Aspies For Freedom

I don't have any clear "recipie" for chili, but this is the way that my dad and I generally make it:

Ingrediants:

Meat: ground beef, stew meat, bacon

Vegstiables: bell peppers (diffrent colors, including red, green, yellow, and orange), celery, onion, beans (two cans, most often chili beans, no baked beans), tomato juice

Spicy ingredants that can be added:

Hot sauce- spiceness varies beteewn brand

Jalopeno pepper- spicy

Habinarro pepper-VERY SPICY


First cook the ground beef in a pot. After it's brown add the stew meat and bacon with paprika and chili powder, then wait for that to brown. Drain all the grease from the pot. Cut the vegstiables and add them. After cooking awhile add the tomato juice. Let it simmer for 30 minutes.

Ground beef is mince to me, stew meat would be a tougher meat that needed stewing to be tender, so if its only cooked for 30 minutes wouldnt it still be tough? Or does stew meat mean something other than stewing steak?

This looks like a kind of stew that I would expect to simmer for hours but of course I don't know what it's supposed to taste like.

Certainly, as Amy says, if you put what is sold in Britain as  "stewing steak" into the mix, half an hour wouldn't be nearly enough to make it tender.

But I can see with these details sorted out, it could all add together to make a rich and satisfying flavour and be a great "winter warmer." -

"Habanero" chiles are known as "Scotch Bonnets" in England, but are not easy to find unless you live in very multi-cultural part of a city.

Stella

Sorry, as I said I don't follow any real reicpie, so parts of this reicpie might not be right.

We like our chili with half ground beef and half TVP  (texturized soy protein).  We found we like white kidney beans much better than the red kidney beans.

My husband detests green bell peppers.  He likes yellow or red ones.

I often add chopped pork to the chili, as well as the peppers and other spices.

Here's a recipe I've made at least a couple times, my friends love it. The only thing of course is if your a bit of a baby about hot stuff you may want to go lighter on the Dave's, even if you follow the recipe it's got a good bite but nothing too rediculous. As far as the garlic and other ingredients, seriously, chop it yourself - for the taste its so worth it. Also be real careful that you do get *lean* beef, last time I had the butcher at the local store kinda BS me on some Angus Beef for this recipe and while the lean beef had turned out real tender and almost fell apart in your mouth the second batch had to cook twice as long to even be chewable and had a real thick layer of fat frothe on it  :neutral: . Anyway:

ARIZONA DESERT CHILI

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 1:15
Categories: Meats

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1 green bell peppers, chopped
3 pounds beef
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon Total Insanity Sauce (or Dave's Gourmet Insanity)
10 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 can beer

* Have been chopped, not ground

Heat oil in a large heavy skillet. Add garlic, onions and green pepper. Saut? until soft, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Add beef and lightly brown on all surfaces. Drain off some of the fat if a lot has accumulated. Lean beef trimmed of all fat should not have an excess amount , however.

Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 1 hour or slightly longer. Put a cover on skillet during cooking time, and slightly tilt it so steam can escape. Check often and stir to prevent sticking. Skim off fat as it rises. Best if allowed to sit, tightly covered, for an hour after cooking is complete.

There are actually a few types of chili.  Old-school chili (chile colorado) has no beans, possibly. Technically, it should be made from shredded meat that has been slowly cooked for a long time.  Serve with rice, tortillas, etc.  This is the ancestor of "chili" as gringos know it.

The direct descendent of old-school chili is "competition chili", aka "Texas Red".  It is rapidly-prepared, using ground meat or very finely cubed "stew meat".  It prohibits the use of "beans, macaroni, or other fillers" is prohibited.

"Vulgar" chili is a more distant relative of chile colorado--a soup/stew made with meat (usually), tomato (usually), beans, and some level of chile-derived spiciness.  It has a great variety in its ingredients, cooking methods, and overall profile.  Some forms are a hamburger/bean soup in a tomato base, over which a homeopathic amount of chile may have once been waved.  To ensure that no sensitive palates are offended by the possible presence of spice, it can be served with macaroni.  My grandmother used to inflict this on us.

Then there is the monstrous abomination of the chili world.  I refer to the thing that ought never be even mentioned in a room where chili once was present.  This abomination is the Cincinnati-style "chili", which is not chili at all.  It is a Greek meat sauce served on spaghetti.

And there's stew chili of course, do you know if that is technically considered an Arizona thing or just a catchy recipe name?

That sounds delicious!

Tim

I hear they use cinnamon in Cincinnati-style chili.

Tim

That's a new one.

Tim

when we make chili we use fry up some hamburger meat

The last time I made chilli con carne I served it in butternut squash halves as edible bowls - an  idea I got from Madeleine Greey's greengrocery handbook Get Fresh!.

I have a new crockpot recipe book.  I am going to try a white chili recipe.  I guess it is called white chili because it has no tomato sauce in it.  It has chicken and white beans in it.