Cooking Palooza: Chili Con Carne ~ AKA Old School Chili

 

While it may be August and in the midst of the dog days of summer (at least in this hemisphere), my taste buds were hankering for some chili ~ not some ground beef chili that's easy to stuff into a can and then heat up, but some honest to goodness chili con carne. And the best place to go for a recipe that's guaranteed to be the bomb is Chili Pepper Madness. I've never had a single fail with Mike Hultquist's recipes!

Whenever preparing a dish with multiple steps, it's always a good thing to do your prep first. (It's all part of what the French call "mise en place.") After all, you don't want to be at a critical point in the recipe, where timing is important, only to realize that you need to finely mince ten cloves of garlic.

(I still had my gloves on from chopping up the hot peppers earlier.)

(Dang it! I didn't have any ground pepper! So I had to go "old school" with a mortar and pestle.)

The beauty of this recipe is that it gets its flavor not from chili powder, but from actual peppers. The key to flavor lies in the dried guarillo and ancho peppers that have been lightly toasted, then soaked in hot water, and then processed in the food processor with some of the soaking water.

While the peppers were soaking, I cut up the boneless chuck into small bite-sized pieces, and added the seasoning as per the recipe. However, instead of adding regular paprika, I decided to use smoked paprika instead, as I love its smoky flavor, and I thought that would work well with this recipe. I also omitted the brown sugar, as I try to avoid any kind of sweeteners (though I am not always successful).

In addition to the jalapenos and onion, I also included a couple of habaneros (because I like to make it rain) and three hatch pepper (because it's hatch season in these here parts). 

All the meat, onions, and peppers get thrown into a large pot and browned for six or seven minutes, after which I add the garlic and cook a minute more.

Remember those dried peppers that I toasted, soaked, and processed? Well, this is where they come in! 

Bring on the flavor!

After cooking this mix for five minute comes the next step ~ adding the beef broth. In this case, I used my own homemade and heavily collagenated bone broth that I made from the collection of beef and pork bones that had been taking up space in the freezer. I only added about half a quart, as I did not want this chili to be too soupy.

At this point, reduce the heat and allow this beast to simmer for a couple of hours. 

Believe me, once you give this a taste, you'll never want to go back to ground beef chili in a can!