Chili is one of those food that spoils fairly quickly for some reason. I was wondering if I cooked up a big 5 gallon pail of chili while camping would reheating to a full boil twice a day be enough to keep it from spoiling. The quantity would be steadily dropping over a 3 day period so it wouldn’t stay hot as long.
How about freezing it in serving-size portions, then pack it in a cooler with some dry ice? Depending on your cooler and the ambient temperature, you might be able to get away with only the frozen chili, no supplemental ice. This is our standard camping method - the frozen stew keeps the rest of the food cold.
We are going to cook the chili while camping, cook from scratch that is.
How many days? You can’t keep it on ice during that time? Or, make smaller batches.
You’re going to cook, from scratch, a five-gallon pot of chili? Why not cook up smaller portions as needed?
(And how many people will there be that you need five gallons of chili?)
Bacteria goes insane as temperature drops. If you can’t get it below 40F, you could find yourself in trouble. Do you have enough fuel to just keep the pot simmering for those days? You’d need to stir it fairly often, but that’s better than poisoning everyone.
Honeybadger don’t care! 
Chili con carne spoils quickly because of the lipids (fats), which are broken down in the process of stewing it. The bad flavor of fatty foods left out at room temperature comes from rancidification (hydrolysis of the saturated fats), and while it is not toxic per se it renders the taste objectionable and may cause intestinal distress in some. Simply reheating the food will not prevent this any more than you can unspoil bad cheese. How long chili will taste okay depends on the content of the fats; the more saturated triglycerides (essentially, animal fats and unclarified butter) is in the stew, the quicker it will spoil. Incidentally, the original purpose of putting spices in the chili was to mask the taste of spoiled meat fats so you could just spice it up.
The growth of pathogenic bacteria is a separate issue. The biggest concerns in terms of contamination are from handling the food, and in particular fecal bacteria from people and animal waste, and environmental bacteria such as Clostridium botulinum, the spore-forming bacteria which produce the botulinum toxin. Bacteria are rendered inert by raising the bulk temperature of the food to greater than 120 ℉ for a sustained period but this doesn’t eliminate toxins exuded by the bacteria during growth periods, and without very thorough cooking some bacteria may survive and rapidly recolonize from the residue of the dead. (Bacteria have no ethics when it comes to ghoulish cannibalism.) Provided you have good camp kitchen hygiene (don’t let utensils or covers rest on the ground or unsanitary surfaces, don’t cross contaminate between raw and cooked meats, don’t have dust blowing into the kitchen and keep the pot covered when not cooking, make sure all cooks have good cleaning and handling practices, prevent individual diners from handling the food themselves) the amount of bacterial contamination should be modest and the amount of growth you could expect to see over a three day period is not enough to cause problems for anyone with a healthy immune system, but given both the high content of sugars and fats the chili is a pretty good growth medium for bacteria, so any lapse in cleanliness could introduce the opportunity for bacterial colonization.
Practically speaking, without refrigeration there is no way to prevent rancidification, the rate of which will depend upon the constituents (as noted above and the ambient temperature), and no way to slow bacterial growth. Something you could do is to either bring a cooler or dig a pit and take a piece of water ice or dry ice to refrigerate the stew and just reheat the necessary portions. Reheating the entire mass repeatedly and letting it return to room temperature, or letting it stew for days on end will only accelerate rancidification.
Stranger
These sorts of posts are the reason I read these forums most days of the week.
That was both comprehensive, and very well written.
This place is still an amazing place to be.
Thanks Stranger
Good info, I did find something that went right along with what you are saying. Our camp practices would suck. The guys would be drinking and handling the utensils after pissing and crapping and god know what else. One of the social aspects is cooking the chili the first or second night out. I think we just distribute it from that point in smaller containers and into the cooler. I was kind of hoping we could leave it out all evening and munch on it.
I’m still wondering about your mention of a “five-gallon pail” of chili. Exaggeration or a really big crowd?
I have a 16 quart (4 gallon) stainless steel stock pot that I regularly use to cook chili/chicken and rice soup/ham and potato N veggies soup for a family of 5. Which means everyone has 1-2 large soup cups of whatever. And some get 3rds… a few hours later (gamers stay up late). And then maybe lunch or dinner the next day.
When we cook 4 gallons of chili while camping my husband and his BFF also pull out the canning supplies and pressure can whatever didn’t get ate for dinner. (That camping takes place during Salsa canning time so all ingredients but the beans and meat are fresh from the garden. I like lots of beans in chili… no matter what anyone else thinks of beans in chili.)
While you’ve got some great answers here, I see this as a cooking thread. So I’m going to scoot it over to Café Society.
I say keep it nestled next to Argentina and Bolivia.
Just to be clear, separation and cold storage of food will not prevent the distribution of bacteria and viruses from poor cooking hygeine; at most, they’ll limit the growth of pathogenic bacteria, but will not prevent the transmission of norovirus, typhoid, cholera, et cetera. Even a thorough cooking of the food itself may not prevent transmission as containated utinsils and dishware may provide a vector for transmission. I’ll admit to being somewhat oversensitive to this, having both worked in the food service industry and being conversant with natural and augmented transmission of infectious diseases, but keeping a reasonably hygenic camp is not that difficult, and encouraging cooks and other people handling utinsils and dishware is largely a matter of hand washing and basic fomate control (e.g. not wiping ones nose with a bare hand, sneezing into the elbow, et cetera). I realize that most people don’t think this is impotant but last year’s epidemic of infections rising from sanitation lapses at Chipotle restaurants should be an indication that hygeine is crucial in preventing an infection vector in any communual or commercial food preparation.
Stranger
While it’s true Honey Badgers are notably lacking in fucks given, a pot-in-pot cooling system might be worth looking into.
Given what you’re looking for, probably your best option is to just keep the chili simmering for the whole weekend. Because the kinds of campers you’re describing are probably going to want to keep a fire going continuously, anyway.
I have one of those big white porcelain pots, I think they are about 4 gallons, my SO and I go through that in about 3 days. I give a few bowls away to the neighbors.
She just reminded me that I usually freeze about 1 gallon in Tupperware.
The Spanish Olla Podrida and Mongolian Firepot were big kettles kept simmering on a fire, the recipe was whatever you had went into the pot. Takes a heavy pot though so it doesn’t burn. So far as great feasts prepared in one pot while camping out with no thought given to sanitation read 7 Pillars of Wisdom. I just spent a week in the back country at Big Bend N.P., sometimes I think I should just throw the Rolaids into the pot with the chili and cook it all together stead of waiting for that midnite wakeup from the rising of the camp chili…
I’m pretty sure that that recipe is found in every culture on the planet.