Help me make some award-winning chili!

Cafe Society
1

I want to make a killer batch of chili for the AFC / NFC games tomorrow.

I’ve found a couple YT links showing how to make what they claim is award-winning chili, but I’m skeptical. For one thing, both videos claimed that a certain fairly obscure brand of pre-mixed chili powder had to be used. I’m not against using spice mixes in general, but one, I don’t feel like special-ordering some spice mix I can’t find at the local store, and two, it makes me suspect there’s a branding deal going on. Plus neither recipe seemed particularly award-winning to me.

So please, share your award-winning recipes, tips, tricks, recommended ingredients, etc.

When I usually make chili, other than the spice level, which is fairly high, I usually make a “Midwest” style chili that I grew up with— ground beef, tomatoes, beans. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’d like to shake it up a little. I bought a couple pounds of chuck roast I want to use instead of ground. From there, who knows— a Texas-style “bowl of red” with no beans or tomatoes, the red only coming from the spices used? I do kind of like beans in chili and I have pinto beans on hand, but I don’t have to use beans. Tomatoes seems like a more key ingredient to me, but I’m flexible on that too.

What I’m working with: fresh jalapeños, Serranos, and green bell peppers. Yellow onions and garlic. A small can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. A wide variety of dried herbs and spices, including smoked paprika, cayenne, chipotle powder, whole cumin seed, and much much more. The aforementioned chuck steak, but I have ground beef as well. Many sauces including hot pepper, Worcestershire, soy, Thai fish sauce, oyster sauce (not afraid to mix it up to boost umami).

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Do you have the option to smoke the fresh peppers?

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Try to find some dried mild peppers: ancho, pasilla, etc. These can easily be reconstituted by simmering them in liquid like chicken stock, but remove the seeds first. Once they’re soft, put them in a blender or food processor and puree them. Adds a ton of flavor. Also a can of beer. Chuck is a good choice for the meat, and your spices sound good. I’d probably use ground cumin instead of whole.

4

Find some whole dried chilies at a Mexican grocery. Anchos, gaujillos, pasillas. Reconstitute using hot broth and blend into a chili paste, rather than using chili powders. The above varieties are quite mild, so you can use a lot of them and get a really rich chili flavour, then adjust heat as desired.

Fresh chilies are to dried as grapes are to raisins. Not that you can’t put fresh chilies into the chili, but it’s the dried ones that are key.

5

It wouldn’t hurt to sneak a little bacon into the mix.

mmm

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I used both chuck (2 lbs) (I cube into about 3/4” cubes), ground beef 1.5 lbs), and bacon (1 lb). All of your ingredients will be great, but the dried chilis recommendations above are a really key component to great chili. Make sure you puree the ever-loving hell out of them, and possibly use a mesh strainer - I’ve not had great luck getting all the grit from the chili husks to liquify.

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I like to add some cider vinegar and white sugar to add a tangy flavor.

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My current favorite restaurant take-out chili uses only a very small amount of beans. I hardly realized they were in there. It’s mostly chuck roast, some tomato (probably canned) , tomato sauce, and mild peppers. It’s actually too mild for me though, so I add ground chipotle pepper.

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Well… my dentist’s recipe is probably a good template/place to start. He’s a two-time Terlingua World Champion. He’s got some great links as well- to spice companies as well as other chili-related stuff.

I’d say that one of the biggest contributors to chili being right are getting the right sort of meat and right sort of grind. You don’t want just plain old ground beef- you want chili grind, which is coarser.

Other than that, I’d think that the most important thing would be the blend of chiles and other spices you use, and the proportions.

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I do. But I also have a can of chipotle chilis in abode sauce, chipotle powder, and smoked paprika, so I have multiple ways to impart a smoky flavor.

The dried chilis might be hard to obtain by tomorrow. I don’t think there are any Mexican groceries nearby. I can do a can of beer though.

ETA: I do have dried Kashmiri chilis, which are mild. Maybe those would be good ground and added to the chilli?

Well, I’d toast the whole cumin seed, then grind it before adding.

Good call!

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Be warned, I’m actually in chili verde faction, with shredded pork and green chile (Actual Hatch grown varietals by preference, sent by my folks in Cruces) - so my advice may be suspect!

Two things I like when I’m making or eating beef based chili options, is to use small pieces of pounded/mechanically tenderized chuck rather than any form of ground meat. Each bite is distinctly meaty, dripping with rendered collagen and fat, but the chili as a whole isn’t greasy in the way that some ground meat chilis manage to be. I have also done a mix of pork and beef treated in the same manner, and I personally like that more than beef alone.

Second, I’ll absolutely support the trend for carefully prepped dried chiles to be added, although I normally hold roughly 1/3 of them back to re-add at the last hour or so of cooking so the flavors are both integrated (the ones from the beginning) but noticeable (the ones near the end).

And yeah, while I like less soupy chili (depending on the serving method) I absolutely endorse the use of beer or homemade beef/chicken stock as a cooking fluid or hydrating fluid. I mention homemade, because I want that rendered collagen, and most stores sell “stock” that is nearly indistinguishable from broth.

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Thirded. I pulverize them dry with a mortar and pestle or food processor, and then let them rehydrate in the chili itself. I discard any seeds that fall out on their own, but don’t worry about getting some in the chili.

And as said, because they are mild, you can use a lot without making the heat distracting.

I start by sweating the onions in bacon fat.

If you can make stock from smoked chicken, all the better.

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Oh yeah, meant to say that the various dried peppers are available in my regular grocery store on the Mexican aisle.

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Really good advice on the chiles, the beer, the meat (no beans!). One thing I add to mine is a small amount of Mexican instant espresso crystals, they seem to add an earthiness to it that I don’t find in other chilis. If concerned about it, take a small bit of your chili when close to being done, add a dash of the espresso crystals, and see what you think. It can be added to the chili in the last half-hour of cooking.

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Gerbhardts? That’s not obscure. That’s pretty standard. But you don’t need it.

I only entered one chili contest and, out of a dozen competitors, I won it. I went against my instinct of doing a Midwest chili which everyone here is most familiar with and did more of a bowl of Texas red. How the fuck it won is beyond me. My prize was a couple cans of Wolf chili. :slight_smile: I’ve refrained from entering chili contests since then and just end on a high note.

What did I do? So I did a coarse ground of beef chuck mixed with hand cut boneless short ribs. I did grill the boneless ribs over coals, but I don’t think that made as much of a difference as I hoped it would. I did not want a smoked flavor, else that would have been my go-to. (And, honestly, to separate yourself from the pack, a smoked item will make you stick out.)

For the chili powder, my base was ground anchos and good Hungarian paprika. For the middle part of the chili flavor, some ground pasilla, and then for the heat, arbol/cayenne/dried Thai. Something like that. Add a little chipotle if you want some smoke, either dried or in a can with adobo. But think in terms of layers of chile flavors.

For liquid, I think I just used broth. Back then, I think I may have used New Belgium’s Abbey Ale, as something not hoppy, with a bit of sweetness, no added bitterness. The old Newcastle was good for that, but not today’s formulation. But I’m no typically a beer-in-chili guy.

Spices? Cumin, garlic (fresh and powder). Use a stock cube or straight-up MSG to amp it up. This makes a huge difference I believe for a contest where each person may only have a spoon or two of the chili. I also like to add a light “accent” spice, which in my case is a little bit of allspice. Nothing else. Oh, sorry, a bit of oregano, as well. You can go Mexican or Mediterranean here. Different flavors but both work.

I’m not even sure if I used tomato in my winning chili. I think it was just onions for the base. Maybe I put some tomato paste, but I don’t think so. And use less liquid than you think you need, as all the meat and onion will pull out a lot of liquid from themselves.

Just some general ideas. I make chili in all sorts of styles with sun and sundry ingredients, but that’s my recollection of the winning one.

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Use as many different types of peppers you can find. Use only chunks of meat, best would be beef chuck and pork blade.

Do not add beans. It’s no longer chili if you do that. If you think some weirdos who only chili and beans then cook some beans on the side to add to their bowls.

Take the time to brown all the meat first, this may have to be done in several portions. Brown onions well, first. Towards the end of browning onions you can add in any of your peppers, ground, chopped, fresh doesn’t matter, it will bring out more flavor than just simmering.

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I love green chili stew and make it often. For reasons unknown, I can buy honest-to-og roasted/chopped Hatch chilis in a jar at a local grocery here in MSP. Makes things so much simpler than having to roast, peel and seed the fresh ones.

I know the OP’s aversion to chili mixes, but I do like Penzey’s Chili 9000, which is a really nice blend of spices you wouldn’t ordinarily think about for chili.

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The best advice I ever got was that chili is a beef stew flavored with chiles. Think about that a sec - how would you make a good beef stew and that is the tack to take making chili so for me.

Won my office’s Chili con Carnival
Beef: Chuck roast with most (but not all) of the fat trimmed off and all the silverskin removed. Brown first.
Homemade chili powder. Don’t have your face near the oven when you open the door while heating the dried chili unless you like being maced. A true chili powder includes cumin seeds lightly roasted then ground and dried oregano all ground together.
White onion
Garlic
A variety of chiles but make sure there are one or two with some heat.
Homemade beef broth (could be boxed if excellent)
Tomatoes
Bourbon
Salt
And that’s it

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Amen! That is all it is.

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I cheat – I use Carroll Shelby’s Chili Fixin’s.

I almost never use hamburger – usually stew beef, though sometimes I cut up a pork roast. The instructions for Shelby’s call for a cup of water; sometimes I use red wine instead. I always add a heaping tablespoon of cocoa powder, and if I remember to buy extra peppers before chili day I’ll add them, too. And I may cut up an onion to add to it. I use tins of diced tomatoes of various kinds (fire-roasted, with garlic, &c), sometimes including Ro-Tel.

My daughter doesn’t like beans, so she gets a couple of bowls before I add them – usually pintos or black beans (I really like Ranch Style pintos with jalapenos), but occasionally something different. Yes, I know some people consider this to be sacrilege, but it makes the chili last longer.