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Monday, 9 February 2015

Chili.....................from Rico

To have said "beanless chili" in the subject line would have been redundant.
- There are no beans in real chili. The adding of beans reduces chili to merely a spicy stew.
 
Beans are for the "campfire scene" in the movie "Blazing Saddles" and not for chili.
- And for Yankees..............
 
With some nights here recently flirting with 50's (and gasp, 40's) it seemed about time to make some real chili (despite the days of 60's-70's).
 
Attached is Mrs LBJ's (Ladybird's) recipe for "Pedernales River Chili."
- There are NO BEANS in it, but using pulled chicken instead of shredded beef would be OK...so long as the beans were avoided.
 
I doctor mine with a pinch of instant coffee and a few chocolate chips, and substitute Sriracha for the ubiquitous liquid hot sauce (like Texas Pete or Tabasco).
- I used red wine instead of water, but Guinness would work equally well.
- Today's batch used smoked red peppers, but on a really cold day chipotle peppers would kick it up a notch or two.
 
Cooking this all day in a slow-cooker/crockpot gives the flavors a chance to merge and tenderizes the meat.


3 comments:

OLDFART said...

There is no mention of dried red chilies, there is too little spices over all to flavor that much meat. The essence of Texas Red is dry red chilies and meat plus sufficient liquid to render a bright red concoction which will bring tears to eyes of rough ol' hairy legged cowboys at the end of a long day eating dust!

sykes.1 said...

Rico has got it backwards. Chili by definition contains beans. It may or may not contain meat. In my youth, when you went down the canned soup aisle you could choose between "chili" and "chili con carne."

Chili is originally poor people's food, and meat is always in short supply in their cuisine.

Anonymous said...

Chocolate, liquor? You are one or two steps away from making mole (the Oaxaca or Puebla variety)