or even the beginning of full GAPS
• use meat stock, not broth– beans aren’t a healing food, but meat stock is
• select your cheese from the GAPS list– cheddar, jack, colby, etc.– aged cheeses
• top with GAPS 24-hour cultured cream if you use sour cream

Ways to Make White Bean Chicken Chili Even Faster!

While this is a quick and easy chili recipe, there are shortcuts that make it even faster and even easier. If you stock some staples, you will find them quite helpful on a busy day!

• little jars of green chilies can sub for fresh jalapeño– not quite the same, but still good!
• keep frozen veggies in your freezer– I often cut them fresh, but frozen bags of onion, bell pepper, and celery have saved many a day– I like the frozen Cajun mirepoix from Kroger– 2 bags for chili
• keep the beans on hand– you can pull them straight from the freezer and dump them in the soup pot if you need to
• keeping frozen, cooked chicken isn’t a bad idea– you can pull it out for all sorts of quick meals

White Bean Chicken Chili is even better the next day!

• serve leftovers
• freeze enough for another meal
• freeze in individual portions