Fun Stuff > CHATTER
A Cooking Thread?
Orkboy:
I didn't see a thread about cooking that wasn't old and dead, so here. Post cooking stuff. Or don't, I'm not the boss of you.
My chili recipe
AKA: All Hail to the Drinking Man
WARNING: NOT VEGETARIAN. CONTAINS TASTY DEAD ANIMALS.
Chili is not an exact science, so there's a lot of room to customize. I'll discuss different options in each step, and tell you what I prefer and why.
Ingredients:
Meat - 1 lbs
Beans - 1 lbs
Tomatoes - 1 or 2 decent-sized tomatoes, or the equivalent canned. Three if you want sweeter chili
Onions - more is better. One baseball-sized one should do
Garlic
Pepper/peppers
Salt
Cumin
Misc spices
Booze of your choice
(click to show/hide) Meat: Beef is best, but pork also works. Any red meat should do fine. There are, however, a few things to remember. Pork has to be thoroughly cooked BEFORE adding it to the stew pot. Beef just has to be browned, but pork cooks at a higher temperature. The single most important rule is this: NO ground meat. Seriously. You lose flavor and texture using ground meat of any kind. I prefer to buy either chopped-up cheap stew meat or whatever cut of beef is on sale and then chop it myself. I don't mind bloody hands, but if you do, then get the pre-cut stuff. It's labeled as "stew meat" at my grocery store, so look for that. The cheap meat that's tough is perfectly fine. Chili was actually developed as a way to make the tough, nearly-unchewable cuts of meat edible and tasty.
I've had good results mixing kinds of meat. I tried a beef/ham hock/bacon batch of chili that turned out well. Experiment, and remember what works.
Beans: Pinto beans are traditional, but anything except black beans works. Black beans are a little heavy on flavor and tend to overwhelm everything else. Canned or dry both work fine. You don't need to pre-soak dry beans if you follow my directions on cooking time, but remember to wash then and sort through for bad beans and small rocks. Not kidding. Dry beans often have small rocks in there that make it through the packaging machines.
Tomatoes: Canned, whole, paste, diced, crushed, pretty much anything works. I personally don't like canned tomato sauce, and if you use fresh tomatoes, peel them first. Blanching them makes them easier to peel. That's where you boil them really quick and then drop them in ice water to stop the cooking. It makes the skins kinda wrinkle and separate. My personal preference is for fresh tomatoes, but tomato paste brings a ton of flavor. Canned diced tomatoes usually have this calcium stuff added to make them keep their shape, which is kinda gross if you think about it.
Onions: White or yellow are best. It's really hard to have too much onion, and really easy to not have enough.
Prep time: Maybe 30 minutes, depending on your ingredient choices.
Cook time: At least 4 hours. For good results, 6 hours. For best results, 8 hours. I dare you to try 24 hours.
* Chop everything. Onions, tomatoes, meat, everything that can be chopped must be chopped.
* Get out your trusty Bigass Stew Pot (hereafter referred to as BSP). The meat you chose should be in bite-sized pieces, either because you bought it that way or because you have a knife. Toss it in, and brown the meat. Pork has to cook more thoroughly, but I use beef, and it just needs to be browned. If you picked hamburger, slap yourself and start over. Hamburger is not the right choice for chili. hamburger is for hamburgers. And meatloaf. But not chili.
* Have some of your tasty booze. I like Newcastle Brown Ale. Shiner Bock is also good.
* Once the meat is browned, toss the onions, beans, tomatoes into the BSP, and add enough water to cover everything. Don't drain the meat. All that juice is delicious. Bring it to a boil.
* This will take a while. Have some more of your tasty booze.
* After everything has boiled, reduce the heat to a simmer, and bust out the spices. The only spices you need are salt, some kind of chili pepper, garlic, and cumin. I use a teaspoon of ground cumin, which is responsible for that distinct chili taste that's so hard to describe, about half a tablespoon of various powdered chilies, and a couple cloves of garlic. The little cloves, not the bulb. I had a friend use a whole bulb of garlic cuz he thought that's what I meant. We were vampire-resistant for weeks.
Your options for chilies are wide and varied. Chili powder is fine, but if you use it, add other stuff to personalize it a bit. I use jalapeno powder, habanero powder, ghost pepper powder (just a little), cayenne pepper, and black pepper. When I can get them, I'll use fresh jalapenos which I chop myself, but if you do this, for the love of dog, wash your hands very thoroughly before you touch anything. The oils the peppers leave on your hands will burn your eyes, your skin, and your loved ones. Another excellent spice option is bell peppers. Anything but green. I find that the green ones taste a little grassy. I like to mix red, yellow, and orange. It creates a kind of fruity heat. Feel free to make a sassy gay joke here, but it had better be really sassy.
* Allow everything to simmer with the lid on for a few hours. Stir the BSP every 30-45 minutes, and be sure to scrape the bottom to prevent anything from burning. If you've had enough booze, you may want to cackle and pretend to be a witch stirring a cauldron. Feel free. If not, have some more tasty, tasty booze. Add more water if it's in danger of drying out. If you used dry beans without pre-soaking them, it'll probably need more water.
* After a few hours, all the flavors have started to blend nicely. Taste some of the broth and decide how to adjust the seasoning. I usually end up adding more of everything at this step. I season lightly at first, because you can add more if it's not enough, but you can't take it back out if it's too much. Once it tastes about right, put the lid back on and let it finish cooking. We want 6-8 hours of total simmer time, so be patient. Remember to stir occasionally. Some stoves seem prone to burning your precious chili. I feel like electric stoves are worse about it, but I'm not sure.
Important Note: Some of you are probably wondering about the long cook time. The reason for this is so that the connective tissue in the meat can break down and escape into the broth. When we finish, what started as tough chunks of beef will have a texture similar to that of pulled pork, and this is why. The melted connective tissue also creates the sort of heartiness that Japanese cooking calls kokumi. It's hard to describe, but it's worth it when just the broth has enough heartiness to it to be filling.
* After everything has cooked, we reach my favorite step. Add booze. Allow to cook without the lid for about 10-30 minutes.
I usually add beer, because that's what I drink. Not the fizzy yellow pisswater that many people drink, and not the bitter German beers either. The best beer for chili has color and flavor, but isn't too thick or bitter. I have also tried bourbon, whiskey, vodka, and honey bourbon. Different kind of booze will have different effects, but generally, the flavor will remain while the alcohol cooks out. While vodka doesn't have any real flavor on its own, it lends a very subtle kind of clear-palate kind of feeling to the chili. I would imagine that red wine would work well, but the sweet stuff like cider seems like it would detract from the flavor of the chili.
* Turn off the heat, and let the chili sit. I let it sit long enough to make rice. This lets the flavors finish mingling, and lets the chili cool enough to eat, and I like my chili over rice.
* Eat delicious chili. Have some more tasty booze while you eat.
Orkboy:
Guess I should have looked in the less logical place, outside of the Make board. Why didn't it come up when I did a forum search, though?
Barmymoo:
Because the search tool is borked. I shall merge your thread into the other thread, rather like folding in butter and sugar.
Your chilli recipe sounds good (I'd sub in a vegan alternative for the meat, but that's easy with chilli!) but it is lacking three or four squares of dark chocolate or two teaspoons of cocoa powder.
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 30 Jul 2014, 14:00 ---Because the search tool is borked.
--- End quote ---
If you click the Search button in the menu, rather than using the displayed search box, you will now get the advanced search form (it was an option you had to click through to - I've now made it default), in which you can specify to search in specific sections of the forum, and/or for specific users' posts. This takes a lot of load off the search engine and works much better in many cases.
I intend to add an index to the database shortly which would make a huge difference, but first need to confirm that the server resource for that is available.
lepetitfromage:
Your recipe sounds delightful and I enjoyed your delivery as well :-) I could visualize each step.
I usually make my chili with ground beef because I'm impatient but I'm thinking of going with a nice cheap cut next time now that I know I can (and should). Plus, ground beef has gotten ridiculously expensive!!
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