First things first. As you may or may not have read on some of the various blogs in our fair city, I am making chili and selling it at the 3rd Ward Craftstraviganza this Sunday. Because I was alerted that some people might have gotten the wrong idea about what this thing was from reading the daily candy or something: I am making chili, not the Diner or Marlow and Sons. Clear? Yeesh.
Anyway, chili is like risotto or some other thing that is supposed to be super-hard to make well but really is stupid easy, so long as you abide by the Five Pillars of Chili:
1) The red color in your chili should come from dried chiles (pasilla and guajillo are my faves with a bit of puya) that have been de-seeded, soaked in hot water and then puréed with their boiling liquid and maybe some garlic. Powders? Non! They make the chili too spicy long before they give it the depth of flavor you get from the paste of a shit-ton of dried chiles.
2) Cumin is important. Toast it whole and grind it for best results. Don't go crazy with it.
3) No black beans. Black beans are stupid and they make your chili go from a fetching bright meaty red to a dried blood band-aid color.
4) No tomatoes. Unless you need the acid from the tomatoes to balance a particularly greasy grind of meat I would stay away from them.
5) Cornmeal. It seems like cheating to thicken chili with corn meal but what it really does is give your chili a texture that is so round and perfect that you would swear it's fake.
Friday, December 05, 2008
A Few Thoughts on Chili
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6 comments:
@ the cornmeal advice:
Your chili thoughts seem to come from a purist angle. I'm curious as to why you're not a masa harina advocate? Also, you seem to be an Alton Brown fan- what do you think of his use of tortilla chips (broken up) to thicken chili? It works for me, though I'm not a purist and have never used cornmeal.
That's what I get for being from Ohio. Jesus Christ I hate being in the middle of nowhere...
No black beans? How about NO BEANS, PERIOD? This would be because chili DOES NOT HAVE BEANS.
Recommend "A Bowl of Red" by Frank X. Tolbert
Otherwise, excellent post.
Huh, weird.
One person telling me I am a purist and another saying that I am not pure enough.
Ultimately if you want to put corn chips or owl dung in your fucking chili who am I to say shit about it really?
Ditto to all those bean haters out there.
I really don't care that much about what your opinions are about chili I'm just glad that you HAVE opinions about chili.
The point of this post was just to steer people away from bad ideas and toward good ideas enough to be able to make a pretty OK bowl of chili and take it from there with the forming of opinions about chili.
As for beans you're right, they do all pretty much suck because they have a generally whack texture in the context of the chili. I like to put white hominy in my chili because the texture is better and it contributes something to the flavor in a positive way.
Don't worry, no matter how hardcore purist you are about chili, someone will always crap on you and enlighten you about how they are much more hardcore and purist. Besides, I got tired of making beanless chili and having to defend it to the normal people about "real" chili this and that. Explaining it makes me sound like a smug a-hole.
Thus, I gave up on it. I use black beans (but I cook them separately so they don't darken up the chili too much with black goo). I use chili powder. I use a little tomato. I just use proper chef technique to maximize flavor (searing the beef properly is a good start) and braise for tenderness. Oh, and I thicken with yellow corn flour, not meal.
I'm Canadian. No matter what I do my chili will be crap to a proper suthern' redneck, hyuk.
im on the no tomatoes in chili wagon , no beans too...wanna share a recipe?-amy
OK to post recipes here? Or is that too pretentious?
Here's a classic chili con carne recipe.
Frank X. Tolbert's Bowl of Red
Stolen out of "Texas Highways Magazine" (early 1970s)
* 9x Ancho Chili Pods
--- "man cooking" rules apply: I use 12-18x pods
* 3.5 lbs lean chuck, Chili grind or bite-sized pieces
* 1 TBS ground oregano
* 1 TBS ground cumin seed
* 1 TBS Salt
* 1 TBS Cayenne
* 1 TBS Tabasco
* 4 cloves (or more) squeezed garlic
--- 2 cloves is good, but I like 4
* 2 Heaping TBS Masa Harina (or cornmeal)
* cooking oil
Ancho Chili Prep
* Wash and remove stems and seeds
* boil 30 minutes
* chop or grind
* Save water to add to meat
Chili
* Sear meat in a small amount of cooking oil
--- Sear only -- no need to fully cook.
--- Probably best to do in two batches
* Put in big pot with peppers and enough liquid to cover the meat
--- Probably should drain meat first
* simmer 30 minutes
* add rest of ingredients, except for masa
--- Hold off some of the salt -- don't use the entire amount
* simmer another 45 minutes
--- add more liquid or water as needed
* Skim grease
* Mix in masa
--- May omit some or all of the masa, depending on consistency of the chili
* simmer another 30 minutes
* Taste for seasoning
--- Add more ground ancho pepper if desired
--- substitute one heaping TBS chili powder if not using anchos (or if you run out)
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