174 of 178 people found the following review helpful

Tasty Recipes That Need Adjusting, April 25, 2004

I’ve made three of the chili recipes from this book and, while all were tasty, two had too large a measure of hot pepper ingedients and the third came out too “raw” without much longer cooking. A four-ounce canned of diced hot chiles tastes mild out of the can, but turns combustible after 8 hours in a slow cooker (“Spicy Black Bean Chili”). In the “Chipotle-Kissed Red Bean and Sweet Potato Chili,” the canned chipotles in adobo sauce were way too intense unless you used a fraction of what the reciped called for. I’m not talking just chili-lovin’ hot here, I’m talking noxiously hot.

The “Sweet and Spicy Lentil Chili” recipe specified unsoaked lentils, but the lentils wouldn’t soften adequately until the dish was cooked 16 hours or more (the recipe called for eight hours). Also, the Vegetarian Society not only recommends that dried beans and lentils be soaked, but that they be pre-boiled for 10 minutes before adding to the slow cooker, which was not mentioned in the recipes I used.

Based on my experience with this book, I wonder if the recipes, many of them close variations of each other, were all adequately tested. I still liked the dishes, however, after adjusting for the problems I mentioned.

Keep in mind that taste is subjective and what I think is too hot or too hard may not agree with your assessment. But I’ve never had this happen three out of three times with any other cookbook that I can remember.

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