A bowl of red

OK, so three rapid fire posts and then nothing for a week. Well, a guy’s gotta work, and a guy’s gotta find proper blog fodder. My adoring wife/business partner/harshest critic got a hankering for chili yesterday; the light bulb came on in my head, my toy camera has a new rubber band, and I can bring you all more food that takes forever to cook.

Thankfully, I can draw no references from Thomas Keller in the world of chili. Although Friday night I did learn of his favorite Bay Area wine shop, but I’m not telling where it is.

Everybody’s got his or her favorite type of chili. The Airstream from Ohio, Texas, beans, no beans, hamburger, the list goes on. I like a Texas style chili, but I have to have beans, which could get me shot in some locales. 8 years ago, I’d never tried to make chili. I somehow thought of it as beneath me. What the hell was I thinking? I love chili, why should it be beneath me to make it? One day I took stock of my favorite flavors, consulted my father in law (who, according to my wife, made the greatest chili known to man), found that my ideas were on the right track, and set to work. The result needed little to no refinement.

There are four components to the chili that I make; meat, vegetables, beans, and seasonings. First for the beans. Never in my life have I had the forethought that I might be making chili the next day. Consequently, I never have beans soaked before I get the chili bug. Soaking the beans softens the beans and removes acids that cause the rather unpleasant side effects of consuming large quantities of legumes. To get around my lack of planning, I use the quick soak method. I put ½ a pound of beans in 2 quarts of water with a teaspoon of baking soda and bring them to a boil. As soon as they boil, I turn the heat off and let them soak for an hour. The baking soda counters the lime quotient of our local water. In not using the baking soda, I’ve cooked beans for 2 days without them getting soft.

Beans soaking, time for the meat. I used about 2 pounds of beef shoulder. Use any cut of beef that’s suitable for braising. I cleaned the shoulder and cut it into roughly ¾ inch cubes.


Next come the seasonings. In a rough approximation of a dry rub, I coated the meat well with chili powder, oregano, cumin, ground pasilla chiles, salt, and fresh ground black pepper. Normally, you don’t want to salt meat too early, because salt draws water from the meat, making it dry and tough. In this case, the meat is only going to sit as long as it takes me to cut my veggies.

For veggies, I use one green bell pepper, one medium onion, about 5-6 garlic cloves, 2 jalapeno peppers - with seeds, and two Serrano peppers – with the seeds and membranes removed (I try to keep the heat factor down to a point where my wife finds it still edible, but I want the flavors of the two chiles). Dice all of these up, put them in a bowl, and set them aside until needed.


I put a large pot on medium heat (about 6 on my electric stove) and added a film of canola oil. You don’t have to specifically use canola oil, but you do need some type of oil, and canola is cheap, has a pretty neutral flavor, and doesn’t smoke at such a low temperature as olive oil. Working in small batches, I added my beef to the pot and browned it well on all sides. Remove the meat as it’s done, and repeat. See the pork tenderloin post for why we brown the meat and why we work in small batches.

After the meat is browned and removed from the pot, add the veggies. Stir them around and scrape up all of the lovely brown bits off of the bottom of the pan. That right there is flavor, and you don’t want to waste it. If you want to know why you can’t add the veggies with the meat, you didn’t read the pork tenderloin post, did you?

At this point we can add the meat back to the pan along with the beans, a 28-ounce can of (good) tomato puree, and 2 quarts of beef stock, about ½ a bottle of Miller High life does well, too. It doesn’t take too much imagination to know what I do with the other ½ bottle. Flavoring this lovely broth is a process. At this point, add some oregano, chiles, chili powder, salt, pepper, and cumin. Let your individual taste guide you in how much of each, I can’t tell you exactly how much, because you might like a different amount of each flavor. What is important is that you add these ingredients in 3 different batches; once when you put the sauce together, once about 2 hours into cooking, and once about 30 minutes before the chili is done. Why? Complexity of flavors. As you add the seasonings and let them cook in, the seasonings go through physical changes and become part of the sauce. By adding them at 3 different points, you get the flavors of the seasonings at 3 different stages of cooking. If you want a flat tasting chili, season it once and call it good. If you want nice, sensuous, complex chili, put in the extra work.

Bring the pot up to a simmer, about 2-3 on my electric stove, but do not let it boil. Chili is essentially a stew; a braise. In braising, we want to gently simmer the meat in order to make it tender, flavorful, and moist. Boiling will make the meat tough, dry, and chewy. Simmer equals sexy; Angelina Jolie on your plate. Boiling equals all of the lust inducing charisma of Larry the Cable Guy. Your choice, your kink. Let this simmer for two hours before adding the second dose of seasoning.

About two hours after the second round of seasoning, check the texture of your meat. It should be pretty close to falling apart tender. Add your third round of seasoning and patiently wait for about 30 minutes. The sauce should be rich and thick (something that’s helped by the starches in the beans, so take that, bean hating chili purists) and almost brown, with an orange tint. At this point, you can serve it with your favorite accoutrements. I highly advise several cold bottles of beer as one of those accessories. I realize that I should have a pic of the finished product, but I ated it.