Chili Recipe

My 5 year old daughter loves chili. We ran out yesterday so I taught her how to make it today. Problem is, I never write down the recipe. Hence it is different every time I make it. This one is especially good however, so I wrote it down.

Here it is:

1 Lb cranberry beans or your favorite heirloom bean
Rich beef stock
2 lb high quality ground beef
1 lb ground turkey
1 medium onion, diced
5 cloves garlic
2 serrano chillis
1.5 T ground cumin
1.5 T freshly ground black pepper
1.5 T medium chili powder
1 12 oz can of tomato sauce
Worcestershire sauce
2 T flour
Salt to taste

Wash beans well and soak overnight in twice their volume of water (approximate).

Prepare, beef stock by browning beef bones and boiling in water with onions and a tablespoon of peppercorns all day. Drain and degrease before use.

Bring beans and their soaking water to a boil. Add 1/2 volume of beef stock and return to a boil.

In a separate pan brown beef and turkey 1 lb at a time and add to the boiling beans. Brown beef last so that there is beef fat in the pan for frying the onions, garlic and chillis.

In the beef sautee pan gently fry diced onion, minced garlic and finely chopped serrano chillis (with seeds if you like the heat) until the onions are translucent (about 10 minutes).

Add pepper, cumin and chilli powder to the fried onion mixture. Continue to fry until this becomes somewhat dry. Add to the boiling beans and meat. Deglaze this pan with a cup or so of the boiling liquor in the bean pot and add to the boiling meat and beans.

Add Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce and flour. Mix well to prevent dough balls from forming.

Simmer uncovered until the chili becomes thick and the beans are done.

Add salt to taste after cooking is complete (mine required 4-5 t of salt).

Serve with homebrew and freshly made cornbread.

You may consider posting this in the cooking forum.

I've found ground meats to be the death of chilis, and I'm also sort of a purist and avoid beans, but other than that, your recipe looks tasty. I also use beer as my liquid, and use bacon in mine.

Laurel said:

You may consider posting this in the cooking forum.

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I considered it briefly, but I'm loaded and so it goes in DRMM by default.

So you use no meat and no beans. What's in it besides beer?

I've always used ground meat. This is grass fed, pasture raised dexter beef so it's not like it's the cheap stuff.

What cuts of meat do you use?

i am sure he is using meat. just not ground. i know i have chopped my own chili meat using my food processor. used the cheapest cut i could find. then when i cook chili its slow and low.

I usually use chuck and cut it into centimeter sized pieces. First I fry my bacon (for grease), then the beef in batches, then aromatics, then deglaze with beer and add spices.

Laurel said:

I usually use chuck and cut it into centimeter sized pieces. First I fry my bacon (for grease), then the beef in batches, then aromatics, then deglaze with beer and add spices.

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Sounds like a winner! I'll give that a try with the recipe I posted.

Everything is better with bacon. SWMBO has a 3 lb tub of rendered pork lard in the fridge that fills in nicely as well.