Posted on 10/02/2001 12:48:56 PM PDT by Willie Green
Edited on 05/07/2004 7:12:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Making a great bowl of chili is a personal thing. Given its status as fall's greatest comfort food, that's the way it should be.
Several Free Press staffers, in fact, piped up about their chili preferences after sampling this week's recipes. One boasted that his is the best, bar none. He turned coy, though, when quizzed why, offering only that he uses six kinds of meat and lets it simmer all day.
(Excerpt) Read more at freep.com ...
My dad made his in a huge cast iron vat for Sunday evening church suppers...homemade fried pies for dessert.
This is the one that really worried me.
Lawry's Chili mix as the base
Ground chuck (ya need the fat all)
Stewed tomatoes (canned)
additional chili powder
2 bay leaves
2 beef bullon cubes
onions
cumin (lots of cumin)
Shredded carrots
nutmeg
kidney beans (chili has beans...no debating)
daves insanity sauce (4 drops...but 5 if I'm daring)
crushed red pepper
cayenne pepper
and the thing that will really piss off the purists:
Elbow macaroni
"What's this say? New Yoooork??"
"Get a rope !"
Chili was invented in Texas. These recipes sound way off to me. The best I ever had was at the San Antonio Folk Life Festival. A darkish brown-green, with no beans, it had an incredibly rich flavor and was hot enough to make your ears smoke.
But to each his own. My chili has certainly improved since moving to Houston from Seattle, I can tell you.
BTW, thanks for the break.
I've been trying, for quite some time now, to get my mother to write down recipes for all my favorite foods, this being one of them.
But she has no recipes, everything is committed to memory (a pinch of this, a bit of that....), so I'm down to showing up early enough when we are going over to their house for dinner, watching her, and trying to write the recipe down as she cooks.
With luck, I'll have that one next time she makes it.
Luis
There are many ways to prepare chili, but all of them involve three central ingredients: chilis (in powder form, plus other spices) masa (cornmeal) and meat. The further one strays from this basic recipe, the less one is preparing chili.
Dishes that contain beans are not chili. Chili is a meat dish; the meat provides the protein. Beans are not needed. They are not wanted. They are not chili.
Some chili dishes are served with peeled, stewed tomatoes, onions, cheese, and other additions. While tasty, please keep in mind that these are garnishes, not ingedients; chili as such is not made with any vegetables. Stewed beef with tomatoes, vegetables, etc. is beef stew, not chili.
Chili is a main course, not a topping, garnish, or gravy. Chili should never be served "over" any other food. (Chili dogs are covered with chili sauce, not chili.) People who serve chili over rice are barbarians and should be deported back to the bayous of Louisiana whence they came.
Anyone serving chili over macaroni, spaghetti, or other pasta is a Communist from Russia and should get what the Rosenbergs got.
Poorer people often serve chili made with ground beef. As an economic expedient this is understandable; however, the true chili connosieur knows that real chili is always and only made with sliced chunks of beef, never with ground. Ground beef is too fatty; a bowl of grease with meat in it is not chili.
Chili should never be seasoned after cooking. Tabasco is an excellent condiment, but never put Tabasco in chili (see "deportation to bayou", above).
Chili should be hot enough to make a Texan's eyes water, and should never be served in warm weather. The first day one's breath becomes visible in the air outside one's home is the first day chili can be properly served.
CALIFORNIANS CANNOT MAKE CHILI. PERIOD.
This is the one that really worried me.
Don't let it worry you! That's one thing great about chili, there's a version for almost anyone. Have to watch your cholesterol? Then make the vegetable or veggie and bean types. On the high protein diet and limiting carbohydrates, then prepare an all meat one. Counting calories, stick with all veggies. Need fiber go heavy with the beans then add veggies.
My mother slices chili peppers in her chili. One year she had a terrible head cold and her ears were plugged up. After eating the chili her ears cleared!
Go chili!
You got it. I'm going to Cincinnati tomorrow on vacation and plan to pick up some.
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