The first chili of fall was actually last week, when we had a cool spell and I made chili for HouseGuest KS-, who documented it with her camera so she could make it up in upstate NY.\u00a0\u00a0 It was good, but as always when I haven’t made it for awhile, the next batch is better because I’ve remembered the nuances.\u00a0\u00a0 I make pretty darn decent chili, in a *mostly* traditional way.\u00a0\u00a0 If you don’t eat meat, you will want to skip this.\u00a0 I make beef or venison or mixed chili.\u00a0\u00a0 If you don’t like onions or garlic, this recipe is not for you, either.\u00a0 I made batch #2 yesterday\/today and yes, it was a tad better.<\/p>\n
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Here goes:\u00a0 Elizabeth’s Version of Texas Chili.<\/strong><\/p>\n About 4 pounds chuck roast, as lean as you can find it.\u00a0 The closer you can come to range-fed with minimal or no “finish” the better.\u00a0 Don’t worry about tough; this will take care of it.<\/p>\n 1 pound Owens Country Sausage regular<\/p>\n 2 medium to large onions, white or yellow, diced\u00a0 (Note that onions can be diced ahead, and garlic cloves can be peeled out ahead, stored in the fridge.)<\/p>\n 1 entire head of garlic, cloves popped out and peeled<\/p>\n 2 packages Red Eye chili mix (locally made here; 1 package per 2 pounds beef)\u00a0\u00a0 Red-Eye is not a super-hot mix; if you use a super-hot mix you may not want to use as much Ro-tel (or any).\u00a0 I’d test on a small batch.\u00a0 You can find Red Eye Chili<\/strong> at their website:\u00a0 www.redeyechili.com.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Or the amount of your other favorite chili spice blend\u00a0 that its maker says is right for 4 pounds of beef.<\/p>\n About 40 oz of Original (medium heat) Ro-tel diced tomatoes & green chilis.\u00a0 That’s four 10 oz cans or one 28 oz can and one 10oz.\u00a0 If you’re on the “NOT TOO HOT!” side of the force, use only two 10 oz cans of Ro-tel and two similar cans of small-dice tomatoes.\u00a0 If you want hotter when it’s done, *cautiously* add any pepper source but remember it will heat up as it spreads in the mix.<\/p>\n Optional.\u00a0 If you have a bit of venison (cooked or raw) or venison sausage, you can add this…up to a half pound.\u00a0 More than that, you’ll need to reduce the beef and increase the pork sausage: venison is DRY.<\/p>\n First cut the chuck roast into strips and then pieces for browning.\u00a0 A thick chuck roast benefits from having a cut across the grain after making the strips.\u00a0 They don’t have to be uniform.\u00a0\u00a0 Brown them–at least one surface with real color on it, preferably two.\u00a0 No long cooking, just enough to get brown.\u00a0 I use a nearly dry cast iron skillet\/frying pan on medium or medium high heat, just lightly coated with bacon fat.\u00a0 As soon as browned, drop them in the chili pot and brown the next bunch.\u00a0 After browning, turn heat down to low and dump in the diced onions, stirring so the onion juices pick up the fond of the pan and until they’re translucent and perhaps starting to “golden up.”\u00a0 During this phase you can open the chili blend packets and pour the spices on the meat chunks, moving them around to cover most sides.\u00a0 When the onions are done, put them in the chili pot.\u00a0 Then the Ro-tel tomatoes & green chilis, and put the pork sausage in the frying pan–bring it up a little (not to hot) and break up the sausage\u00a0 as completely as you can.\u00a0 It does not need to “brown,” just turn from pink to gray.\u00a0 While it’s doing that, add water and stir to cover the meat, onions, and Ro-tel and turn its heat on low. When the sausage is broken up and mostly done but not brown, transfer it to the chili pot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Check water level (covering everything but not too deeply)\u00a0 and cover to establish a good simmer.\u00a0 NOT a rolling boil.\u00a0 Now peel out the garlic cloves, trim off that little Somewhere around 4 hours, someone coming in the house will comment “Smells like chili!”\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not ready, drive the hungry off to something else.<\/p>\n Between 4 and 6 hours, some of the meat lumps will begin to “let go” and break up if pressed against the pot side with the edge of a spoon.\u00a0 Not ready, feed them something else.\u00a0 At some point in here it will smell too garlicky.\u00a0 Don’t worry; it’s the garlic cooking and that will fade as the garlic cloves go all velvety-soft.<\/p>\n Somewhere between 8 and 10 hours more meat will yield to a spoon’s edge and some will yield to the back of the spoon, splaying out sideways.\u00a0 When most of the meat lumps are yielding to the back of a spoon, the liquid is visibly full of meat fibers, thickening, take the top off and begin the reduction stage, stirring slowly to encourage the final relaxation of the meat.<\/p>\n Shortly before the chili’s done, it turns fairly quickly from red-brown to brown (a faster color change than before) and thickens markedly but the spoon will not yet stand up.<\/p>\n Final ingredient.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A *pinch* of cocoa (not hot chocolate mix–actual cocoa powder) sprinkled on top and stirred in.\u00a0\u00a0 Mellows the spice mixture, bringing it all together while still spicy and hot (as hot as you asked for.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now test with your kitchen spoon: tip of bowl on bottom of pot, handle up.\u00a0 Will it stand?\u00a0 If it doesn’t, it needs more gentle reduction.\u00a0 If it “almost” stands, or stands then slowly leans over, you’re almost there…only a few minutes.\u00a0\u00a0 When the spoon stands up by itself for a count of 12 (I walk to the kitchen door and back), it’s done.\u00a0\u00a0 My old spoon is probably over 50 years old; it may have been my mother’s, in which case think 50-60 or more.\u00a0 Metal, black plastic handle at the top, round “heavy wire” type stem, metal bowl.\u00a0\u00a0 No guarantees, really, about when YOUR spoon will stand up, given the different lengths, weights, shapes, etc.<\/p>\n If you started your chili in the afternoon or evening, you do not have to stay up all night with it…make sure it’s on a low simmer, cover it, and you can leave it alone overnight.\u00a0\u00a0 If you want it for supper, start it in early morning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first chili of fall was actually last week, when we had a cool spell and I made chili for HouseGuest KS-, who documented it with her camera so she could make it up in upstate NY.\u00a0\u00a0 It was good, but as always when I haven’t made it for awhile, the next batch is better Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beynd-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“woody” tip and drop all the cloves into the chili pot (yes you take the top off to do that…<G>)\u00a0\u00a0 Adjust stove heat so you can have the top just slightly ajar and maintain a gentle simmer.\u00a0 Nothing much changes un how it looks for the first 2-3 hours…check hourly (approx)\u00a0 to be sure the water level doesn’t need adjusting.\u00a0 It shouldn’t if you’ve got the stove at the right temp.<\/p>\n