UPDATE: Chili served up with all the fixin's...
After an hour and half of simmering on the stove, with gentle stirs every once in a while, and requisite tastes for seasoning, the Texas Chili should be...dope. That's some dope Texas Chili - beefy, beanless, spicy chili.
Here's the secret, though, to what truly makes the chili turbo awesome. Make it the night before you plan to serve it. I have no idea about the chemistry involved with letting it sit overnight, but for some reason, Texas Chili tastes about one bazillion times better the day after you make it.
Let it cool on the stove top, then cover it and stick it in the refirgerator until tomorrow.
Then I'll show you how to dress your Texas Chili up for Debutante Ball.
Part 4: Simmer Down!
Once all of the meat has been browned, remove it to a separate plate. It's a wee bit annoying to have to do this, but it's one plate.
Add the 2 chopped onions, chopped garlic and jalapeno peppers to what is presumably the rendered beef fat. If you have drained off the beef fat, use about 2 Tbsp olive oil, health-nut. Cook the vegetables over medium low heat until the onions are translucent and tender, which takes only a few minutes.
Add the browned beef back into the pot, dump in about half the chili powder to start, ground cumin, salt and pepper. Be careful on the salt, because if you plan to use canned beef broth, it might be salty already. Stir to combine, then add the beef broth and canned tomatoes.
Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and let that pot "of red" burble down for about an hour and a half, giving it a stir every once in a while, tasting, and adding more chili powder, salt, and pepper as needed
Part 3: Brown the Beef
Some people are of the belief that the beef must be dredged in flour before browning. Evidently, this helps to create a "crustiness" on the beef and will serve to thicken the chili later. Blasphemy! I know I said that there are no rules in chili, except for the one rule about diced steak and the other rule about no fillers. Flour, to me, counts as a filler.
Simply salt and pepper the diced beef and brown over medium heat in the pot you plan to use to cook the chili. You can add oil first to brown the meat, but even though the meat is lean, it does have some fat, which will be enough to brown the meat.
You can drain off the rendered fat once you're done browning, but I never bother. The fat tastes good.
Part 2: Prepping Everything Else
Before browning the beef, it's a good idea to get all the other ingredients for Texas Chili ready to dump into the pot at once. I am notorious for prepping nothing in advance, and simply mad-dash chopping vegetables, grabbing spices out of the cabinet and opening them with *gasp!* greasy hands.
The thing to achieve here is vegetables that are chopped smaller than the beef so that they almost melt into the chili's "liquid" before the end of cooking. I used 2 large red onions because those are what I already had. Otherwise, use regular onions since they are stronger.
My recipe says to use 8-10 cloves of garlic that are finely minced, but really, my garlic cloves are always enormous, so if you want to use more than 8-10, by all means, do it. If I hadn't run out of garlic, I probably would have used a whole damn bulb.
Now a lot of recipes call for fresh jalapenos or serrano chiles. Whatever. I prefer the pickled jalapenos because I'm lazy. They've already got a bit of acid and salt from the pickling brine they were in, so I don't have to worry about either of those elements later.
As far as spices go, have about 1 c. of chili powder ready (ground chiles, ground red pepper and ground oregano, in your preferred ratio) as well as 4-5 Tbsp. cumin, more if your chili powder doesn't include it.
Part 1: Dicing Beef
Last week, Sarah Gilbert showed us how she sniffed out the secret of Nick's Coney Island Chili. I'm no food sleuth, but I do love chili, and was motivated to make my Texas Chili.
Obviously, there are no "rules" in chili. I think chili started as a big old pot of "stuff" - whatever meat and vegetables were around, tossed into a pot and cooked until the cows came home. However, there are a few things that make a Texas Chili, well, Texas. It uses diced steak or other cut of meat, not ground beef; it's fairly spicy, and there are absolutely no beans. None. Never. Otherwise it's just plain old chili.
This isn't a giant pot of chili - just enough for a few friends. I'm starting my chili with about 2 lbs. lean chuck, diced. The rest of the ingredients are:
- 2 large onions, chopped
- 8-10 cloves finely minced garlic
- a handful of jalapenos, chopped
- 1 cup beef broth
- 1 15 oz. can plum tomatoes, crushed or chopped
- ground cumin
- your favorite chili powder (which probably already has cumin)
- salt/pepper
That's it. Once the beef is prepped, we're off to San Antonio...
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