It has been pretty chilly in SF lately, which had gotten me thinking about making some chili. Now, I grew up in Texas and have eaten a decent amount of chili, but I'm a total novice when it comes to making chili. So I of course went to 2p2 for tips, but came up dry. I couldn't believe there was no great chili thread on 2p2. So here it is, a thread for chili recipes, tips, discussion, etc. Please don't tard it up w/ idiotic one-liners like "I LOVE BEANS IN CHILI" "OH MAN ONLY **** LIKE BEANS IN CHILI" "NO U" etc. Instead, promote your chili platform via recipe, tips, pictures etc.

Chili-lovers,

I will get things started off w/ a pictorial guide to the chili I made tonight. While 2p2 was pretty dry as far as chile recipes, stabn kindly gave me a recipe, plus I checked out Google, Epicurious, and GoodEats for various other ideas. I took a bunch of what sounded good and mashed it all together.

Here's what I started with and approximately how much I used below:

Vegetable Oil (a few tablespoons)

Bell peppers (1 medium, 1 small)
Onions (2 medium, chopped)
Garlic (5 cloves, chopped)

Ground Beef (2.3 lbs, 15% fat)

Jalapeno Peppers (1 chopped)
Serrano Peppers (2 chopped)
Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce (2 chopped)

Red chili flakes (1 tsp)
Black pepper (1 tsp)
Cumin (1 tsp)
Paprika (2 tsp)
Chili Powder (5 tsp)
Sea Salt (2 tsp)
Brown Sugar (2 tsp)

Crushed Tomatoes (28oz can)
Jalapeno Tortilla chips (a couple handfuls, 10-15 chips, crushed)
Chicken Broth (~8oz)
Distilled White Vinegar (couple teaspoons)
[not pictured] Oatmeal Stout Beer (~6oz)

For serving:
Sour Cream
Grated cheddar
Chopped onions

Then I cooked the chopped up onions and peppers in some vegetable oil for 10-15 minutes:

Then I chopped up the garlic, jalapeno, serrano, and chipotle peppers:

Dump those in the pot and cook a couple minutes, mmmm smelling good:


Add the ground beef (will graduate to more advanced meat next time):


Cook ~10 minutes til all the meat is browned:


Drained the meat, then added the spices, salt, sugar and mix it all together for a couple minutes:


Add the can of crushed tomatoes, broth, beer, vinegar, and the crushed chips (Alton Brown suggested that in place of masa harina or cornmeal for a thickening agent) and bring to boil:


Low simmer for about 90 minutes and then let it cool for 15 minutes:


Put some in a bowl:


Add some chopped onions, grated cheddar, sour cream, and a beer:


This turned out pretty amazing. Very well seasoned, and did not taste hot upon first bite. But as I ate it, I realized it had a pretty good heat kick to it, sort of a slow developing heat that doesn't hit you hard right off the bat.

Overall very happy w/ the end result and looking forward to kicking it up a notch by using some fancier meats than just ground beef.

nom nom nom, I haven't made chilli in a long time, and when I did, it was very similar to what you did above. I may be inspired this week to one up you Will post results if I do obv

Damn thats made me hungry.

The Terlingua chili cookoff posts their winning recipes every year and the CASI (chili appreciation society something) has a bunch of winning recipes on their site.

I downloaded a few of them and combined what I liked about each and then experimented.

Now, of course, I need to go buy chili fixins myself for this weekend.

damn please put some of that in a can and mail to me, looks amazing. showing to the wife immediately so she can get to work

wholes foods ftw

El Diablo, that looks very close to the recipe I use though I do things in a slightly different order.

You might want to experiment with just a tiny bit of cinnamon and perhaps instead of using bell peppers, going with poblano.

1 thing I think really adds to any chili recipe is the addition of a good roast cut up into bite sized pieces.

I prefer to use a combo of ground beef and a venison roast. My dad likes to use the opposite.

Another thing I've heard of people doing that I haven't tried yet is to add some of the grease from browning the meat. Several people have told me it adds a little something to the overall flavor.

I'd also suggest adding a little BBQ sauce and/or bourbon. If I make chili and don't add a little of either I can really tell the difference.

I also like to add some vinegar based hot sauce instead of actual vinegar. It adds some extra heat and doesn't just add a vinegar taste. I want spicy chili while other people don't want it that way. If they see a lot of hot peppers in the chili it might turn them off from trying it so I sneak a little extra heat into it with the hot sauce.

edit: Your chili looks good. Prob going to make some this weekend now.

One suggestion is that when you graduate to better meat, brown the meat first, drain and set aside, then saute your veggies, then combine them together. You'll get some added flavor by browning the meat instead of steaming/boiling it.

And reduced fat content as an added benefit.

I dont have a recipe per se, I usually just throw **** together, there is nothing special about the ingredients, but I think the order of cooking is important:

1-2 lbs of high fat ground beef
Carrots
onions
garlic
various peppers from the garden (dried and reg)



cumin, red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, chilli powder, paprika, s/p, onion powder


tomato sauce (I make huge batches and freeze containers during the summer)--basically just garlic, onion sauteed, w/ fresh tomatoes added

sharp cheddar

kidney beans (if i have them, if not whatev)


I always brown the meat first in a 9QT dutch oven, then remove it all, and dump most of the left over fat out, then I saute the veggies in a little of the meat fat, carrots first, then peppers, then onions and garlic until everything is soft and the onions are carmalized ( I use a **** load of onions), then I add the meat back in w/ tomato sauce, and throw the spices in, as I taste; If I have a dark beer on hand Ill add it also.

I also like to add all the cheese in with the chilli near the end and let it all melt down- rather then sprinkling it on after (typically because Ill freeze small tupperwares of the chilli to eat for lunches)

yeah, I definitely brown meat (typically tri tip or stew meat in small cubes) first, remove meat, remove some but not all of the grease in pot. Then I render some bacon, and saute veggies in the mix of 2 fats along with some spices. I find that powdered spices release a lot of flavors when cooked in oil.

I then add a dark beer, let that reduce/evaporate the alchohol, then add other wet ingredients.

That looks amazing. I plan to try out this recipe in the cold months of winter.

Why would you buy specifically high fat meat, only to dump the fat out?

its cheaper, and its better to have too much then too little (I dont dump all of it out)

i love chili but never eat it with a spoon. it is always thrown on top of hot dogs and then covered w/ shredded cheddar. or i top it with a ton of cheddar cheese in a bowl, sometimes some jalapenos and eaten with tortilla chips. as a kid i liked to dip pb sandwiches into it

your chili looks a lot like my moms and therefore delicious if the spice taste is right.

never like noodles in chili

All,

Thanks for the comments/tips!

I made one edit to the post - I did drain the meat after browning before adding the spices.

Things I'm gonna do differently next time:

1) Get some different chunked meat either instead or in combination with the ground beef
2) Brown the meat separately first
3) Poblano peppers
4) Add some bourbon

Things I am considering
1) BBQ sauce - read a lot of pro, lot of con on this one
2) Carrots

I do this for burgers all the time, but never for chilli, but I think next time Im going to grind my own roast for the meat.

El D, I would honestly mix in a bit of celery before I put carrots in.

While a bit of carrot is good in Bolognese sauce, I like to keep the chili flavor profile more Southern US instead of continental Europe thus I would go with trinity vegetables - Onion, pepper, celery instead of Mirepoix vegetables - onion, celery, carrot.

You could try experimenting with a few different onions though. Anything aside from purple onion or vidalia onion should work pretty well. I always liked a mix of spanish onion and green onion.

green onion later in the cooking process or just as a garnish to give a additional complexity.

scallions to garnish when you serve is awesome. more color always makes everything taste better!

Few drops of daves hot sauce goes a long way as well.

Lookin good!

I would literally never put carrots or scallions in my chili. Nor would I delete my posts for disagreeing with someone who posts lol inconsistent ideas, but lol EDF.

A surprising ingredient that works well and that lots of people like is dark chocolate. I have made recipes with cinnamon and dark chocolate and it is an interesting mix. I like mixing multiple different kinds of beans in too.

+1 to adding hot sauce.

hoya and others,

#1: I forgot about chocolate. Chocolate totally makes sense and I definitely plan to add some next time.

#2: Can you guys talk to me about vinegar and hot sauce? I added some vinegar because the good sounding recipes all did. But I'm not totally sure what that did for me. I'm totally open to hot sauce, but I'm not sure what that would do for me if I have a ton of slow simmering peppers in the mix already? Thanks for any/all feedback on this.