On the oven at the moment I have simmering my first ever attempt at chili.
Following my general rule of “Recipes? Where we’re going, we don’t need recipes!” I kind of made it up from scratch.
The inspiration was some tomatoes from my garden along with a ton of hot peppers of different varieties. My recipe was basically as follows:
[ul]
[li]Tomatoes from the garden (a bunch of 'em) and two cans of peeled tomatoes stewed in a pan with a bit of sugar.[/li][li]Brown 1lb of ground beef and 1lb of sausage[/li][li]Combine tomatoes and meet in pot with about 2 pounds of kidney beans, and a can of baked beans, hot peppers (three jalapeno, one habenero, one hungarian wax, and two thai hots), and some bbq sauce. Simmer until whenever. :)[/li][/ul]
So, as I said, this is a first time amateur/adlib recipe. It tastes pretty good at the moment (and the heat is wonderful, too). I know chili can be a passionate topic, so I want to hear your best chili recipes and tips!
I just made a pot. I make 3 or 4 batches a year. I could live on chili. Chili is ambrosia.
I never follow any recipe either. I wing it every time. Today’s went something like this:
3 cans of diced tomatoes.
A pound and a half of browned and drained ground beef.
A diced red pepper.
A diced green pepper.
3/4 of a red onion, diced.
Lots of sliced mushrooms.
2 peeled and chopped carrots.
A can of red kidney beans.
A can of white kidney beans.
A can of navy beans.
A can of romano beans.
A few tablespoons of Chili powder
A tablespoon of Black pepper
A tablespoon of Salt.
A few tablespoons of Brown sugar.
A few tablespoons of Blair’s salsa.
A few tablespoons of Dave’s Insanity salsa.
A few drops of Dave’s Insanity sauce.
Other miscellaneous spices.
I don’t cook anything before-hand except the beef. The rest gets added to a pot and simmered for a few hours. Beans go in last. I like them a little on the firm side.
Now I have 7 meals prepackaged for later. I love chili!
Whatever meat you have on hand, diced medium to small.
Chilis, lots of them, a variety. I use Anaheim, habañero, and jalapeño usually, but whatever is around will work.
Beer.
Crushed tortilla chips in place of masa.
Crushed, stewed tomatoes, although this is skirting the borders of apostasy.
A metric buttload of garlic and cumin, some Mexican oregano, onions if you want, salt and pepper to taste.
ETA: The best version of this I ever made used moose as a base.
The real fanatics are the ones that complain about tomatoes being in the chili. I make mine all sorts of ways, from no tomato, to tomato no-beans, to everything but the kitchen sink. It all depends on the mood. Generally, though, I prefer using hand-cleaved chunks of meat to ground meat, or a mix of ground and cubed meat. I also like to mix pork & beef together in the same chili.
My sainted mother-in-law had more people than she expected one night for supper, so she added water to the pot. That woman could not cook. Nice lady though.
I’m not much better. Our chili is basic Iowa unadventurous chili – hamburger meat, chunks of sirloin, chili beans (Mrs. Grimes), home-canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, cumin, and chili powder. It’s good, especially after simmering for a couple hours, but I’ve never had “real” chili.
Good chili is whatever pleases you. Purists can go suck an egg. The following is my favorite, and pretty much my own invention. I’m doing it from memory, so hopefully won’t miss anything. This stuff is fantastic and very addictive. It’s also won many contests. Most of the spice amounts are mental estimates, as I don’t measure. I eyeball it as I’m dusting the meat.
Chicken & Black Bean Chili
3 boneless/skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces
3-4 TBSP Ancho chile powder
2-3 TBSP Ground cumin
2-3 tsp Chipotle powder
1-2 tsp Smoked Spanish paprika
3-4 TBSP Mexican oregano (actually, I just grab a small handful, crush it and add)
Small pinch of cinnamon
salt
olive oil
Large onion, diced
Green bell pepper, diced
2-3 jalapeno peppers, minced
3-5 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
1 can diced tomatoes, drained, reserve liquid
3 cans black beans
1 bottle good beer (optional)
4 oz dark chocolate (min. 60% cacao), broken into small pieces (optional)
Dust/toss the chicken with the spices. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over med-high heat. Dump in the chicken and sear very well. Add the vegetables and cook, stirring, for several minutes. If you are doing this in a deep skillet, continue with the next step, other wise move all this to a pot. Add the tomato liquid to deglaze the pan, then add the tomatoes and beans and the beer. I like to further mince the tomatoes before adding them, but that’s personal preference. Once it gets to bubbling, add the chocolate. Cover and simmer for at least a half hour before serving. An hour is better.
I used to make chili for my science fiction club’s annual pot-luck dinner. I had gotten the original recipe from a cook book and did very little personal tweaking, but it was so popular that when I announced that I was moving away there was much moaning and gnashing of teeth, and I had to leave the copy of the recipe with the head of the club. There’s a copy of it on my laptop, but as I remember (I haven’t made it since I moved here, but I think it’s about time I did) it went something like this:
8 medium onions and 4 cloves of garlic, chopped and sauteed in olive oil until golden. Add oregano (I think about two tablespoons) and four pounds of ground beef, as high quality as you can get to reduce the fat content of the chili (I often skim off the excess fat after the meat is browned). Then add about a quarter cup of chili powder, about 60 ounces of canned diced tomatoes (I like to use plum tomatoes) and 120 ounces of canned kidney beans (I use a mixture of light and dark beans just because I like the way they look in the chili). Simmer for about an hour and a half, then add another 60 ounces of kidney beans, four tablespoons of cider vinegar, salt and dried hot peppers to taste; simmer another fifteen minutes before serving.
This makes enough for a good-sized party. I serve it with crackers and shredded cheddar cheese, although cornbread goes nicely with it too.
Garlic and red onion, fried in olive oil with salt, pepper, tabasco, cayenne, chillies and paprika.
Add beef mince, a tin of kidney beans, a diced red pepper, a tin of tomatoes and a tablespoon of tomatoe puree.
Add worcester sauce, balsamic vinegar, more tabasco and red wine to taste.
Serve with rice and cheese.
Sometimes I take my basic chili recipe, and after browning and draining the beef, put everything into a crockpot, and add more water than usual. It makes chili soup, good for a side dish.
A correction to my recipe above. A full bottle of beer is going to make this amount of chili too soupy. Either add less, or leave the cover off the pot and cook longer to reduce the liquid.
Please just do not do what the chef did at the bar where I ate last night, which is to follow the part of his chili recipe that said:
*add diced carrots (?)
*half-cup diced celery (??)
*season to taste with some unidentifiable grit that has the consistency of sand. I’m still trying to figure out what that even could have been.
Since you will probably get loads of recipes for a classic bowl of red, I will submit a great alternative guaranteed to get you lynched by purists (but it is very yummy):
**White Chili
Ingredients **
2 – 15 ounce cans white northern beans
1 tbsp. canola oil
1-1/2 cup white onion (diced)
1 clove garlic (minced)
1 lb. russet potatoes (peeled and cubed)
2 cups chicken stock
1-1/2 cup white wine
2-1/2 cups water
1 lb. cooked boneless chicken breasts (cubed)
2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 cup milk
4 ounces white cheddar cheese (grated)
2 tsp. (per serving) non-fat sour cream 2 tsp. (per serving)
white cheddar cheese (grated) 1 tbsp. (per serving)
fresh cilantro leaves
1 small can diced green chilis Directions
Rinse the beans well with cool water. Place the oil in a large stock pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook slowly. Stir frequently and don’t let the onions brown. Add the potatoes, chicken stock, white wine, and water. Cook over medium-low heat, and then let it simmer for 30 minutes until the potatoes are soft. Add the cubed chicken, beans, and cumin. Stir well and cook for five minutes. Add the milk and grated cheese, stir and heat thoroughly. Do not allow the chili to boil. Serve with two teaspoons each of non-fat sour cream, grated reduced-fat white cheddar cheese, and cilantro as garnish.
I added more cumin than this recipe calls for, and I would use additional chicken stock instead of the water. Add chopped mild green chilis to taste, and add the chopped cilantro to taste at the end.
If you like a thicker chili, make a roux in a small sauce pan out of 2 tbsp. butter (melted) then add 2 tbsp. flour, and cook for 2 minutes to remove the raw flour taste. Stir into the chili to thicken.
Easy and delicious:
Mince onion and sweat it.
Brown 1 and a half pounds ground beef
Add one large can tomato sauce
One can drained pinto beans.
Add Chili powder, red pepper flakes, and ancho hot sauce to taste.
Easy, quick and if I didn’t get the reflux I would make it once a week.
Great with cheese crackers, or on a hot dog with vidalia onion and shredded cheese.
