A few months ago, I made chili and said that leftover chili can be frozen and reheated later for a fast dinner. It's true! I'm gonna prove it.

There are essentially two steps to get this job done, thaw and reheat, each step with options:

The method outlined below is how we opted to do our chili. Time was of the essence, so thawing in the refrigerator was immediately ruled out:

The thing about reheating the chili is that the spicy-heat is diminished especially if it's been in the freezer for oh, say, 6 months. If you want as much, or more, spice-level as the chili had when it first prepared, I'd recommend an addition of chili powder or peppers, whether powder, dry or fresh during the reheating part.

When reheating our chili, it was a lot thicker than when prepared initially. I'm not sure if that's because Rodney and I eat all the "juice" the first time around, or it somehow dissipated during freezing/thawing/reheating. If you like juicier chili, maybe an addition 1/3 cup of water/tomato juice/V8 will do the trick. Personally, I like it thicker. It sticks to tortilla chips better that way.