The Great Chili Debate Post Your Favorite Recipe

Discussion in 'Recipes' started by Faye Fox, Sep 11, 2021.

  1. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    Let's get out the ingredients and start the great SOC chili rumble. What makes a great chili in your opinion? Do you like it spicy or bland? Do you include beans or are you an advocate of just meat? Please share your recipe and describe the taste best you can.

    I love making chili and once loved entering the competitions. Here is my one and only winning recipe. I love that it has a medium spicy zing and a hint of mustard that with the white pepper really makes for a comforting meal. The beans help add volume and help to fill hungry stomachs. I have made it with just meat and it is just as good. I have made it a few times as a hearty and great social meal after a day of riding rounding up range cattle. Taste best if served from a chuckwagon, but still great for an apartment patio in the city.

    Faye’s Rockin Double F Ranch Roundup Chili

    Ingredients

    1 32oz can pinto beans
    2 lb well-marbled chuck steak
    1 32 oz cans of tomato sauce
    1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes
    1 large sweet yellow onion
    2 garlic cloves
    2 tablespoons chili powder
    1/8 tsp white pepper
    2 tbsp yellow mustard
    1 tbsp olive oil
    1 7 oz can hot tomato sauce (optional)
    1/2 tsp Spanish hot paprika (optional)

    Feeds 2 to 4 adults

    Preparation

    Cut steak into ½” cubes. Leave all the fat. Rub olive oil around in the skillet. Season meat cubes with your favorite steak seasoning and brown. Dice up the onion and garlic. Add to skillet and sauté for a few minutes. Dump all the contents of the skillet into a 4 qt pot. Add the tomato sauce, beans, tomatoes, chili powder, white pepper, and yellow mustard. Stir up, add water or more tomato sauce to get the consistency you desire and put on medium until it starts to simmer, and then put heat on low. Sample liquid for taste and add salt, more chili powder, and hot pepper sauce if desired, but add all these in small amounts, stir and taste. I would usually make two pots of chili, one with hot sauce and one mild. Stir up and leave on low for several hours. I always started early so it could cook for 10 hours. Be sure to lid the pot and watch liquid level although on low it should go all day without much loss. If you cannot attend it, just add a bit more water and forget about it until dinner time. I have a 16 qt pot that I have used and just multiplied all the ingredients by 4 and it came out great for filling 12 very large bowls. Serve with hot oven-fresh cornbread and lots of real butter.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 11, 2021
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  2. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I will cook anything, from the most basic to the most complex. Chili is my culinary Achilles heel. I'll Watch this thread and maybe pick up some pointers.

    Besides, I want to see people throw Beans/No Beans at each other.
     
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  3. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    Chili, yeah. My recipe is quite simple but can be very hearty.

    2 cans of kidney beans (red or dark red)
    2 pounds of ground beef or chuck (I haven't seen any ground chuck since COVID)
    Oregano
    Garlic salt
    Pepper
    Chili powder
    1 12 oz. can Tomato paste
    1 small can of diced tomatoes, drained (optional)
    Onion chopped
    Green or Red bell pepper chopped
    Thin spaghetti (optional)

    Ritz crackers a must have for me* Hot Water cakes * buttered garlic bread

    Brown meat, onions, bell peppers in large skillet. Add tomato paste then equal amounts of water stirring to a saucy consistency. Season to desired taste with oregano, garlic salt, and pepper. Drain mixture.

    In large pot empty kidney beans with equal amounts of water using can for measuring and bring to boil about 10-15 minutes. Add meat mixture, tomatoes and stir under low to medium heat. Add chili powder to desired level of spicyness.

    Optional: Spaghetti is cook as usual, lightly rinsed and drained. Should still retain heat after rinsing. Spaghetti can be stirred in with meat mixture or the meat mixture as a topping over the spaghetti.

    Note: If you like the meat mixture thinner you can add more water and re season to desired taste.

    This would serve at least four but with me and Johnny it won't least the day, lol.
     
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  4. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    Thanks, @Von Jones My folks loved to use kidney beans (they grew them) in their chili claiming they were less gaseous and more filling. It was great chili and yours sounds tasty and a good comfort meal. I love Ritz crackers, but I always have to have cornbread smeared with butter with my homemade chili. Sometimes with canned chili, I crumble up a handful of Ritz crackers in it and add some shredded cheddar cheese to it.
     
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  5. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    I have made chili with both pinto beans and red kidney beans, and I like it either way, but think that i prefer it made with the dark red kidney beans because of the color it adds to the chili.
    My grandma Bailey always made fresh cornbread to go with beans , any kind of beans; but usually just plain navy beans with a little bit of bacon cooked into it.
    I don’t remember her ever making chili, and I think that she didn’t like spicy foods.
    I do not have any special recipe, I just start looking and putting things into the pot and use whatever I have that seems like it would work; but I do like cornbread with the chili. Also, sourdough rolls are wonderful with homemade chili.
     
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  6. Ed Wilson

    Ed Wilson Veteran Member
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    I don’t know how to make chili but I know what I like. The beef has to be lean so the chili is not swimming in fat. I like spicy and hot, but not too hot. I prefer eating it alone with no crackers or anything else because you don’t get the true flavor of the chili.
     
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  7. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    Hot water cakes are fried cornbread. Johnny loves shredded cheese with his chili. Sometimey for me. As for the kidney beans I have met a 'less' gassy bean in my lifetime. but I have read of ways to cut don't the gas. One which I use mostly is a warm glass of water and a couple of tablespoons of baking soda. It works for me.
     
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  8. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    My 3 Church Charge held an annual Chili Cooking Contest. The entire community was invited to attend and submit an entry. We did lots of stuff like that so people in this rural community would have a casual evening out breaking bread and socializing with each other.

    It was fun. We had a panel of judges (who were prohibited from being entrants) who chose the winners, and there was a "People's Choice" award that was chosen by all attendees, entrants and otherwise. Folks brought in cornbread and veggie dips. We'd make hot dogs for those who wanted chili dogs. You got to eat some really great chili made by some really good cooks and visit with non-churchgoers you'd only see at these events.

    I took 3rd place the first year (2015.) While no one disclosed their recipes (I still want the one for "Slap Yo' Mama" chili), at the last contest, the winner told me his "recipe" was Burger+Canned Beans+Chili-O seasoning!!! Talk about minimalist.
     
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  9. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    I've been to a couple of County Fair Chili Cookoffs. Had no idea that the tender meat in one was actually rattlesnake. Really thought it was hamburger, that is, until the cook took me behind where he had been cooking and showed me the rattlesnake skin he had laid out on a board.

    We don't make chili, we buy it in a can..........without beans.
     
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  10. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    There was a hole-in-the-wall bar I used to go to that calls their chili-topped spaghetti "Chili Macs," although the internet says that the dish is called Cincinnati Chili. It's a very tasty combination. I really like it.
     
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  11. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    That is exactly what my folks did. The soda really makes a big difference. I will have to check out making hot water cakes.
     
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