Damn, Ike, ya tantalizing bastard, chili is one of the meat eating things I miss most as a veg. Yer’s sounds wonderful.
I make a good veg chili, but have to admit that it doesn’t have the bloodthirsty yodel of a meat chili. Oh well.
A nice addition to the spice repertoire is about as much good cocoa powder as your eyeballing allows. It gives a nice rich flavor, counterpointing the cumin.
Give a happy chili howl at the Brooklyn moon for me…
Okay, dinner’s over. The chili was REALLY GOOD. In a Brooklyn sort of way. Pianola and the Ukulele Lady said it was too spicy, but Banjo and I dug it.
Sqrl: According to my chili texts (yes, I have chili texts; I am a Kitchen Nerd) real Texas chili contains nothing but meat, grease, and chile. Onions, if you’re wimpy.
[sub] Germany…?
Where is the cornbread?
Ike, I agree with Nymysys: NO BEANS! (Sqrlcub’s varient sounds much more like mine, but I like a little tomato flavor in my chili, maybe a quarter of a can of tomato paste.)
But one other change that could improve your recipe:
Toast the spices, especially the cumin.
Just get a non-stick skillet, dump the cumin (and the rest of the spices if you want) in, crank the heat and stir constantly. The second it smells “nutty” or “toasted” (you’ll know what I mean when you smell it), give it a really good stir, let it cook for another few seconds at most, and dump the spices into the liquid. You’ll get stronger, more robust flavors and the cumin will transform into something magical.
And lose the beans (bleh!) 
Fenris
I hate pouring spices into a mass of liquid…Paul Prudhomme has impressed upon me the benefit of adding them at the browning stage. Does that count as toasting, or would you consider that frying?
I’ve made chili without beans, and I find it irritatingly RICH. I may be a carnivore, but the idea of sitting down to a bowl of heavily spiced MEAT (without the buffering effect of the legumes) is slightly distasteful.
Cornbread seems to work at cross purposes with chili…southeastern rather than southwestern. I like cornbread with a big pot of Soup Beans…generally pintos simmered with a hambone, onions, and red pepper.
Jay-ZUS! You and your BEANS! Ike, baby. Sweetheart. Sugarmuffin. Really, lose the beans. It’s just not right. You have a damn good chili going for you, and you’re ruining it all. No matter how much you beg, I’m never, ever, ever…EVER. In our LIVES. Ever. Ever coming over to your place for chili with beans. Ever. If you need me, I’ll be over at Casa de Fenris.
[sub]Yeah, Germany. I pankicked, okay? Sue me.[/sub]
I LIKE beans.
Anybody wanna come over and see my bean-pot?
Frying, I think. There’s too much moisture (I’m counting oil/fat/etc as moisture) when frying to get the toasting effect which needs an absolutely dry pan.
Maybe toast 'em, then add 'em to the browning meat. The idea is to dump the toasted spices into something moist, which the frying meat would be. There’s such an intense difference in toasted vs non-toasted cumin that it’s worth dirtying another pan.
Beans…bleach.
Fenris
Hi All! (finnally a non trek question)
Here in Seattle,we like thick chili,and that usually means
lots of beans and corn,and masa flour to rhicken it up.But,
we are devided–half us like crackers/half totillas
(personally–I like crakers)
Rich in Seattle
Ike, are you talking about chili or Viagra here?
As for beans, they’re strictly a spurious Tex-Mex sorta confabulation. You managed to mildly absolve yourself by using cranberry beans instead of pintos or (shiver) kidney beans. If you’ve gotta have beans, cranberries are the best I’ve found. However, you did omit one slight clarification, white onions are de riguer for the mui authentico flavor. Aside from that, I’ll refer you to my own killer Chili de Guaillo recipe from the old monster thread. This is a tomato-less chili in the ancient Mexican tradition and represents the wellspring of most modern chili recipes. I have substituted beef for pork in it out of personal preference.
Chili de Guaillo
Authentic Old Style Mexican Chili
Please note the absence of beans or mixed spice chili powder. Also, Jalapeños are for sissies. If you want some real backbone in your chili, try Serranos, they have it all, fire, flavor and a full blown afterburn for all those lovely endorphins. I like your idea of the ground meat as a thickener, but masa harina is really hard to beat. Some fresh white corn tortillas are always a nice changeup from the usual flour ones. I am also no longer able to desecrate my authentic chili with Cheddar cheese, it’s always Monterey Jack for me.
ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
You did it. You broke me. I just went and bounced a check so that I could make chili.
It better be DAMN good, considering it may lead to my eviction.
I’ll let you know.
Let me put it this way (assuming you are going to try my recipe), I brought a batch of that chili to a job and shared it with some Hispanic cow-orkers and they almost cried with homesickness after tasting it. Comments were made about, “…like Mom used to make…” and the like. Please do let me know how it turns out.
Zenster: Yeah, like I’m going to dig through 500 pages of sliced bologna to locate your chili recipe.
Fenris: Beans – Blecch???
Fine.
You are hereby NOT invited over for N’Awlins Red Beans and Rice; Hopping John baked with Green Onions; Maine Yellow-Eyes Baked for Eight Hours with Salt Pork and Rum (this is where the Yankee bean-pot comes in); Butter Beans with Cornbread; Moros y Cristianos; Cowboy Pintos Stewed with Chiles; Arroz con Gandules; Feijoada Incompleta; Barbados Pigeon Peas and Rice…
– Ukulele (BRAPPPPP… Somebody open a WINDA!) Ike
Oh, and also…
I’ve toasted cumin in a dry pan as an addition to curries; it DOES add a certain zip and zing. Okay, next time I’ll do it before it goes into the chili pot. Should I bother to toast the other spices? Do they have a similar reaction?
So today I went to the market, and set in most of the ingredients. I even got some whole Chipotles, as a nod to Pantellerite, whom I’ve momentarily forgiven for calling me a Yankee. Tortillas and Jarritos on the side. I could have probably picked up some Lone Star, but with both kids in tow I didn’t linger in the beer section.
Then this evening there was an Autumn fest at a nearby park. This included a Chili cookoff by the local fire department. After keeping up with this thread for the past two days my mouth was watering and I needed a fix. Loaded the kids back into the car and headed out. Fifty cents for three small sample cups, a real bargain. They were already out of beer and the wretched Cincinnati chili (okay, not that bad, if you don’t think of it as chili, but not what I was I had a hankerin’ for) and most everything else. But they still had about 9 of the 15 sampling chilis left.
Let’s just say I was glad to donate something to the fire department. Most Cincinnati area firemen are long term locals, and they have had their sense of chili deeply perverted. I have been left with the chili equivalent of blue balls. All revved up and no where to go. So I will likely drag out the pots and pans tomorrow and whip up a batch.
Well, since I’m pretty allergic to beans (regardless of the fact that they have no place in chili), I’d have to pass anyway.
And as for toasting the other spices, the transformation isn’t as amazing as raw cumin->toasted cumin, but it adds…something. Especially to garlic powder and paprika (I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to toast paprika for some reason. Piffle! I say. Piffle!)
Fenris, who thanks to Ike made low-fat (I’m still on that diet, dammit) Turkey Chili (but with chicken, since I’m out of turkey.)
::waves hand in front of face::
Cor, who opened their lunch?!?
Hey! I provided a direct link, you lazy bastich! At least you’re not arguing about the white onion.
Besides, anyone who knows about hopping John or Christians and Moros can’t be all bad. When you gonna post some of those recipes Uke?
Chili, chili, me want chili!
I throw a good handful of diced pepperoni into mine (in addition to the ground chuck and chunked hunk-o-beef), and add another good handful of rice. Crockpot overnight, and all the rice dissolves into liquid starch. Good and thick that way. Garlic cloves chopped in half only, and lots of them. Long range of peppers, from green chiles through jalapenos through tobascos (if I can find them) through serranos through habaneros. Throw in a few dried varieties at random, as well. It’s the Dreaded Heat Spectrum![sup]TM[/sup]
There. I’ve done it. I’ve revealed myself to be a pathetic cooking heathen. You may all stand aghast.
I think your recipe sounds just fine, Ike. Of course I have to tweak a thing or two`.
And as to all of you Texans, I have the Terlingua winner’s recipe book and they add all kinds of crazy crap, much worse than beans. MSG? Chicken boullion cubes? Feh. I’ll put my chili up against any Texan’s pot o’ tomato-less mud.
I almost forgot to add;
Zenster, Monterey jack? Use queso fresco! You’re authentic in all other details, why not that one?