So I cooked up a batch of jeffd’s chili for consumption during the Alamo bowl and found it to be pretty good. It was a bit spicy for my tastes, a bit thin for my tastes, and a bit tomato-ey. Some of that is my fault, the peppers I used were on the small side so I added extra to compensate and my have overcompensated. Also, the amount of meat I had was towards the minimum end of the recommendations and I really think that chili recipe needs more meat. I would recommend using the maximum amount of meat called for or maybe even slightly more.
I still have a few playoff weekends and the superbowl so I’m going to read all the chili recipes in this thread and try another one soon. Anyone else tried some of the recipes from this thread and want to share their results?
I’m going to risk the wrath of the chilli aficionados here, and say that celery makes a great addition to any chilli recipe. It adds a a slightly crunchy texture and a subtle flavour. Yum.
Personally I agree with you. Celery’s good in most stew[ed] type things and is a must in a chili sans? carne (vege chilli) to add some of the bulk missing by the omission of the meat. Baby sweetcorn is also pretty good.
I’m sure Americans would recoil in horror at my mistreatment of what I call chili, but it tends to go down a treat round these parts.
The peppers I’m guessing are regional. I made this back in NJ for the Rutgers bowl game against Arizona (my dad’s a Rutgers alumn, he had all his buddies over to watch it). They didn’t have Serrano peppers, so I just added some jalapenos. Worked OK.
That being said - out here in Washington I can get all the peppers at Safeway, which is a pretty typical grocery store. If your local store doesn’t have them try one of those upscale grocery stores, or some sort of produce store or something.
Nick if you want thicker chili, a) use more meat (meat = good) and b) cook it with the lid off. Also if it was too spicy - did you add the seeds from the peppers? That’s where the majority of the heat comes from.
JD
I don’t think the meat will thicken the sauce that much. I’m probably going to try coating the meat in cornflour or similar next time both to assist in the browning and to get a little flour into the mix to thicken things up.
In terms if the peppers, I did in fact try to exclude the seeds but I wasn’t being too meticulous. Especially with the fiddly small serrano peppers I’m sure plenty of seeds snuck into the final product.
I’m a big wuss when it comes to spicy foods so my complaints about heat should be taken in that context. The chili I made probably wasn’t spicy by the standards most folks would use.
If you do find it too spicy you can always put it on a high heat for a while which starts to break down the stuff that makes it hot. There’s obviously a trade off between reducing the heat and boiling the shit out of everything else, but it does have some effect.
A side of Soured cream is probably your best bet can’t remember what it is, but something in milk blocks the receptors that the capsicum? binds to generating the hot feeling.
Dairy pretty much kills heat dead, so a good glass of milk or some delicious sour cream is helpful when eating anything hot.
And, it needs to be said: Beans should never touch chili. Ever. They have no business being there.
Oh they have business, and it’s called being delicious.
Really, chili with beans and chili sans beans are fundamentally different dishes and should probably have different names to end this silly bean fight forever.
FWIW, I favor beans as well. I like the flavor and texture they give to lots of dishes. But I can understand people who are interested in a meat/pepper/tomato experience not wanting beans in their chili.
If you put beans in it, it becomes a beef stew if you want to get into the nitty gritty.
Beans are one of those things that I can’t tolerate in anything. Bean skin texture is the most abhorrent thing ever, even when their taste is not bad at all, thus refried beans are great but just solid beans, bluh no thanks. No beans in chili.