Chili

UPDATE 5/22/2012: Added information about the cooking time, garlic amount, and a Southern Comfort tip.

I attended an informal chili competition about 8 years ago and was amazed at the variety of tastes and ingredients that each dish had. There were simple tweaks like different types of peppers, or "weird" things like cinnamon and beer.


Several years later I wanted to make a healthy random dish for dinner, so I decided on a vegetarian chili. It was horrible, but the seed was planted. To cook good chili, all you need is a place to start... a base.

So I tweaked it. Added ingredients, changed spices, and found other recipes to borrow ideas from. I've ended up with a dish that I love.

That is were the facts end. Everyone has their own interpretation of "good," and everyone likes different features in a chili: sweetness, saltiness, spicy, whatever. I've been told my chili lacks any specific feature. So I figure that means my chili is just good overall :)

My point is there is a huge amount of variance in flavors, and just as much variance in personal preference. You may not like a chili someone else likes, or vice versa.

Outside of subjectivity, another issue is with cooking variables. If I cook chili for personal use I'll portion it out in 2-cup containers and throw it in the freezer. When I reheat it it is a bit like cooking it a little more. For a competition I may cook it in the morning and serve it immediately. It is a small difference but it can affect the flavor.

Before I share my recipe... here is a fun time-lapse video I took of myself making my chili. It runs about 2 minutes and covers about an hour of cutting and cooking.

Recipe

My recipe is mostly based on two different recipes:

• Food.com - The Best Chili You Will Ever Eat
• Serious Eats - The Best Chili Ever

I had been closing in on the first recipe so I started using that as my base. I found the second recipe when I decided to add more of a umami (savory) flavor component to my dish. So now I sort of merge the two and make a few tweaks for easier cooking.

Ingredients

• 3 smallish sweet onions
• 6 cloves of garlic (or about 3-4 tsp of Garlic World minced garlic)
• 2 jalapeño peppers
• 2 anaheim peppers
• 1.5 lbs ground turkey
• 1 lbs ground sirloin
• 1.5 Tbsp Mexican oregano
• 3/8 tsp star anise (ground)
• 1 tsp ground corriander
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 Tbsp cumin
• 2 Tbsp Penzeys Chili 9000
• 3 Tbsp Penzeys Med-Hot Chili Powder
• 3-4 anchovy filets (cut into small pieces or blended with liquid in a blender)
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 15 oz beef broth
• 6 oz tomato paste
• 30 oz diced tomato
• 12 oz stout (I like Bells Kalamazoo Stout, or any imperial stout)
• 4-6 oz Maker's Mark (or really any bourbon)
• TIP: if you like the recipe, next time use Southern Comfort instead of bourbon)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 30 oz kidney beans
• 30 oz black beans

Process

I start by dicing the onions and fresh peppers. I saute that with the oil, garlic and Mexican oregano until the onions are translucent.

Onions, peppers, garlic, Mexican oregano

Tip: Some people saute onions with ground beef. But if you drain the fat I assume you may lose a little of the onion flavor. And reading about Mexican oregano, Penzeys recommends adding it at the beginning of cooking (like when sauteing onions) so the flavors have time to meld.

Meanwhile, brown your meat.

After that add everything else. It doesn't matter much but I start by adding liquids so that the heat drops a bit, then spices, then solids... except for the black beans. I find that the black beans usually don't need to cook at all, so I add them at the end.

Simmer for about 90 minutes.

For the anchovies, I cut then into thin pieces with a fork and dump them in. They are very tender and I've been told they just "dissolve". The blender method is used in the second recipe above, where they are blended with reconstituted dried peppers.

The finished product

I love eating chili for lunch, because I can cook up a 5-quart batch and get about 10 lunch-sized portions. It freezes and reheats well, is high in fiber, and overall is kinda healthy(ish) (see what I did there).

Ten lunches ready to go...

Volume-Boosting

If I am just making lunch chili, I'll sometimes throw in random stuff that I have lying around, or a little extra of certain things. Lately I've been adding a little extra meat (about 3-lbs total), a 15oz can of Great Northern beans, maybe some corn, and yesterday I added a 15oz can of soy beans (higher protein than other beans). Adding things like that doesn't have a huge impact on the flavor, and lets you get a little more food from your cooking.

Another thing you can do is what I call "Kitchen Sink Chili". If you have leftover or old food you don't need, throw it in! While you can do this with anything, I stick to things that work well in chili. Leftover or unappetizing salsa and ready-to-expire canned corn are two good examples.