good chili recipes

[Janx]

I will have to try some of these recipes and let you know how they go.

Last thought: I am not a big chili bean fan. Can I omit the beans and use the recipe as is or do I need to add more water?

that's a really good question. On my wife's recipe, as ubran said, don't add water...

If you took out the beans in that recipe, you risk making spaghetti sauce. The meat, tomato, garlic, onion are pretty much the same (might be different amounts), and then she uses different seasonings (oregano, parsley, other stuff)

She does say, the cumin is one of the big "this is chili" seasonings.

If you wanted a "meat" chili, rather than a "bean" chili, you might wantto google up some more recipes. Get a sense of what the standard stuff is. I'm concerned that the "tomato" foundation might be the wrong way to go for such a thing, whereas with beans, it works great.

From what I can tell, my wife's recipe is pretty generic, as in ingredients found in various recipes.

let's see what pb comes up with for cincinatti style. I recall the last food thread, where it sounded pretty wierd, from my experience (of having not ever seen or heard of such a thing). But it didn't sound like it contained anything I wouldn't eat.

My wife poo-poo'd the "meat" chili, but she's a health nut. I've always wanted to make a batch. I've also wanted to try a chopped steak version. I've had it at a friend's chili-contest, and it was good. It's different with a high quality meat, even if it's the same animal.

 

[Umbran]

If you wanted a "meat" chili, rather than a "bean" chili, you might wantto google up some more recipes.

A couple of suggestions:

1) Alton Brown's Pressure cooker chili

2) Alton Brown's Cheater's Cheap Chili

Both beanless. Yes, I like Alton Brown - whatever one might say about his presentation, his recipes all work.

 

[Janx]

A couple of suggestions:

1) Alton Brown's Pressure cooker chili

2) Alton Brown's Cheater's Cheap Chili

Both beanless. Yes, I like Alton Brown - whatever one might say about his presentation, his recipes all work.

hmm, I checked out the cheap chili.

I had assumed there wouldn't be a tomato product in there. The salsa is pretty much a variant of the "cans of tomato stuff" in my wife's recipe. Though the salsa probably has some sweetener, much as umbran hinted at.

that's actually cool to know, because if you compare the 2 recipes, you can see the parallels in parts.

salsa = bell peppers + tomato sauce/paste/diced tomatos/onions

the big difference is the chips, instead of beans. That wierds me out a bit, but as umbran pointed out, they're going to disintegrate. I imagine there's some other starch you could put in there to do the same thing.

After that, the beer is the next different ingredient. That's not a big deal in my mind, as each chili recipe has some "variant" ingredient in it, that gives it a distinctive flavor. Beer, chocolate, BBQ sauce, something else..

Which is why I described my wife's chili as generic. It's good, but pretty much every chili has a the same pattern, just with substitued components of similar nature or the "twist" items.

 

[Pbartender]

let's see what pb comes up with for cincinatti style. I recall the last food thread, where it sounded pretty wierd, from my experience (of having not ever seen or heard of such a thing). But it didn't sound like it contained anything I wouldn't eat.

Alright... Bear with me, many of my recipes are a bit off the cuff, and more than half from memory. This is (more or less) the best recipe I've used yet. Note that amounts of ingredients are slightly negotiable, depending on your taste, though none should be left out:

2 lbs. ground beef
2 15 oz. cans tomato sauce
half of a finely chopped onion (save the other half)
1 ½ tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp chili powder
2 tsp cayenne
5 bay leaves
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice (or ½ tsp each of nutmeg, ground cloves and ground black pepper)
2 tbsp cocoa powder (the unsweetened stuff you use for baking, NOT instant cocoa mix)

So, the first part is probably the weirdest...

Put the tomato sauce into a sauce pan, and add in the raw ground beef while the tomato sauce is still cold. Mix together, until smooth. Then, turn on the heat.

(This is important for Cincinnati aficionados, as it is the best way to get the proper consistency for the sauce, which should have a very smoothly fine texture with regards to the bits of meat. The other way to do it, if adding raw meat to the sauce bothers you, is to brown the meat and chopped onion in a skillet, drain it, and then quickly run it through a blender on low to break up the bits of meat into very small crumbs.)

Finally, add in the chopped onion and the remainder of the ingredients, and mix well (it's the cinnamon, allspice and cocoa that give it the distinctive flavor). Heat until boiling, and then simmer for a half hour or more. The sauce should be just a little bit on the thin side.

Serve over spaghetti noodles, with chopped onion, kidney beans, oyster crackers, finely shredded cheddar cheese, and hot sauce on the side. Garlic bread is a traditional side.

 

[Scotley]

Alternate Cincinnati or Skyline Chili

First off, no one is the southwest is gonna consider this stuff chili. Second, it is damn good. This is the version America's Test Kitchen came up with, so it may not be as authentic to the Greek influenced Skyline restaurant original as Pbartender's version. Often ATK recipes seem unnecessarily fussy and complex to me, but this one really works.

Cincinnati Chili


2 teaspoons table salt or more to taste
1 1/2 pounds ground beef chuck
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped fine
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups water
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
2 cups plain canned tomato sauce
hot pepper sauce


Accompaniments:

1 pound spaghetti, cooked, drained, and tossed with 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
12 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1 can red kidney beans, drained, rinsed, and warmed
1 medium white onion, chopped fine
oyster crackers

1. FOR THE CHILI: Bring 2 quarts of water and 1 teaspoon salt to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the ground beef, stirring vigorously to separate the meat into individual strands. As soon as the foam from the meat rises to the top (this takes about 30 seconds and before the water returns to a boil, drain the meat into a strainer and set it aside.

2. Rinse and dry the empty saucepan. Set the pan over medium heat and add the oil. When the oil is warm, add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft and browned around the edges, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the chili powder, oregano, cocoa, cinnamon, cayenne, allspice, black pepper, and the remaining 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until the spices are fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the broth, water, vinegar, sugar, and tomato sauce, scraping the pan bottom to remove any browned bits.

3. Add the blanched ground beef and increase the heat to high. As soon as the liquid boils, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the chili is deep red and has thickened slightly, about 1 hour. Adjust the seasonings, adding salt and hot pepper sauce to taste. (The chili can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat before serving.)

4. TO SERVE: Divide the buttered spaghetti among individual bowls. Spoon the chili over the spaghetti and top with the cheese, beans, and onion. Serve immediately.

 

[Scotley]

Chili my way.

The Skyline chili is my wife's fav. and we make it often. My own more traditional recipe is closer to what Umbran suggests. I like to start with fresh chili peppers, mild or hot as you prefer. Taking all the seeds and veins out of the hotter peppers will help cool them some--wear gloves. Diced and sweated in a little oil along with a large chopped onion and some minced garlic. Then toss them in a big pot or crockpot over low heat and use your skillet to brown a pound and a half of ground round and a pound of ground Mexican style chorizo sausage. The sausage gives a wonderful flavor and texture to the chili. It really makes a big difference over just beef. Mexican chorizo is not like dry Spanish chorizo, it is more like Italian sausage in texture, but not in flavor. Drain the grease and toss the meat in the pot. Then I add two cans of diced Mexican style tomatoes, two cans of chili beans, hot or mild as you prefer, a beer, usually amber or red for my tastes, some smokey sweet bbq sauce, a tablespoon of yellow mustard, a little cumin, a generous portion of chili powder (I heartily agree with Umbran's Penzey's recommendation) and toward the end of the cooking you can adjust the texture with a masa/corn meal slurry or just put a few corn chips in a blender. Another trick to thicken things up is to mash some of the beans before adding them. If you don't care for beans in your chili then you'll almost certainly need to thicken it with something else. I add a little salt and pepper toward the end to taste. If you are using the chorizo along with canned stuff and some corn chips you won't need much salt. Serve with oyster crackers, shredded cheese (I like colby jack) and plenty of beer if you use hot peppers and beans. Enjoy!

Needless to say this is a pretty inexact recipe and no two pots I cook are identical, but I'm pleased with the results.

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread. I've never considered garbanzo's in chili before, but I can see it working well. I'm going to have to consider that.

 

[Umbran]

After that, the beer is the next different ingredient.

Well, there's two points to the beer. One, it tastes like beer. To some, that's a bonus.

Another, is the alcohol. There are flavor compounds that are not very water-soluble, but are alcohol-soluble. You don't generally taste these compounds if you haven't put a bit of alcohol in the food.

 

[Pbartender]

Another, is the alcohol. There are flavor compounds that are not very water-soluble, but are alcohol-soluble.

Especially capsaicin, the chemical which makes hot peppers (and chili) hot.

Unfortunately, research has shown that the tangible effect is extremely small for anything much less than nearly pure alcohol. When you mix a bottle of 5% alcohol beer into an entire pot of chili and then heat it until much of the alcohol evaporates, you really don't have enough in there to affect any flavors.

Alcohol is kind of the "halfway point" of solubility between highly polar water and non-polar oils. If you have both of those in your chili pot, anything ethanol can dissolve already will be in one of those two.

 

[ExploderWizard]

One thing I add to my chili thats makes it a bit non-traditional is some chopped potatoes. They add good starchy body to the mix and help balance out some heat by providing nice chunks of "bread " to bite into.

 

[CleverNickName]

I have a recipe for green chili that everyone in my house really likes. It's just your basic, no-nonsense green chili: no tomatoes, no cans, no beans, no wierdness.

TRAV'S GREEN CHILI

Ingredients:

2 lbs. boneless pork chops, cut into 1/2" cubes
2 Tbsp. masa flour
2 Tbsp. corn oil
1 Tbsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. cumin powder
1 tsp. Mexican oregano
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 large onion, diced
1/2 C. cooking sherry
1 lb. roasted green chilis, thawed
Broth (about 4 cups, more or less)

Put the onion and garlic into a large bowl. Add the flour, sugar, salt, and spices, and toss to coat. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy stock pot. Add the pork, and cook over medium-high heat until golden brown. Deglaze the pan with the cooking sherry. Stir in the onion-flour mixture and the green chilis, and add enough broth to cover everything. Turn the heat up to "high," and bring to a boil.

The chili will thicken quickly, so add more broth (a half-cup at a time) until it is as thick as you like it. Taste the chili, and adjust the salt/spice levels. Turn down the heat to low, cover the pot, and let it simmer, stirring occasionally, until everything is tender...about an hour.

Serve over rice, with a giant pile of fresh corn tortillias.

NOTES:

Chilis: Use fresh ones if you can find them. You can use canned ones, but your chili will taste like it came out of a can.

I get a one-pound block of frozen green chilis from the supermarket. The best ones, IMO, come from Hatch, New Mexico. Be warned: if the package says "HOT," it means business. Best to start with "MILD," because as Umbran said, you can always add heat later.

Broth: use whatever kind of broth you have handy...chicken, vegetable, and beef are all good. Mix and match, if you like. One time, I used the liquid from a batch of pinto beans that I had cooked the night before. It was freaking *amazing.*