Chili – Cook-Off 15

[Marlene]

Our two favorite chili recipes are

- "Very, Very Good Chili" from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen -- probably the one in Rick & Lanie's Excellent Adventures is similar -- which is actually a sub-recipe/suggestion for his ancho chile paste:

Recipe on the Simon & Schuster site (scroll down/search for "chili")

- Venison Chili with Red Beans from David Waltuck's Staff Meals from Chanterelle. We always use beef bits and cannellini, having no access to venison nor love of red beans.

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Yeh the Bayless is awesome in my opinion.. Just found a photo of the last time I made it.. I am ready to call it a day and start making this stuff..

Now the question is, do I serve with cheese fries, tater tots, or spaghetti.. Either way i am a happy man..

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This looks amazing. I guess chili is on my list this week.

[Milagai]

Re: vegetarian chili--I too have used various incarnations of the Moosewood recipe with the bulghur. I really like how it turns out texture-wise--prefer it to using TVP as the latter's texture/mouth-feel never quite feels right to me.

yay! another fan!

the barley suggestion sounded great too and i'll try and remember

next time i am shopping.

milagai

[fifi]

I'm starting to think that some of that leftover smoked pork butt in the freezer might make a darned fine chili!

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OH MY . . . Yes! I have always thought of the Barbeque Posole as a sort of chili. I have made that basic recipe with only one can of hominy and added ancho paste. It was more like chili than a posole. I have also made it without the hominy altogether and with the ancho paste and it was chili. Boy, does smoky pork make for a bowl from heaven. I do like the green chilies in it though, and the oregano.

BTW . . . Anchos are my favorite for the basic chile pepper for chili. Then I add others of my choice or what seems to be a good idea at the time. I have had a hard time finding the pure chile powders in my local stores, even the Latin American places like Fiesta Mart. I can find the dried chiles pretty reliably so I have taken to making big batches of chile paste and storing them in the freezer in half cup amounts. All you have to do is take the stems off and the seed out. Then you soak them in hot water until soft and run them in the blender. If you need liquid to get them to blend, I use chicken broth. You have to be careful about using the soaking liquid as it can get bitter. A purist would toast the dried peppers on a griddle or comal before soaking. I usually don't bother. If I ever get a larger capacity spice grinder, I will probably make my own powders. If you do that, toasting them makes for easier grinding as it dries them out more. But you do have to be careful not to burn them. The bitter thing raises its head again. If you can take the time to stock your "pantry" with chiles of your choice (paste or ground) you can have a lot of fun blending your chiles to your own taste. Having that in your pantry makes a pot of chili a quick meal instead of a project.

[alycemoy]

I personally love smoky beef chili that's done in a little more Indian style. My Indian friends pretty much call chili a curry anyways (not too far from a good keema).

But, my boyfriend loves chili verde, and I have yet to encounter a recipe that he likes.

The RecipeGullet recipe for green chili didn't really work out for me.

As a point of reference, he really liked the two verde chilis at Encino's <a href="http://www.chilimysoul.com/flavors.html">Chili My Soul</a>.

Anyone know of where I can find a great chili verde recipe that is produces chili just as good if not better??

[TongoRad]

I personally love smoky beef chili that's done in a little more Indian style. My Indian friends pretty much call chili a curry anyways (not too far from a good keema).

But, my boyfriend loves chili verde, and I have yet to encounter a recipe that he likes.

The RecipeGullet recipe for green chili didn't really work out for me.

As a point of reference, he really liked the two verde chilis at Encino's <a href="http://www.chilimysoul.com/flavors.html">Chili My Soul</a>.

Anyone know of where I can find a great chili verde recipe that is produces chili just as good if not better??

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Here is a recipe from the ICS recipe page that you can use as a jumping off point. Whether you use pork or beef, you should reserve a bunch of chopped chiles to add at the end. The RecipeGullet recipe features ground chicken so it isn't cooked to the point that the chiles start to lose flavor, but that can be a problem with cubed pork or beef. The one I linked to uses tomatillos so it should get you close.

I prefer beef myself, but either way is better with potatoes (cubed, added during the last 20 min or so). They give the end result a real comforting home-style quality. When I was in New Mexico I would order my chile verde extra hot and they would simply ladle in some of those chopped really hot Hatch sonofaguns to the base dish before serving. It's something I do at home now because my wife prefers it milder. When I make a pot of red I have a puree of chipotles/piquins on hand for that same purpose.

I still have to take an inventory of what I have on hand but if I do go ahead with the green I'll come back and post what I'm doing.

[suzilightning]

i grew up with my mom's sweet chili - ground beef, sugar, tomatoes, a bit of chili powder, kidney beans

then i went to TEXAS and learned what a BOWL OF RED is (at least in texarkana) - beef chuck cut into small pieces and cooked in a cast iron pan on one side only, dusted with ancho chile powder then doused with beer and served in a bowl. sides were cheese and onion.

came north then had some cincinnati chili served five way by a coworker - ground beef, tomato, and a spice sachet then served over spaghetti with beans, onion, oyster crackers and cheese.

now i do all kinds depending on who is around and what i want to do...

chopped venion, ground buffalo, organic beef, onions, beans, cheese, pork and tomatillo, hmmmmm

the next time it is raining and i can clean out the freezer i will have to play

[snowangel]

I personally love smoky beef chili that's done in a little more Indian style. My Indian friends pretty much call chili a curry anyways (not too far from a good keema).

But, my boyfriend loves chili verde, and I have yet to encounter a recipe that he likes.

The RecipeGullet recipe for green chili didn't really work out for me.

As a point of reference, he really liked the two verde chilis at Encino's <a href="http://www.chilimysoul.com/flavors.html">Chili My Soul</a>.

Anyone know of where I can find a great chili verde recipe that is produces chili just as good if not better??

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Anybody remember Zantigo restaurants? Well, there are now four of five of them in the Twin Citites, still serving that fabulous green chili that they had lo those many years ago. I'm sure it has tomatillos. I've played, and played and played around with this many times, but not recreated this one. So, when I have a hankering for chile verde, I find an excuse to be near Zantigo.

[Daniel]

What a great time to have a chili thread.. Its about that time of year, especially in rainy cold, Manhattan.. Tonight, we made the chili from Bayless's Recipe.. Basically, it calls for ancho chile's to be blended with a some garlic.. Really easy, but provides a complex flavor.. Instead of using ground beef, I cubed hanger steak.. Also didnt have bacon so we used duck fat to brown the onion and steak.. Despite peoples warnings, it was really so gross out, and I wasnt leaving to buy ground beef.. The cubes were awesome and definately gave the dish an entirely different feel..

We served it with green and white onions, sour cream, and cheese..

Great bite..

We were going to serve with spaghetti if using ground beef. rice if cubed, but we then decided to go corn bread... Made the skillet corn bread from Hoppin John's Book..

Love the ridges the skillet gives it..

I have cooling on the counter, a Krispy Kreme Donut Bread Pudding. with Butter Rum Sauce.. Wish me luck

[suzilightning]

I have cooling on the counter, a Krispy Kreme Donut Bread Pudding. with Butter Rum Sauce.. Wish me luck

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[lperry]

Deborah Madison has a fantastic black bean chili in the Greens cookbook. It has a wonderful chipotle flavor. I've recently taken to toasting and grinding my own instead of using the canned, or adding in a bit of Salsa Negra from Rick Bayless' recipe. That smokiness is so nice in chili.

-Linda

[fifi]

Daniel . . . I have to agree. Cubed beef adds an admirable texture to chili and it is my preferred way to go. I do the same thing if I am adding pork. While my dad did various riffs on the basic Pedernales River Chili, one thing he did settle on was the cubed beef rather than ground. He would put whatever meat he was using (beef chuck, pork shoulder) in the freezer to get icy and start chopping away until he had basically 1/2 inch cubes. He had progressed from your generic ground beef to a coarse chili grind, done for him by the butcher, to the cubing process. Yes, cubing is a PITA but I think it is worth it.

I have just about all of the Bayless books. I am going to have to try one of the recipes. Just about everything else I have tried out of them has been spot on.

[Chris Amirault]

Linda, when you cube the beef, how big are the cubes? I tend to make them 1 1/2-2 inches, pretty big.

[fifi]

Linda, when you cube the beef, how big are the cubes? I tend to make them 1 1/2-2 inches, pretty big.

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I will give you a lawyer's answer. It depends.

For the most part, I tend to cube at about 1/2 inch. I may go a bit larger for the Whacked Out Chili. That is because the beans, celery and red pepper pieces are a bit bigger. For the Pedernales River Chili, I tend to go with what dad did and head for 1/4 inch. Dad found that the texture was different by cubing rather than going for a coarse grind. I have to say that he was right.

That is not to say that I have not taken the easy way out and used ground meat. It is all good. It is just a matter of what texture you prefer. Remember, the classic came from well pounded meat so it shouldn't be chunky like a stew. However, I have done that too and it was a chili like stew which was very good. I guess this is a bit like gumbo. There are many different ways to skin a cat (not to say that cats make their way into my chili, though I can't vouch for some of my friends ), and they are all good.

[MarketStEl]

Daniel . . . I have to agree. Cubed beef adds an admirable texture to chili and it is my preferred way to go.

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I thought the main objection everyone had to Daniel's plans is that hanger steak is one of those top-quality cuts that should simply be broiled or grilled and served as is. Usually for stew-like dishes, you want the cheaper cuts, as the cooking liquid will tenderize them.

I've never tried chili made with cubed meat; I generally like the thicker consistency I can get using ground beef. I may experiment sometime in the future.

Fifi: I have ancho powder, chipotle powder, dried chiles de arbol and a few dried habaneros on hand. I take some of your prior comments to mean if I have these, I can skip using chili powder?

[helenjp]

Chili recipes from the Geezer's Cookbook at macscouter.com was my first encounter with US-style chili.

...I hear that some people say that beans and chili should be cooked separately, served together, while others cook them together. ???.

[eje]

I know beef is traditional, but anyone else ever use pork?

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Bone in pork country spare ribs are very nice for chile stews.

Not sure if it really qualifies as "Chili".

There is a tasty version in Diana Kennedy's "The Art of Mexican Cooking" called "Chilayo" which I have made many times. Country spare ribs, tomatillos, and a simple pureed sauce of 3 kinds of chiles, onions, garlic and a little cumin.

Some folks advise making your own chili powder using a "spice" grinder. I've found that my demoted coffee grinder doesn't really do that great a job of grinding chiles. I've gone back to either making chile puree or buying chili powder.

Edited October 26, 2005 by eje (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I don't know why I have such a blister on my ass about advocating for cubed chuck, but here's chapter 14:

Dad found that the texture was different by cubing rather than going for a coarse grind. I have to say that he was right.

That is not to say that I have not taken the easy way out and used ground meat. It is all good. It is just a matter of what texture you prefer. Remember, the classic came from well pounded meat so it shouldn't be chunky like a stew.

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Daniel . . . I have to agree. Cubed beef adds an admirable texture to chili and it is my preferred way to go.

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I've never tried chili made with cubed meat; I generally like the thicker consistency I can get using ground beef. I may experiment sometime in the future.

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What I've found is that cubed meat braised for a good long time reaches that point where it's both succulent and shredding into chunky strands that are more like well-pounded meat than meat that's been ground into small bits. I don't know why it is (McGee handy for anyone?), but ground beef never seems to get to that stage.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or am I spinning in some strange, red universe in my mind?

[snowangel]

IWhat I've found is that cubed meat braised for a good long time reaches that point where it's both succulent and shredding into chunky strands that are more like well-pounded meat than meat that's been ground into small bits. I don't know why it is (McGee handy for anyone?), but ground beef never seems to get to that stage.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or am I spinning in some strange, red universe in my mind?

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Yes, Chris, I know what you are talking about. However, when it is 3:00 pm and the screaming hordes are gong to want dinner by 6:30 pm, ground chuck works just fine.

[TongoRad]

I tend to prefer cubes myself, and the larger the better, but about 25% of the time I'll just be in the mood for a 'ground beef and beans' chili. I just don't have the patience to cut my meat into 1/4" cubes but I do have an Indian restaurant near me that does that for their Keema Mattar. I can appreciate the textural differencce with the ground but so far haven't been inspired to do it myself. Here's my method for a last minute down and dirty chili (I won't say 'recipe' because a lot of the items are subject to change depending on my mood and/or what I have on hand):

Brown the ground beef in a stock pot or dutch oven. Remove to the side, drain the pot and wipe with a paper towel. Heat some oil and add chopped onions, caramelize until just turning brown. Add chopped garlic for a few seconds, and then a few tablespoons of flour. Keep it moving until the 'roux' takes on a nutty character and then in go the chile powders and spices. Allow this to bloom for a few seconds, but not to change color. Add the liquid (water and/or beer) until the sauce is the consistency of pea soup. Then the beef and drained beans can go in and simmer it for another 15 to 20 minutes.

My chile powders are usually a combination of NuMex (hot and mild), Ancho, Pasilla and Chipotle and I prefer making them myself. I have also found that the paprika that I get from my local Indian market makes a very reasonable substitute for mild chile powder ( and it is kick-ass fresh and cheap to boot!).

eje:

Some folks advise making your own chili powder using a "spice" grinder. I've found that my demoted coffee grinder doesn't really do that great a job of grinding chiles. I've gone back to either making chile puree or buying chili powder.

Do you dry them out before grinding them? I usually put them on a wire rack on a sheet pan, and the put the works in a 175degF oven for a half hour. Then I turn off the oven without opening the door and leave it alone overnight (if possible). They come out very brittle but not scorched or bitter, and grind fairly well in an ordinary coffee grinder. I also pass the powder through a fine strainer, and there is some waste but not much.

[fifi]

. . . . .

Fifi:  I have ancho powder, chipotle powder, dried chiles de arbol and a few dried habaneros on hand.  I take some of your prior comments to mean if I have these, I can skip using chili powder?

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What is in the stores as "chili powder" is usually a combo of some sort of powdered chile, usually ancho, garlic and cumin. Some even bulk the stuff up with salt. If you have your own pure powder or puree, you have more control over your seasoning.

. . . . .

...I hear that some people say that beans and chili should be cooked separately, served together, while others cook them together. ???.

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Here is some science . . . If you use tomatoes in your chili that is an acid. As we discussed in the Dried Bean thread, acid stops the cooking of the beans. Usually, beans are added to chili as cooked beans. The acid effect is really to your advantage in that the beans won't get any mushier. IMHO, if you are going to put beans in your chili, they shouldn't be mushy.

. . . . .

What I've found is that cubed meat braised for a good long time reaches that point where it's both succulent and shredding into chunky strands that are more like well-pounded meat than meat that's been ground into small bits. I don't know why it is (McGee handy for anyone?), but ground beef never seems to get to that stage.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or am I spinning in some strange, red universe in my mind?

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I know exactly what you are talking about. But I haven't a clue as to why that should be so. Maybe it is because with ground meat, you may have the same ratio of collagen-->gelatin but it isn't hooked up with the muscle fiber in the same way. That is my wild guess.

I will have to say that I do make chili with ground meat because cubing is a bit of a pain. When I just want a quick bowl of red, I head for the ground chuck. My dad kept experimenting with ground turkey, trying to make something edible out of it, and came up with some good stuff.

Now I will go back to spinning in my own strange, red universe.

[Malawry]

I said that if Daniel used that hanger steak in a chili, I'd cry. Here I am: *cry* But it's for two reasons: 1. I'd much rather eat a hanger steak seared or grilled the old-fashioned way, yet 2. The finished chili looks so damn good that it's making me hungry and I just ate lunch.

Has anybody ever made the Ohio sausage chili from the latest Joy of Cooking? It's an interesting recipe, like a thick sausage stew.

[MarkinHouston]

has anyone ever had green chilli................

i lived in northeast CO for a while, and it was a staple there..........

in most small towns you could get anything on a menu "smothered".....

usually it was cubed pork steak with all the bling one would put in chilli, but everything was green, instead of red......

a few crushed red tomatoes at the very end.........

it was pretty damn good.  i've never seen it anywhere else........

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I have used this recipe for chile verde for over twenty years. MY splattered notes say "Jane Butel 1979" and I know she produced some books on BBQ and other southwestern cooking but from which the following arose I have no idea.

Pork with Chile Verde

2 pounds boneless pork, cut in 1” cubes

3 T. flour

2 T. lard or bacon drippings

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

Water

1 tsp. salt

Freshly ground black pepper

½ tsp. ground Mexican oregano

¼ tsp. ground cumin

3 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped

20 fresh green chiles, roasted, peeled, and chopped

1. Sprinkle pork cubes with flour. Heat lard in a large, heavy skillet and brown pork. Remove to a plate.

2. Sauté onion and garlic in the same pan until the onion is soft. Return meat to the pan.

3. Add water to just barely cover the meat. Add salt, pepper, Mexican oregano, and cumin. Cover and simmer for one hour.

4. Add the tomatoes and green chiles; simmer 30 minutes or longer, adding a little more water if necessary, until flavors are well blended.

Notes: I’ve used two 7-oz. cans of chopped green chiles, drained when I’ve been too busy (or too lazy!) to deal with fresh chiles.

[alycemoy]

has anyone ever had green chilli................

i lived in northeast CO for a while, and it was a staple there..........

in most small towns you could get anything on a menu "smothered".....

usually it was cubed pork steak with all the bling one would put in chilli, but everything was green, instead of red......

a few crushed red tomatoes at the very end.........

it was pretty damn good.  i've never seen it anywhere else........

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I have used this recipe for chile verde for over twenty years. MY splattered notes say "Jane Butel 1979" and I know she produced some books on BBQ and other southwestern cooking but from which the following arose I have no idea.

Pork with Chile Verde

2 pounds boneless pork, cut in 1” cubes

3 T. flour

2 T. lard or bacon drippings

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

Water

1 tsp. salt

Freshly ground black pepper

½ tsp. ground Mexican oregano

¼ tsp. ground cumin

3 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped

20 fresh green chiles, roasted, peeled, and chopped

1. Sprinkle pork cubes with flour. Heat lard in a large, heavy skillet and brown pork. Remove to a plate.

2. Sauté onion and garlic in the same pan until the onion is soft. Return meat to the pan.

3. Add water to just barely cover the meat. Add salt, pepper, Mexican oregano, and cumin. Cover and simmer for one hour.

4. Add the tomatoes and green chiles; simmer 30 minutes or longer, adding a little more water if necessary, until flavors are well blended.

Notes: I’ve used two 7-oz. cans of chopped green chiles, drained when I’ve been too busy (or too lazy!) to deal with fresh chiles.

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Sounds very promising! I'll probably try it this weekend! Thanks much!

[mizducky]

What I've found is that cubed meat braised for a good long time reaches that point where it's both succulent and shredding into chunky strands that are more like well-pounded meat than meat that's been ground into small bits. I don't know why it is (McGee handy for anyone?), but ground beef never seems to get to that stage.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or am I spinning in some strange, red universe in my mind?

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I suspect that with ground meat, the act of grinding has already fragmented the muscle fibers into such miniscule lengths that they no longer show up in the food's mouth-feel as fibers at all. Whereas with cubed meat, even with the small-size cubes some have mentioned, the fibers have been segmented but the fibrous structure is still basically intact within each cube. I further theorize that the meat fibers in chili made from larger cubes of meat would be more noticeable than those from small cubes, simply because of the relative fiber lengths in the two sizes of cubes.

I vaguely recall seeing some chili recipes that specify both ground and cubed meat. I theorize that this would give a really nice combination of the thick sauce-texture of an all-ground-meat chili and the shredded/pulled meat texture of the cubed-meat chili.

I confess to preferring pork to beef in general (oy, what a nice Jewish girl I turned out to be, huh? ), so it pleases me that so many New Mexico chile verde recipes I've seen on the net specify pork.

Oh---how about spices in addition to the chiles? Cumin is pretty common; allspice seems to be one of the flavor secrets in Cincinnati-style; I've also been known to sneak a little cinnamon in there for its natural "sweetness."

As to beans: I fear that kidney beans are not my favorite beans by a long shot--I just find them too big, bland and pasty. Pintos are a bit better to me--somehow, their smaller size makes them register as a little less pasty in my mouth. The pulses I really like are black beans, lentils, and garbanzos. I know the latter two are definitely not traditional chili-makings, but I wonder how they'd work out. Using lentils might result in a chili-flavored dal! And we saw garbanzos, I think, way up at the top of this thread in an Algerian chili-like bean stew.

How about other beans folks have used, or thought about using? I'm especially wondering about beans like black-eyed peas (they have a fresh vegetal flavor even when cooked from dried beans that I really dig); and azduki beans (their natural sweetness and digestability might be an great asset in chili-making).

[TongoRad]

You really hit the nail on the head with regards to kidney beans, but I think that character is why they are traditionally used: they don't have an assertive flavor at all, so they don't compete with the chili, and they hold their shape very well. Pinto beans have a much better flavor but can break down easier. I find that pink beans are somewhere in between so that's always on hand as my 'all purpose' bean. There is plenty of room for experimentation, as far as I'm concerned. I would probably stop shy of using the lentils myself, though. I will say that I have added black beans, and corn for that matter, to chile verde and the chile gods didn't strike me down.

As to the seasonings, cumin and oregano are all you really need, but a bay leaf is also nice to add. Cocoa is also pretty common.