I often say that eggnog was the first thing I ever cooked. That’s not quite true. Alton Brown’s raw eggnog recipe sparked my desire to cook well, and to really understand the science and the techniques behind good cooking. Chili isn’t the first thing I cooked, either, but it is the first recipe I made up after I moved out from my parents’ house, post-college, and had my own apartment and kitchen, well, I rented in what was basically the projects, sharing a blast-furnace hot apartment with my friend and roommate Nate). I gained a lot of confidence in the kitchen making endless variations on chili con carne—always with beans; sorry purists!—and never with a real recipe.
Chili con Carne
At the time, I didn’t know how to cook much outside of Tuna Helper, but I had an idea, probably sparked by living near a Chili’s, that I should make chili. I didn’t know the first thing about what it was, so I bought some canned beans, canned tomatoes, chili powder, and fresh peppers and onions, threw them all into a pot, and called it chili. Nate was a vegetarian, which explains why there was no meat in it. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that beans are considered unauthentic (but, to some like me, delicious) in chili.
In my opinion, chili is more of a process than a recipe. That said, I always use the same basic ingredients, and experiment with the spices. I never measure anything, so this is not a true recipe. It’s more a guideline for making all sorts of different kinds of chili with beans.
Ingredients
Meat
- 1 pound ground beef (beef is far better tasting in this dish than chicken or turkey)
Vegetables
- 1 large red onion, sliced
- 2-3 bell peppers, any color, sliced into 2-inch segments
- 1-2 jalepeno peppers (or chipotle peppers), seeds removed and minced (optional)
- 1 16-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
- 1 16-oz can red or pink kidney beans, rinsed and drained
- 2 16-oz cans diced tomatoes, drained
Liquids
- 1 12-oz bottle of beer
- 1 12-oz can of beef broth
Dry Ingredients (Thickeners, Seasoning and Spices)
- 1-2 cups of flour or, even better, cornstarch
- 3 tbsp chili powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp cilantro
- 1-3 tsp adobo sauce (optional)
- 1 tbsp cocoa powder, to make it into a mole-type dish (optional)
- pinch of kosher salt
Technique
- Brown the ground beef. It doesn’t have to be fully cooked, because it’s going to sit in a hot pot for hours. You want to brown it to enhance the flavor of the beef, thanks to the Maillard reaction, and to get rid of the fat. Drain the beef and put it aside.
- Chop all the vegetables into uniform pieces, and throw them into the crock pot. I like to chop everything into 2-inch rectangular slices, about 1/4″ thick.
- Smash the garlic and throw it into the pot.
- Dump the ground meat on top of the vegetables, and mix the meat and vegetables together until things are somewhat evenly distributed.
- Mix the liquids and dry goods together to form a slurry. In other words, pour the beer (important!) and beef broth into a bowl, and mix in the chili powder, cumin, cilantro, flour, salt (optional), black pepper, red pepper, and adobo sauce (optional), cocoa powder (optional).
- Cook in the slow cooker on low for at least 4 hours, preferably 6-8 hours.
- When the cooking time is done, shut off the slow cooker and allow the chili to cool down a little before serving. The chili will thicken as it cools.
- Serve on top of rice (yellow saffron rice and brown rice are best), spaghetti (if you are from Cincinnati), over French fries, or in a bowl. You may top with sour cream and cheddar cheese. If you eat it in a bowl, rye bread is an exceptional side.
