Don’t listen to these knucklehead chili snobs! I’ll help ya! :)
In a heavy-bottomed pot, fry up a pound of bacon. Drain the fat, crumble the bacon when cooled and set aside.
In the same pot fry up a pound of ground beef (or ground venison or ground wild turkey) and a chopped up yellow onion. Drain the fat.
Add the bacon back to the beef, then use a packet of a mild chili blend dry mix you can find at any grocery store. Follow the directions on the package and add as many cans of beans and chopped tomatoes as the packet of seasonings calls for. Where it calls for water, use some of the tomato juice from the drained tomatoes and a can of cheap beer. (The alcohol cooks out, the flavor stays.)
Heat it through, then throw it in your crockpot. (Of course, you can double this recipe if you need more.)
Make sure you have a ladle with your crockpot, and some serving bowls of some sort (styrofoam works best for chili) and sturdy spoons. Have three other bowls near your crockpot filled with shredded sharp cheddar cheese, chopped onion and sliced jalapeno peppers (from a jar.) Also, a bottle of Hot Sauce (Tobasco Brand is fine, buy the Green Sauce if you want to be “fancy.”)
People can then add more onion, hot sauce and peppers to the chili if they want to. Everyone will most likely add the cheese on top. :)
This is how I serve it when we have Green Bay Packer football parties over here. There’s never a drop left and it’s mild enough for the kids to eat, and the adults can “hot it up” as they see fit.
P.S. The reserved fat goes on the hunting dogs kibble; waste not, want not. :)
I’m not even going to comment on that travesty that you are calling chili.....
Your recipe sounds excellent, as do your serving suggestions.
At a big chili cook-off at the office a long time ago, the winner was a gal who had never made chili before and had gone to the grocery, bought a little packet of McCormick’s chili seasoning, and followed the recipe on it. Ha!
Well ... I don’t have a recipe for crock pot chili though I suppose the one I make on the stove could work — ground beef, onion, drained kidney beans, tomato juice, chili powder, and salt and pepper.