mmmm…chilli…
So my parents are moving, and I got the remnants of what was left in their food cabinets - basically, a lot of various canned beans (NOT of the baked variety). I was wondering if anybody had any good chilli recipes. I looked online, but I wanted something that people had tried before. I’m not a vegetarian, so recipes with meat are fine, hot and spicy is also ok. mmm…guatemalan insanity peppers
thanks!
I’ll kick things off with my Harp and Red Bean Chili.
I created a Guinness-and-Black-Bean Chili recipe based on a co-worker’s “Red Rocket” Chili, which won best tasting Chili at my office’s Chili Cook-Off back in 2000. The smoky taste and late kick earned my variant the “spiciest chili” award two years running. I tailored it to my fiancée’s tastes and substituted Harp and red beans to make it less smoky and sweet. The recipe is as close as I’m going to get it to perfect, and can be tweaked (as any good chili recipe) to be milder, sweeter, or if you dare, hotter.
You will need:
* 8 pints Harp lager (if you can get these at a pub, more power to you, but read ahead--you'll want to buy four and then go back the next day for four more)
* 1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes
* 1 lb. ground beef
* 1 lb. red kidney beans
* 1 large Vidalia onion
* 1 clove garlic
* (at least) 5 hot peppers: choose from any mixture of pasilla, jalapeno, serrano, and habanero you like. One is for garnish.
* (at least) 1 type of hot sauce, e.g. Tabasco or Endorphin Rush
* 1/4 cup olive oil
* 1/4 cup brown sugar
* honey
* powdered cayenne
* powdered cumin
* black pepper
The night before you intend to cook the chili:
Rinse the beans and pour into a large pot. Add four pints of Harp, and cover the pot. Set it aside. In a small container with a lid, combine olive oil with: your two hottest peppers, puréed; 1/8 onion, puréed; 1 clove garlic, finely chopped. Add a dash of cayenne, black pepper, and cumin, and some of your hot sauce if you want. Honey and brown sugar will also help this mixture but aren’t required. Close the container and shake well. Refrigerate this mixture.
When you’re ready to cook the chili:
At least 6 hours after you poured Harp on your beans, drain (but do not rinse) the beans. Add three pints of Harp and bring the beans to a boil. Simmer with the lid tilted (to allow steam to escape) for 1.5 hours. With about 15 minutes to go before the beans are done, pour the oil mixture in a deep cast iron skillet and apply very low heat. Begin finely chopping all of your remaining vegetables except one hot pepper. When the oil starts sizzling, add the ground beef and bring the mixture to medium heat, stirring in vegetables as the beef gets darker.
When the beef is completely browned and the vegetables are starting to brown or go limp, gradually stir in crushed tomatoes and beans, mixing over medium heat. Add cumin until your chili smells like chili. Add brown sugar and honey to taste (sweeter if you plan to serve it sooner, since it will initially have a bitter taste). Heat until the mixture begins to dry out, and add a pint of Harp. Stir over low to heat, adding spices to taste. Make sure that the mixture simmers long enough to thicken back into chili (let the majority of the Harp evaporate).
Transfer to a crock pot and let simmer on low heat until ready to serve. Garnish with a hot pepper (I like serranos and jalapenos because the bright green color looks good against the red - a habanero will warn the faint of heart away from this chili).
This chili typically hits in two waves: the cayenne and black pepper break through the sweetness and the lager taste first, the hot peppers and hot sauce follow close behind. For best effect, don’t overdo the former, so that the flavor is sweet (or bitter), then tangy, then hot. The escalation effect can make this chili seem stronger than it is.
If you use all pasilla peppers, go easy on the cayenne, and use Tabasco as your sauce in the pre-mix, you will have a mildly potent chili that anyone will be able to eat. If you use jalapenos or serranos in the pre-mixed vegetable purée, or use Endorphin Rush or any other insanely hot sauce in the pre-mix, you will get a Jack-In-The-Box chili that tastes wonderful and then, to quote my college roommate, “boots you in the ass”.
I’m not a chili expert, and I’m sure there’ll be purists along that’ll say my chili’s icky, but I like it a lot, my spouse likes it a lot, and it’s quick and easy. And apologies - everything’s an approximation for this recipe. Here we go:
1 - 2 lbs ground beef
1 to 2 onions, chopped (I like onion, so I use closer to 2)
minced garlic, maybe 2 cloves? Use what you like
salt and pepper
chili powder
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can light red kidney beans (I like the variety, but you can use only one sort if that’s what you have)
2 cans stewed tomatoes
1 sm. can tomato paste
salsa - as much as you like.
1 can corn, drained (I use Niblets)
hot sauce
In a good large pot, start browning the ground beef and onions. Season this mixture with the garlic, salt and pepper, and chili powder (I use a lot of chili powder here). As it’s browning, mix it all together. When the beef’s mostly done, dump in everything else (I don’t drain my beans, but you can if you want). Let it simmer for a while - longer is better, but you can dig in when everything is heated through.
The best part about it is you can adjust it to your liking - add peppers to increase the hotness, or use more hot sauce, hotter salsa, and chili powder.
It’s better the next day.
And, of course, serve with cheese!
Snicks
Jurph, that sounds damned tasty! I can find Harp pretty easily, but have you ever tried it with other kinds of beer? How do they taste? I may have to make this chilli over the weekend 
My chilli tip: Use cumin seeds, lightly crushed (the back of a spoon will do it enough), and give them a couple of minutes frying time as the onions are finishing (more and they’ll burn). Gives a much better flavour than the ground stuff.
My chilli tip, is add a few sliced prunes to the chilli, they add richness and their sweetness alows you to add more chillis. Cumin is a nice addition (it is the ‘secret’ in Hard Rock Cafe chilli con carne) as GorillaMan says. I also like to save one fresh chilli chopped and add it raw to the cooked chilli con carne just before serving.
GMan is right about the cumin (and just about any other spice too). As soon as they’re ground the scent and flavour start to escape, so you’re best cracking them when you need them.
Back to the OP. I don’t usually make chili with ground beef, but my beans and sausage comes out nearly the same. You can follow any chili recipe, but use sliced sausage for the meat; chorizo is good, but anything that’s spicy or smoky (or both!) will come out well. Slice the sausage fairly thick, remove the casing if necessary, and cook on low heat until browned, draining excess fat as needed, then toss it in.
Well, it’s always been my understanding that it’s spelled chili, but a search of web dictionaries has chili, chilli, chile, etc., all meaning the actual pepper, so I give up my nitpicking on this.
Recipe? You want a recipe? Okay, fine. Here’s my award-winning recipe for black bean chili, with one ‘L’, goddammit. This version has a nice, smoky flavor, a thick mole-like liquor, and is actually fairly low in fat. Use beef chunks if you like, but chicken is better. Black beans rule, by the way. Not nasty and dry like kidneys, and a cut above pintos.
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, partially frozen, well-trimmed, then cut into half-inch pieces
Ancho chili powder
Ground cumin
Ground chipotle
Mexican oregano (NOT Greek or Italian)
Sweet Spanish paprika
olive oil
1 Large yellow onion, chopped
1-2 Green bell peppers, chopped
garlic
6 Cans black beans, undrained
2 Cans diced tomatoes (the normal soup-size can), drained, retain liquid and dice the tomatoes into smaller pieces
Dark chocolate
Coat the chicken pieces with the spices. The amount and proportion of the spices is based on your own tastes. I would suggest a minimum of 3-4 TBSP of ancho, 2-3 TBSP of cumin, 1-2 TBSB chipotle (careful with this), and a like amount of paprika. Several TBSP of the oregano.
Heat several tablespoons of oil in a large pan until very hot. Dump the chicken and spices, including any left on the chopping board, into the hot oil and fry and stir until the chicken is well-browned to the point of almost black. Don’t worry, this is the spice that is blackening and releasing its oil. Remove the chicken to a soup pot.
Reduce heat, add the vegetables and a little more oil, saute until tender, remove to the pot.
Deglaze the pan with the tomato juice and tomatoes. Add to the pot. Add the beans. Add a hunk of chocolate. Mix well, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low simmer, cover and cook for about an hour or so, stirring occasionally to prevent the tomato from sticking or burning.
This freezes exceptionally well, by the way. For more heat, you can add more chipotle or you can add jalepenos or cayenne.
Simple Roasted Pepper Chili
Two small packages williams chili seasonings (williams is local, so I use them)
Four pounds ground beef (I like 85% lean)
One large-ish onion (red tastes best)
Three cans tomatoes (diced, with chilis, with garlic, whatever)
Three cans beans (I use black, red and kidney)
Three large bell peppers (I use red green and orange for color)
two small jalepenos
one anaheim or poblano(?) pepper
Roast peppers under broiler until black on all sides. Rub with a little oil before. Watch for fires (trust me). Put peppers into plastic baggies for a few minutes and allow to steam. Pull off the skins and chop in to pieces.
Brown beef and onion in a little oil with salt and lots of pepper.
Add tomatoes and beans (I don’t rinse or drain anything) and peppers.
Stir like crazy. Keep on VERY low heat for at least four hours. Season with chili powder if needed.
Simple, tasty and thick. MMM.
Use chunks of frying or stewing steak, not minced (ground) beef.
Much nicer.
I do a basic garlic/onions/salt/chilli powder/cumin seeds/meat/peppers/ canned tomatoes, puree/beans recipe.
A teaspoon of brown sugar, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, black pepper, red wine and Balsamic vinegar are my “secret” ingredients.
I tend to be a “splash of this, dash of that” kind of cook, so I can’t tell you how much of each, just that I make the chilli wet, and leave it bubbling until it’s as dry as I want it.
Reducing down the liquids make the flavours much more intense.
Chilli is hard to get really badly wrong, as long as you remember that when it comes to spices and seasoning it’s easier to add than to take away.
[QUOTE=irishgirl]
I tend to be a “splash of this, dash of that” kind of cook, so I can’t tell you how much of each, just that I make the chilli wet, and leave it bubbling until it’s as dry as I want it.
QUOTE]
I’m the same kind of cook, people hate it when I try to tell them how I make stuff because all I can tell them is “well, i put a small handfull of this, a little bit of that, sprinkled some of those on top, cooked it for some amount of time, at a temperature I can’t really recall…”
I have some turkey sausages in my freezer that are taking up space right now, I might try those in my chilli…some of these recipes sound great! I’ll let y’all know how mine comes out (probably won’t make it till next week, though).
These are all pretty good and here’s a few suggestions of my own. I don’t believe in recipies for chili. It should be a spontaneous growth of things that seem like they’ll taste good.
I like Real tomatoes as opposed to canned, just tastes fresher.
Consider cans of Chipotle in abodo sauce, and dump sauce in too. The sauce is already a good blend of flavors.
a shot or two of Bourbon adds a depth of flavor.
Moke sure the meat is seasoned and flavored well as you brown it. Other than that you’re basically boiling it which leaches flavor, and you want the flavor to be part of the meat.
Don’t put in all your spice at the beginning, hold at least a third back(except for the meat). The flavors merge and change as it simmers, and it’s easier to put some more in halfway through, that to get some out.
I will second irishgirl and and say start with thinly sliced beef, rather than ground. I feel it should be a mix of textures, rather than some milled stuff you might put on a hot dog.
Anyway. Thinly/uniformly sliced bits of chuck or sirlon. Cook in olive oil and garlic. Everything else you put in your chili will appreciate it.
Well, as mentioned above, I’ve used Guinness, which comes out smokier and a little more bitter – I have to use honey and brown sugar to counteract that aspect of the taste. I haven’t tried any others, but stick with beers that you would enjoy with a good spicy meal (perhaps Corona, milder pasilla peppers, and a few limes for a summer chili?) and you should be fine.
Just to add to Jurph’s reply…
I cook chili quite a bit for friends that come over during the Fall and Winter months, I won’t go into the recipe because it changes every time I cook it. 
What I will say though, is that 5 habanero’s is a TON of HOT for even a HUGE sized pot of chili(depending on how long you simmer it of course). I usually put two habaneros into a very good sized portion(3-4 quarts) of chili. One pepper is minced, the other just thrown in like a basil leaf for flavor.
BTW, make sure to fish out the full habanero before serving. A great friend of mine had the unfortunate experience of mistaking one for a chunk of beef on his fork. He was quite sweaty for about 30 minutes.
PS…It may be just me, but chili always seems better after it’s been cooked and simmered thoroughly, refrigerated until cold…and reheated.
I agree with most of this. Fresh tomatoes are fine if they are overripe. Canned tomatoes are generally tomatoes that are over the hill and are much sweeter than the picked-green-shipped-green-sold-tasteless variety.
If you are going to add spice later, I would saute it in a little olive oil before adding.
These canned chipotle peppers are my secret weapon in chili! I love them in anything, though. Surprisingly, they are very hard to find down here, and none of our major supermarket chains (in MIAMI, FLORIDA!) carry them. When I see them, I stock up like crazy because I’m a chipotle nut.
That a good point. They arn’t as sweet. I usually make my chilis tarter than most, and the Abodo sauce and Bourbon I mentioned earlier add all the sweetness I need.
aAnd as I’m thinking about it, if you happen to like tart chilis and are adventurous might I suggest Chili Verdi. Basically you use tomatillos instead of tomatoes. Tomatillios are green tomato=ish like things that taste good but are much more tart. They have less juice so you need to liquify a few in a flood processor since they don’t give up juice as readily, but it makes a great green chili.
flood processor? Let me try that last paragraph again since I don’t remember to hit preview much anymore and can’t type or spell worth a crap.
“And as I’m thinking about it, if you happen to like tart chili and are adventurous might I suggest Chili Verde. Basically you use tomatillos instead of tomatoes. Tomatillios are green tomato-ish like things that taste good but are much more tart. They have less juice so you need to liquify a few in a food processor since they don’t give up juice as readily, but it makes a great green chili”.
Oh and the Chili Verde I mentioned is damn good with pork (which is in many ways the real traditional chili anyway) but it works with beef too.