So I make dinner most nights, and I have a finicky 15 year old who I try to get to eat somewhat healthy. If left to his own devices, he’d make noodles every day without a hint of a vegetable. He can’t stand cruciferous stuff like broccoli, won’t eat it at gunpoint. But, he does like spicy foods, and doesn’t mind bell peppers. So I find myself making stuff with spicy salsas or spaghetti sauce with bell peppers and jalapenoes in it to add some vitamins.
To mix things up, I’ll sometimes make a chili-style spaghetti sauce that’s very like Skyline style, with various spices and coca powder. For those who aren’t familiar with Skyline chili, it originated in Cincinnati and there are Skyline Chili restaurants throughout Ohio. I make it a point to stop at a Skyline if I’m driving though Ohio. It’s a chili-style sauce on spaghetti noodles, with various toppings added like shredded cheddar and chopped onions.
I found a copycat recipe for Skyline chili online that was actually pretty complicated-- it involved cooking the ground beef, then running it through a food processor to get a very fine ground, adding beef stock and various spices (including the cocoa powder, which seems odd, but like Mexican mole sauce, goes really well with spice). Then simmering the sauce for several hours.
The Skyline copycat recipe was very good, but I often will make a simpler version without any extra beef grinding, beef stock or hours of simmering. Last night I made a chili mac bake with a sauce of ground beef, crushed tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, cumin, cocoa powder, oregano, thyme, cayenne and various other stuff; then mixed it with penne pasta, put it in a pan, added various cheeses on top (shredded cheddar, parmesan and provolone). Baked it for 1/2 hour and turned on the broiler for the last 5 or so minutes at the end to get the cheese on top nice and bubbly and brown. Good comfort food.
I enjoy the Skyline chili/mac/cheese/whatever although it is not real chili. I always got it at Steak N Shake but all the ones around here have closed. There is an actual Skyline restaurant, though. And I buy the frozen version from a local store.
How is it not real chili? I’m not asking in a Joe Pesci “how am I funny?” way, I’m just curious since the definition of ‘chili’ is so nebulous. Certainly if you asked say, a Texan if Skyline chili was real chili you would get a hard no.
I try to avoid food holy wars around what constitutes the “true” version of a food, but certainly Cincinnati chili is a very different dish from any of the various other foods called “chili”.
No idea what kind of chili this qualifies as but my super easy throw together recipe:
Brown 1# lean ground beef with 1/2 cup chopped onions.
Drain.
Add-
1 16oz can tomato sauce
2 16oz cans diced tomatoes
1 16oz can dark red kidney beans
1 16oz can light red kidney beans
3 tbsp Penzey’s Chili 3000 seasoning
Simmer a couple hours. Serve over macaroni noodles. Top with shredded cheddar.
Actually tastes better after it sits in the fridge for a few days and is reheated. I could eat this stuff all winter.
To me, it’s way too soupy to be what I think of as chili. It’s really more like a spaghetti sauce, at least as how I’ve had it at Skyline – it’s not something I’d eat on its own, but it’s great on a shitty hot dog to make it palatable and good with spaghetti & all the fixins. Point in favor of calling it chili is that even they know not to put beans in it.
Cincinnati-style “chili” ain’t chili, but it’s damn good, whatever it is. I’d never try to make it at home. Besides, I don’t own any oval plates.
My personal Comfort Food Chili Mac is a little different:
1 box Kraft M&C, prepared
browned hamburger/sliced hot dogs
1 jar Homade chili sauce
1 buttload hot sauce
additional shredded cheese as needed
chopped onions
Make it all up in the largest sauce pan you have. Makes about three meals.
One thing about Cincinnati chili is that it’s really fatty* because you don’t brown the beef, you boil then simmer it with all the other ingredients so none of the fat is removed. That, and it’s served with a huge mound of cheese on top.
You can call anything by any name you care to so in that way Skyline is certainly chili, but it’s more of a Mediterranean-style meat sauce than it is chili.
I used to be totally obsessed with eating Skyline Chili. I’m better now but I still really like it. I’m in California now so never get the chance (canned and frozen isn’t nearly as good).
*some copy-cat recipes suggest you fridge it overnight then skim off the fat with a spoon. I think Skyline, Gold Star, and the rest might do this but I don’t know.
I love Skyline, and I try to get it whenever I’m in the southern half of Ohio. I will sometimes buy the canned stuff, which is carried at my local supermarket – it’s kind of pricey, but it does make for a tasty meal with spaghetti and cheddar cheese, even if it’s not traditional chili.
I’ve never been to Cincinnati, but I’ve ordered canned Skyline and Gold Star and Dixie (my favorite) on Amazon and I’ve been working on replicating it at home.
I’ve found that cooking it in an Instant Pot is the best way to replicate the texture, which makes sense since I’ve read the restaurants cook the stuff in a pressure cooker.
Yeah, I guess it is its own thing, too chili-like to be called spaghetti sauce, too sauce-like to be called chili.
I could have sworn I remembered coming back from a Florida family road trip and stopping at a Skyline Chili near Toledo to get a fix before crossing the border into Michigan, but this map shows the northernmost Skyline along I-75 is in Lima, OH. Well, that was 8 years ago, maybe there used to be a Skyline in Toledo that closed. Or my memory could be faulty. Yeah, probably the second one.
I took a look for the Skyline copycat recipe I found online and made a few years ago, but though I found several recipes that sounded good, I didn’t find the specific one that said to let the ground beef cool after cooking it and running it through a food processor to get it more finely ground. The instant pot idea is interesting, but I seem to remember it’s important to cook for several hours to reduce the liquid, which is one thing the instant pot can’t do. But instant pot recipes probably start off with less water to begin with.
Cincinnati native here. Empress Chili was the first to serve this about 100 years ago. And you are correct in calling it Mediterranean as it was developed by Greek immigrants (as I recall from reading the story during many drunken nights consuming 3 Ways an coneys.) For those unfamiliar a 3 Way is spaghetti, chili and cheese; a 4 Way adds either onions or kidney beans in a layer between the chili and cheese; a 5 Way is both onions and kidney beans. I always liked Skyline the best. Nowadays I don’t eat it because it is way to much fat.
I also think it’s its own thing and not really “chili”.
(I have to admit, the first time I was in a Skyline Chili restaurant and I heard an old guy tell the waitress “I’d like a 3-way”, the inner adolescent in me quietly snickered.)
The last time I made it was years ago after returning from Cincinnati and having the flavor of Skyline chili fresh on my mind. The not-browning-the-meat part was crucial for the correct texture. The main spices that defined it for me are some combination of cinnamon, cloves, and/or allspice. To be honest, for me it was the clovey-allspice flavor more than the cinnamon that made an impression on me. A lot of recipes online include cocoa powder or chocolate in it. I’m fairly sure that I have read an in-depth account somewhere of a writer researching Cincinnati chili and while he did find a printed newspaper recipe from one of the local publications including one of those ingredients in them (and it’s been popularly cited since), the actual owners of Skyline and Empress both deny chocolate in any form in their chilis. I’ll have to look this up – I’m pretty sure Google Books has it.
It was in this book, but the full pages are not available. Note that you can see glimpses of the overall thesis that there is no chocolate in your most usual Cincinnati chilis as served by the local chili parlors:
Thanks pulykamell, as always you’re a very informative, in-depth source of food knowledge. Interesting that chocolate may NOT be added; I always thought that it was a key ingredient.
This cut-off quote in the first search snippet of your link is frustrating: " The presence of chocolate in Cincinnati chili is a…“. A what?? A blasphemy? A myth? A ridiculous notion? A great idea? I even tried searching the whole phrase “” The presence of chocolate in Cincinnati chili is a” but it still gets cut off at the ‘a’.
No, lifelong Detroit-area resident here, and Coney-style chili is nothing like Skyline-style chili sauce.
