GranolaBox

Making chili is an experience for me. It is not merely cooking something. I just can’t cook chili on demand. It just has to happen. Whether it’s some sort of celestial convergence, the number of days before or after the equinox, or simply that I’m hungry, I get this feeling in my bones When it does, I must make chili.

Not only does it extensive procurement of the ingredients, but it must be made in a complete mental chili state. Good music, a fairly clean kitchen and an afternoon of little or nothing else to do are essential for making a good pot of chili.

When I make my chili it is a labor of love but it is also a love – hate relationship. While I cook it, I constantly wonder about the final outcome. The list of ingredients below is fairly accurate to the chili, but I can’t portend to tell anyone how to make their chili. This is how I make it, and this recipe has been culled from about five recipes and about 20-30 chili experiences, all of which have resulted in this recipe, which even I won’t follow the next time I make it.

When I learned to cook, and realized that I was fairly proficient at it, I would ask my mom for some of her home recipes, and she would say that she didn’t really have it written down, she just kind of made things up as she went along. This would frustrate me, as at that stage I was a straight by the recipe kind of guy. I had my ultimate revenge on mom with my chili though. She asked me for my chili recipe, and I said that I didn’t really have it written down, but that I just kind of made things up as I went along.

List of ingredients

Produce:

• 1 Bigass or two smaller onions - chopped
• 1 green pepper - chopped
• 1 red pepper - chopped
• 1 cubanelle or sweet Italian pepper – chopped
• 2 habanero peppers – chopped.

These little bastards are scary. If you’re the least bit squeamish about hotness, steer clear of the habanero. There are hotter peppers, but these look so harmless that people tend to overuse them. They have the greatest hot taste, but be very careful when cutting them. If I could ever remember to get rubber gloves, I’d use them to cut up the habanero.

Try to avoid as much contact with skin as possible. It’s not that they sting when you touch them, but if you make the mistake of touching them when you’re cutting them up, then rubbing your eye. It’s all over.

Don’t even think about masturbating until you’ve washed your hands at least ten times. I learned that one the hard way. No pun intended, but it didn’t stay that way for long.

• 2 poblano chilis
• 1 potato cut in half

Cans

• A couple big cans of tomato
• Chopped black Olives
• Mushrooms
• 12 ounces tomato paste
• 2 cans dark red chili beans
• 2 cans black beans
• 1 can garbanzo beans
• 1 can fava beans

These are sometimes hard to find. They taste great, but if you can’t find them it’s no big deal. They have a great, hearty taste, but I throw them in for two completely gratuitous reasons. First, they look really cool in your chili. Second, the name is just so cool. Putting fava beans in your chili makes it sound like you know your shit when it comes to beans.

Meat

2 pounds ground sirloin or chuck

If you don’t mind sacrificing the taste of red meat in your chili, which some people deem essential, you can be a bit health conscious and replace the ground beef with ground turkey. Turkey doesn’t taste as good, but it also absorbs spices really well.

2 pounds hot Italian sausage

If you want it a little less spicy, use 1 pound of mild instead of hot.

Spices

• ½ c chili powder
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp allspice
• 3 tbsp cinnamon
• 6 bay leaves
• 1 tsp cardamom

This stuff is extremely expensive and sometimes hard to find. It’s almost hard to justify spending $8 - $12 for a teaspoon of spice for chili. Once you smell that wonderful smell, you will realize that it was money well spent, and you begin to get creative with this wonderful, but little known spice. Try some in your Bloody Mary mix and you’ll be the hit of the party

• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp salt

Back when I used to fear that sodium would kill me, I’d actually make the chili without salt. It can be done, but then I decided I’d rather take my chances and go with the salt. With all the other stuff in this chili, salt is probably the last thing you’ll need to worry about.

Liquid

• 1 tsp white wine vinegar
• 2 shots mescal tequila - 1 for chili, 1 for cook to drink

Now don’t make the mistake that a lot of people make with tequila. Mescal, as any discerning tequila drinker knows, is a different sort of alcohol altogether. Unlike regular tequila, mescal is brewed from the agave cactus, and the better mescals will even have an agave worm inside them. If you want to freak out your party guests, tell them you cut up the worm and mixed it with the meat. I actually did cut up the worm once. It added to the chili buzz for me, but I never had the heart to tell everyone I put it in. Anyway, Mescal will give your chili a great smoky taste.

½ bottle hearty Canadian, or microbrewed beer

There’s a lot of room for variation here. I like to put in a good dark brew, or for the southwestern traditionalist, you can use Corona or XX. If you don’t have any of those on hand, any generic Canadian beer will fit the bill. Whatever you do, don’t put a generic American beer in. You might as well piss in your chili.

Making the Chili

Even before you start cooking, there is such an impressive array of ingredients that go into this chili that I like to get all the ingredients together and put them out on the dining room table. All the spices, the multicolored peppers, the myriad of cans of beans with funky names, all lined up like football players getting ready for a game

Step 1: Prepping the Produce

Cutting up the chilies and the onions is the funnest part of this step. I clean and chop them before putting them in my little hand chopper. I like the hand chopper because it gives me much more control of the stuff I’m chopping up. It gets really cool when you chop up the onions and the habanero, which I do last because it’s so damn strong. I like to cut the habanero together with the first batch of onion. This time, when I opened the top of the chopper, I got a blast of onion and habanero so strong it stung my eyes.

After the produce is chopped, put it altogether into the big pot, and then dump the meat in. Then, I can think of no way to get closer to your chili, then to mash one or two of your hands right into the pot, and mash the meat and the produce altogether until they’re all thoroughly mashed. It feels really gross, but there is nothing better than reaching a state of oneness with your chili, and far outweighs the risk of botulism inherent in covering your bare hands with raw meat and vegetables.

Next, cook the veggies and the meat together. Mix it well as you cook it, and cook it until you don’t see any pink on the meat. It’s going to have plenty of time to cook more as you go through the process. Carefully drain the meat after cooking.

Step 2: Seasoning

First, add the tomatoes and the tomato paste to the meat and then stir for a long time until everything is coated with the tomato sauce. Then add the spices. I like to smell all the spices before they go in, and I stir the whole thing after I add each ingredient, and smell it as though I could really tell the difference each spice made in the smell.

Next, the funnest part, the liquid ingredients. Add the Worcestershire and white wine vinegar first. Then, pour a shot of the mescal, and drink it yourself. If you like the taste of tequila, you’ll love mescal. If you liked that shot, try another, and then put one in the chili. Then add the beer. If you’re like me, you don’t want a bunch of empty bottles around, so drink the beer you don’t pour into the chili.

Step 3: Cooking

First, bring the pot to a dramatic and messy boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 11/2 to 2 hours. Stir whenever you get a good whiff of it, and although it will be hot, take a taste of it every time you stir it. It just gets better and better.

Next, add the beans, mushrooms and chopped black olives. Add the juice of all the dark beans, and drain the garbanzos, mushrooms and olives. The juice from the beans seems to give the chili a heartier flavor. Cook for another ½ hour to 45 minutes.

After it’s all cooked, you may want to add some more spices, depending on your taste. There are a number of different hot sauces that can be used to make your chili hotter, depending on availability in your area and your passion for hot sauce.

Some of the good nationally available sauces are Red Hot, Scorned Woman Hot Sauce, and Maria’s Habanero Sauce. Use caution with the latter two. I don’t advocate cooking these in your chili, because these are the extreme ingredients that tend to drive the weakling chili eaters into painful fits.

Serving
This is an all-purpose serving chili, and can be served a number of ways. It should always be eaten straight the first time, with some corn bread if you have it. Sharp cheddar or hot jalapeno Monterey Jack are good on top, and look really cool when they’re melted or almost melted.
If you want to make your supply last forever, you can serve the chili over rice, spaghetti, or even a potato. (Sour cream is a nice topping for that one) Another great way to eat chili is to make a chili salad, with crunched up tortilla chips, romaine lettuce, and lots of chili over the top.

Comment!

What do you put in your chili?

What good is “ass-on-fire” chili if you can’t stand to eat it?

Technorati Tags: chili recipe

Filed under: Food on December 16th, 2006