Help me make a better chili

Janx

Hero
I'm not much of a cook. I make chili about once a week, but it's pretty basic. Here's what I do:

A load of beef chunks
Two tins of chopped tomatoes
Two peppers, chopped
One onion, chopped
A load of mushrooms
Red kidney beans
Crushed chilis

Served on rice, grated cheese sprinkled on top, dollop of sour cream.

It works out pretty well. But I'd like to improve it. Occasionally I swap the tomatoes for a premade sauce in a jar, but I prefer not to. What are your chili tips?

Your tongue will tell you how you like the heat, so I got no comment on that.

We usually use cans of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Diced tomatos by themselves add a lot of water (even if you drain them. So the tomato paste (which is short of water) balances that out. The tomato sauce sets a good medium level of red sauce thickness.

One thing your recipe is sorely lacking compared to everybody else is seasonings. Cumin is a prime ingredient to chili. And most folks also use chili powder. I suspect that seasonings will up your chili-making game several notches.

Luckily, there's not too many ways to do chili wrong (though it took me a while to get my wife to stop putting macaroni noodles in it, that's chili-mac, not chili).

Some serious hombres in Texas will claim chili has no beans, but I think that's a local myth.

We tend to use:
ground beef
tomato sauce
tomato paste
dice tomatos
bell peppers
1-2 jalopenos
crushed red pepper flakes
chili powder
cumin
diced onions
garlic

IMO, there's not much difference in that recipe from our spaghetti sauce recipe but for the cumin, chili powder and various forms of hot peppers peppers. Other than plugging in oregano, and other seasonings instead.
 

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delericho

Legend
My go-to chilli recipe comes from the first Hairy Dieters book. Despite being a 'diet' recipe it doesn't actually seem to lose anything for that. Fortunately, they made the recipe freely available online.

(I usually switch the kidney beans for cannellini beans. That's my wife's influence.)
 

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