303 replies to this topic

[MarketStEl]

Okay, true confessions:

Beans: My local supermarket (a Super Fresh, one of the A&P-family [Tengelmann] chains) has a store brand of canned chili beans ("America's Choice") that is quite good. I've been known to use these undrained, as they come in a fairly well spiced liquid. I think they are kidney beans, but they look smaller than kidneys to my eye; maybe they are pinto beans? Will investigate further.

Cooking method: Chili is one of those foods that are made for a Crock-Pot, and I give mine a steady diet of it. Since slow cooking is a form of braising, using cubed beef should work out just fine. I'm about to do the big grocery run after I finish this, so I now have something to look for on 9th Street. Say--if I use raw beans, would it be necessary to soak them first for chili? Mightn't they cook from their raw state in the sauce?

Cumin: It just doesn't seem right without it.

Thickness: I generally prefer a nearly-pasty consistency, IOW, very little liquid left. This requires a method other than a Crock-Pot, however. I've made a conscious trade-off in favor of the set-it-and-forget-it effortlessness of slow-cooker chili. Besides, it fills the apartment with that wonderful smell for much longer. I guess I could use less liquid in my recipe.

I promise I will have product to share with all of you sometime in the coming week.

[TongoRad]

I went through my freezer yesterday and discovered that the chuck that I thought was in there turned out to be a brisket instead. Not that I blame her mind you, but my wife immediately informed me that if I made chili out of her brisket she would kill me dead. So it looks like the chile verde that I alluded to way back in the beginning of the thread is off the table for now. I did find some ground beef in there, though, so a ground beef and beans chili it will be, and I'm kinda jazzed about it to tell the truth. I will make sure to take note of my measurements and post a recipe when I'm done.

Good luck and happy cooking, all! I look forward to seeing more entries soon.

[mizducky]

Ellen, those look great! Juniper berries in that Zuni stew -- that's a surprise! Which do you think you'll make? The second one almost seems more like a pozole than a chili. Whatever that means...!

Yeah, I'm not totally certain even the Zunis think of that stew as "chili" as such--notice that the recipe's title carefully calls it "green chile stew." But it's got enough things in common with other New Mexico green chilis that I figured it was at least a near relative.

What I'm probably going to do is a hybrid of these and other NM green chili recipes I've found from random Googling. From these recipes here, I'm taking the inspiration to use lamb as the main meat. From others I've seen on the net, I'll be taking the idea of using potatoes instead of beans.

Say--if I use raw beans, would it be necessary to soak them first for chili?  Mightn't they cook from their raw state in the sauce?

I am far from anybody's idea of a chili expert, but if I were using dried beans I'd cook them separately first, then add them to the chili to cook some more (bearing in mind the earlier discussion that the acidity of tomatoes would keep them from breaking down into mush). However, if you're doing this in a crockpot with a lot of liquid, that probably would be enough time and moisture for uncooked dried beans to cook ... so I dunno.

[fifi]

Cooking method: Chili is one of those foods that are made for a Crock-Pot, and I give mine a steady diet of it.  Since slow cooking is a form of braising, using cubed beef should work out just fine.  I'm about to do the big grocery run after I finish this, so I now have something to look for on 9th Street.  Say--if I use raw beans, would it be necessary to soak them first for chili?  Mightn't they cook from their raw state in the sauce?

Beans should be pre-cooked. If you have tomato product in the chili, or anything else acidic for that matter, your beans won't cook up right. Then you get into the situation where you don't know how much liquid you would need to cook the beans. My true confession is that, if I am using beans like in Whacked-Out Chili, I use a good brand of canned. Goya seems to do a good job of cooking beans without them getting mushy.

[little ms foodie]

we've got a spicy pork chili from Gourmet magazine on the menu for Tuesday.....we are making it on Sunday though to give it time to get really good!

[Jake]

Made chili last night using 1/2 inch cubes of sirloin. First time I'd done it this way, really prefer the texture. No recipe just used the usual onions, garlic, tomatos dried pasillo and guajillo chilles, some unknown chile powder a friend picked up in Mexico for me and a bit of chipotle powder for some smokiness. Also added Mexican oregano and some finely chopped cilantro. I was cooking some black beans separately for something else, so I threw a few of those in at the end too. Served with crema, chopped onion and cilantro. I will definitely use cubed meat in future, I really prefer the taste. I personally prefer my chile without beans, but throw them in for my other half. This one was really good, smoky and quite spicy. Had another bowl for lunch today...

[Chris Amirault]

Jake, how thick was it? I definitely lean on the spackle end of the spectrum, though I can appreciate the benefit of drippy juices soaking down.

People, we need more photos!!

[gourmande]

Doing some more poking around the net, I found two very intriguing chili recipes using lamb...

Phew!!! Someone else mentioned lamb first. I was afraid to post this earlier, but one of my favourite chili recipes (I use the term loosely) includes lamb, chick peas, toasted ground coriander and fresh mint.

Back in the day, we'd have après-ski chili nights, and one weekend, a friend brought her lamb chili that wowed us all! I've been attempting to replicate it ever since...

I plan on making a ground beef version tomorrow and for the first time, I may even take notes as to actual ingredients and quantities...

[Chris Amirault]

Phew!!! Someone else mentioned lamb first.  I was afraid to post this earlier, but one of my favourite chili recipes (I use the term loosely) includes lamb, chick peas, toasted ground coriander and fresh mint. 

OK, I'm going to pick up the gauntlet here. How is this chili? It sounds like a wonderful braised lamb stew. Are there actual chilis in it?

I mean these questions in the friendliest of ways, of course!

[gourmande]

Phew!!! Someone else mentioned lamb first.  I was afraid to post this earlier, but one of my favourite chili recipes (I use the term loosely) includes lamb, chick peas, toasted ground coriander and fresh mint.

OK, I'm going to pick up the gauntlet here. How is this chili? It sounds like a wonderful braised lamb stew. Are there actual chilis in it?

I mean these questions in the friendliest of ways, of course!

Well, to begin with it involves ground lamb rather than cubed (which is what I associate more with stew), the "chilis" or peppers I have used in various incarnations include the sweet red and yellow varieties along with fresh hot Thai peppers, and/or smoked paprika or dried chipotle... as I said it's a work in progress so to speak (the original recipe was never divulged), but it absolutely is an interesting twist on "chili"... and YES, quite good.

[mizducky]

Okay, my attempt at New Mexico-style green chili with lamb is currently simmering away. Was too hurried to do the full pictorial thang, but I promise I'll post some kind of photo at the end. Here's what went into it:

1/4 lb bacon
2 lbs "lamb bones" -- yielded what looked like approx. 1 lb. meat in 1/2" cubes
2 7 oz. cans NM style green fire-roasted chiles
1 lb. fresh Anaheim chiles, roasted, peeled, and chopped
2 small onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Approx. 1/2 tsp NM red chile powder
3 dried chiles de arbol
Approx. 1/2 tsp ground cumin
Approx. 1/2 tsp ground Mexican oregano
1 bay leaf
3 cups cooked garbanzo beans
1 scant cup water

First I cooked the bacon, then removed and reserved it. I browned the lamb, including the bones, in the bacon fat, removed and reserved that too. Browned the chopped onion and garlic in the bacon fat, then added back the lamb, bones, and whatever bacon I hadn't already noshed on , plus all the other ingredients except the garbanzos, and let it simmer for about 1/2 hour. Then the garbanzos went in (thanks, gourmande, for the impetus for that--I had pressure-cooked a big batch of garbanzos earlier in the week and there was still a goodly amount hanging around in the fridge).

So far, it's looking pretty promising, and definitely green! I'll let it keep simmering until the lamb is really tender, then remove the bones, put any remaining meat off them, and stir the meat back into the chili.

Only other observations so far: my pepper-peeling technique still needs a little work. The Anaheims went directly from the oven into a tightly-sealed container to steam as most people suggest, but while the skins of most of them came off fairly easily there was at least one I had to give up on and mutter, "Okay, a few shreds of skin in a non-competition chili aren't going to harm anything."

Oh yeah--the Anaheims roasting in the oven smelled distinctly different from when I roast bell peppers, but I don't know if that might actually be due to the fact that, unlike bell peppers, I roasted these Anaheims dry, without oil (I figured it would be a pain in the butt trying to peel slippery peppers).

Edited by mizducky, 28 October 2005 - 08:55 PM.

[mizducky]

Okay, I could have let the chili simmer for even longer, but it's getting late and I'm getting hungry!!!

As I expected, even though I only put in a scant cup of water to start things out, the chiles released a large amount of liquid, so between that and using cubed rather than ground meat, I produced a soupy chili. Which is fine, because that soup is downright flavorful. The amount of heat is not huge, but just right for me and my sensitive tummy. The lamb, while tender enough, is not doing the disintegrating-into-meat-fibers thang; like I said, I should have let it simmer perhaps another hour. The garbanzos really held up well--there's no tomato products in this recipe, as you'll recall, but the canned green chiles contained some citric acid, so that plus the natural sturdiness of garbanzos probably helped with that. The green chiles, both fresh and canned, semi-disintegrated, but I think they're supposed to do that. The flavors of the lamb and the combo of different chiles are playing together very nicely in my mouth.

A note on my rationale for the variety of chile products I used: as my transplanted New Mexican friend tells me with great sighs of longing, you just can't find fresh New Mexico chiles in Cali markets, and there's no good substitute. The typical Hatch NM chile used for these kinds of dishes is called Big Jim--it's the chile that, when fully ripened to red and then dried, gets made into those ristras (chile wreaths) one sees in NM gift shops. Green, they slightly resemble Anaheims, but are a good bit hotter. The green chiles are rumored to come dried too, but I haven't found them. Typically the fresh ones are flame-roasted and skinned, and then either used as-is in recipes, or frozen. There are some mail-order places that sell the frozen stuff, but of course I didn't want to wait for that! The canned flame-roasted green chiles are considered a last resort--and most of the time, the chiles in those cans aren't even Big Jims, they're just more Anaheims. So, I did a compromise suggested by one or another of the NM chile-head websites I found, using a combination of canned and fresh-roasted Anaheims for the general flavor, color, and texture, and then some other chiles for the heat. The chiles de arbol are my favorite go-to dried chiles for long-simmered dishes--I've got their heat-level pretty well calibrated at this point. And the New Mexico (red) chile powder? I threw that in, well, just because (it sez New Mexico on the label! )

Edited by mizducky, 28 October 2005 - 11:15 PM.

[Chufi]

well I really was planning to make chili from some recipe tonight.. but I was tired so I just did it my way.. here it is:



I can't give the recipe but I can sort of tell you what's in it..
ground beef and ground pork
vegetables: celery, onion, garlic, grated carrot
can of tomatoes
spices; ground corianderseed, cumin, chipotle peppers, tiny bit of cinnamon, chocolate.
Kidney beans, barley.
Fresh parsley and fresh coriander

very, very good and so comforting..

[Patrick S]

We made some Texas-style chili last night -- big cubes of chuck, no beans, fairly hot. I top it with jack cheese and fresh onions, but I left them off for the pictures.

[Jason Perlow]

Chili in the pot, simmering, sans-beans, which are still cooking in the Le Creuset and are to be added later with some more tomato liquid.

This is composed of tomatoes, tomatillo, onion, red bell pepper, ground lamb, ground turkey, and ground pork, with fresh serrano, fresh jalepeno, dried New Mexico, dried chopped chipotle, and powdered guajillo and morita chipotle. dried oregano. And some mole paste. coriander seed. thyme. and garlic. Hit of vinegar.

Fresh cilantro will be added before completion.

EDIT: We just dumped in some frozen corn kernels as well.

[gourmande]

Here is today's chili simmering away...



As mentioned yesterday, today I'm making a very simple ground beef version. The ingredients include:

ground beef, onion, red and green sweet peppers, canned tomatoes, canned kidney beans, chipotle in adobo sauce, garlic, cumin, oregano, chili powder, cocoa powder and salt.

Once served I'll top with some chopped fresh cilantro and grated cheddar.

[Jason Perlow]

Finished product, in pot:



Served over skillet cornbread:

[TongoRad]

I did mine last night and served it tonight. I used ground beef and beans, but no tomatoes, and went for a flavor profile of Chile Colorado. I was finished in under an hour but it turned out to be quite satisfying nonetheless. I posted the recipe here: Northern Valley Red

I also took some photos, some 'still lifes', if you will. The first is my cast of characters (including appropriate tunes, of course):


And this is how it went down (again, with an appropriate 'accompaniment'):

Garnishes are corn tortilla strips, sour cream and cilantro.

[MarketStEl]

Beans should be pre-cooked. If you have tomato product in the chili, or anything else acidic for that matter, your beans won't cook up right. Then you get into the situation where you don't know how much liquid you would need to cook the beans. My true confession is that, if I am using beans like in Whacked-Out Chili, I use a good brand of canned. Goya seems to do a good job of cooking beans without them getting mushy.

Okay, thanks. I'll stick with America's Choice canned, then.

And it will be ground beef once again, at least this time. Esposito's on 9th Street had a special on 80/20 ground beef (10 lbs for $9.90) that I had to take advantage of.

Recipe and photos to come when I cook it.

[muichoi]

Bit of a nerve to contribute from the other side of the water-but to me the best results come with hand chopped meat-deliberately in a variety of dimensions from 3/4 inch cubes to finely ground. But the essential is pork rind-very finely ground after(long) cooking-shin of beef is best-and returned to the pot. only this gives the richness of texture I'm looking for.

[Jake]

Jake, how thick was it? I definitely lean on the spackle end of the spectrum, though I can appreciate the benefit of drippy juices soaking down.

People, we need more photos!!

Sorry, just got the camera back...it was fairly thick, but not paste-like, just a thick sauce (tomatos reduced, I don't use paste in it.) I'll try and get a picture this week if we pull the leftovers out of the freezer.

[Ktepi]

Haven't got any photos -- I'm not a big food photographer to begin with, but tonight it's really just not an option, with a flashless camera phone, a light out near the stove, and meat-in-dark-sauce cooking in cast-iron -- but I made chili tonight 'cause of this thread. Goat chili.

In August, we got a goat -- minus the head and one leg -- from our butcher, who'd ordered it to fill a special order and had a lot left over so gave us a good deal on it. There's not much of it left now, but there were two packages of assorted chops, which I had found were best braised: they're bony and fairly small, so although they can be seared/baked/sauteed/whatever, if served on the bone they're pretty hard to eat.

This is a pretty young goat, I think -- milder than the lamb I buy, and many of the cuts would be more likely mistaken for pork. The ground meat made the best non-beef hamburgers I've had.

Anyway, though -- today I braised the chops in my cast iron "chicken fryer" (so Lodge calls it), with two diced cayenne peppers frozen sometime in the summer, a few cloves of elephant garlic, a mixture of spices (cumin, grains of paradise (I'm out of peppercorns), oregano, paprika, dash of cinnamon, dash of sugar, dash of salt), the half cup of coffee we hadn't drunk this morning, and enough stock to cover.

Once the meat got to the point that it was hopping off the bone, I strained out the liquid and popped it in the fridge -- it's very fatty, and I want it to cool down enough for me to get most of that fat out, especially since this goat fat is fairly gamy. I've got beans -- straight up red beans like we'd be using for red beans and rice -- cooking in a little stock, and some roasted tomatoes, and I'll toss those all together in about an hour, after I've made some cornbread to go with.

The one thing it's really missing is onion, which I'm out of cause we skipped the Farmer's Market yesterday morning in favor of a Halloween party. But it's a nice halfway point between "what I think of as chili" and "what I think of as stew," and spicy enough -- thanks to those midsummer cayennes -- that the Missus is gonna ask for some cheese on top.

ETA some chili-making background:

Chili is the first dish I learned to make, if you don't count "watching Dad cook while Mom's sick" type stuff (scrambled eggs, hamburgers, ... more scrambled eggs). I'd been "baking" for a few years, making cakes from mixes while my mother was out running errands, because I'd realized that asking, "Mom, can we have cake?" often yielded a "no," while "look Mom, I made a cake!" might get an exasperated "and look at the mess you made," but we still had cake. The kitchen's a mighty powerful place.

I'm not sure why I switched from sweet to savory, and neither's my mother, who points out she'd make chili any time I asked for it, since it was something the whole family'd eat -- so that cake-making motivation wasn't there. But whatever the reason, I started making it when I was about 12 or 13, which means I've been at it 18 years now. When I was in college and was "the guy who can cook," chili was the main thing people came over for.

I've gone through every phase with it, adding all the ingredients you suddenly think are brilliant, all the CASI recipes, peanut butter chili, sweet potato chili, a chili I called "Chili Palmer" after Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty (pork chops and ground beef, lots of papaya), Texan purism, etc. At this point, I just make whatever I'm in the mood for. Usually I prefer chili-grind beef and/or pork, onions, chile, tomato, a minimum of garlic and bell pepper, and enough stock in the liquid to encourage a thick sauce to the final product (the stock I used tonight is heavy on the gelatin). If it's more finely ground beef, I like it to be thick enough to spread on toast without soaking through.

Edited by Ktepi, 30 October 2005 - 05:16 PM.

[bookluvingbabe]

I lept into the fray with a chili stew concoction for lunch today.

I used stew meat, onions, garlic, fire roasted tomatoes, chipoltes in adobo sauce, a little cumin, a little paprika and a little chili powder plus several slugs of vinager.

Served with cornbread, cheddar cheese and sour cream.

It was a little spicy for my taste -- I'm usually a Cincinnatti chili girl but I had two servings and hubby had two as well.

I browned the meat and then simmered it for about 3 hours. The meat didn't get as tender as I had hoped. Oh well.

There's always next time!

[purplewiz]

It is cold and damp here today with what is politely termed "wintry mix" falling from the sky, so chili seemed like just the thing for dinner.

It's not fancy, it's not authentic, it's only a riff on the flavors of Mom's Chili. Mom's chili is middle American at best, but it's the flavor I grew up with, so while I like other chilis, I always come back to this.

It's basically half a pound of ground beef, browned and drained, some onion thrown in (I use half a small or a quarter of a large), a bunch of chili powder (yes, the premixed stuff in a jar) - I never measure, I just eyeball it - some oregano, a shake or two of ground chipotle, a can of diced tomatoes, drained, and a can of beans. Salt and pepper as needed. Mom always used dark red kidney beans, but I've been using black soy beans, and really liking the flavor. I also used fresh tomatoes tonight because all those green tomatoes we took off the plants about a month ago are now ripening all at the same time.

I usually just serve the chili with shredded cheese and a dollop of sour cream, but I had an avocado that was going to be overripe soon, so I garnished with that, too:



And since that picture doesn't show much of the chili, here's a picture after the first bite or two:



I have a green chile stew planned for later this week, which probably qualifies as chili too .

Marcia.

[jrt]

Wow... well, this is my first attempt w/cubed chuck. I agree: cubing it is a pain, but worth it. This batch was done in the Bayless style (that is, with a toasted ancho starting "sauce") but I used ground lamb, ground veal, and a big ol' cut of chuck. All of it was worth it. The main thing missing here was a bit of spice... and while I'm not a beer drinker (that is, I'm allergic to it if you can believe that), a local crappy beer is necessary w/chili...

[chef koo]

something that sorta makes a chili for me is grease. i know alot of people have an averse reaction towards it but when you see the oil sitting on top from the beef or the cheese it makes it ten times better for me. when searing my meat i always use a really fatty cut of meat. and the cheese has got to have that glisten to it from having too much and from the melting of course. i know it sounds strange but without it, it just seems bland to me.

[hwilson41]

I've been pretty busy and just discovered this thread today. My loss, but all OK now.

something that sorta makes a chili for me is grease. i know alot of people have an averse reaction towards it but when you see the oil sitting on top from the beef or the cheese it makes it ten times better for me.

Amen to that. I'm a native Texas, now living in Virginia, and I hate to admit it but there are two joints around here that serve pretty decent chili. At one, when you order, you specify the amount of grease you want on yours. I usually order what is called "Texas medium with cheese, onions, no beans", but lots of folks order "Texas wet". Sans grease, it just ain't the same .

[MarkinHouston]

I've been pretty busy and just discovered this thread today.  My loss, but all OK now.

something that sorta makes a chili for me is grease. i know alot of people have an averse reaction towards it but when you see the oil sitting on top from the beef or the cheese it makes it ten times better for me.

Amen to that. I'm a native Texas, now living in Virginia, and I hate to admit it but there are two joints around here that serve pretty decent chili. At one, when you order, you specify the amount of grease you want on yours. I usually order what is called "Texas medium with cheese, onions, no beans", but lots of folks order "Texas wet". Sans grease, it just ain't the same .

I just added "Soulful Bowlful Chile" to RecipeGullet. It has added pork sausage to pump up the greas content. Since I am not yet learned in making a link to the recipegullet, here is an approximation of what I have added:

Soulful Bowlful Chile

Ingredients:

25 ancho chiles
1 quart beef stock

2 & ½ lb chuck, chili grind
1 & ½ lb fresh pork sausage (not Italian)
2 lb ground venison
3 T. canola oil

4 cups finely chopped onions
8 garlic cloves, minced
1 T. chile pequin
1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
4 Serrano chiles
1 12-oz can beer

2 T. ground cumin
2 T. kosher salt
1 & ½ tsp Mexican oregano
1 tsp smoked paprika
3 T. cider vinegar
Water as needed

1. Spread the ancho chiles on a large baking pan and toast for 10 minutes at 300º F. Remove from oven, allow to cool, and then stem and deseed. Combine with the beef stock in a food processor and pulse until a smooth paste is formed. Add more liquid if necessary.
2. Heat 3 T. canola oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté the meat in batches and transfer to a Dutch oven when meat turns gray---it doesn’t need to be browned.
3. Add the onions, garlic, chile pequin, tomatoes, Serrano chiles, and 12 ounces of beer. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for twenty minutes.
4. After simmering twenty minutes, add the cumin, salt, oregano, smoked paprika, and vinegar. Simmer, covered, for another hour, adding more water or beer as needed.

Serve with Mexican rice, pinto beans, and cornbread.

[snowangel]

Here's the link to Mark's chili: Soulful Bowlful Chili.

[fifi]

This past Sunday, Whacked Out Chili was the project for the day. Here we go with the long list of ingredients:



I got this particularly beautiful chuck roast at my local HEB. It was their Natural Angus brand. The marbeling was wonderful. Here we are starting to brown it in the big gumbo pot standing in as a chili pot. I cut it into about a 1/2 inch dice.



You can see that there is enough vegetation in this recipe that I consider this a one dish meal so I can get out of making a salad. Notice that the veggies are cut fairly large. You only cook them until they just begin to wilt before adding all of the other ingredients.



After simmering for about an hour and a half, the meat is succulent and tender and you are ready to eat. Notice that the "gravy" is fairly liquid but nicely thickened. We wimped out on making cornbread and served it with buttered saltines. I had forgotten how much I like saltines with chili.