nethead

I love all kinds of chili. Generally I would make it with ground beef, onion, tomatoes and kidney beans, and black beans, plus spices (and served over rice). Sometimes I make a veggie chili, and sometimes a white chili, which is my new favourite way. I like it with the cinnamon and chocolate too.

wareagle

nobody put a bottle of real ale in their's? find it adds a nice flavour, that and some chorizo..

Kaffy Mintcake

We made a shredded beef/chorizo chili with tomatoes, tomatillos, etc. just last week. Will remember your suggestion - sounds good!

Bob

I've chucked a Ale in a few times, quite lovely...also tried a stout, one from Trader Joes...the missus grabbed the wrong bottle, but anyway, turned out to be really good too, but more like a stew base I thought

snowbunny

He was right on all accounts.... unless he taught you how to spell jalapeño actually - you don't have to use jalapeños but it does need to have some kick.

MrEmjoy

We were just in Texas and the one thing I didn't have was Chili, but it is meat and beans on the side!

We also found some Ghost Chillies while we were there and I'm not sure what to use them in as they are stonking hot as I expected, but they're dry!

ottotheboar

The wrong spelling was due to me, the " y'all " and the plural of "all y'all" was something new. One thing they did with the jalapenos was to cut them in half long ways and grill them with cheese as another side dish , this was way before the jalapeno poppers were available in supermarkets

Leslie

As far as Texas chili, or TexMex chili ... I seriously doubt there was any beef at all in the original recipes.

At least in this part of the world, chili was cowboy food made on the trail. The chuckwagon would have dry goods such as salt, flour, coffee, sugar, cornmeal, beans, etc. Maybe they'd bring some salt pork or deer jerky for meat. Fresh food had to be killed or foraged on the trail. One thing cowboys very rarely got to eat was the beeves they were driving. That would be stealing. So, "real" chili probably consisted of rabbit, prairie chicken, wild turkey, deer, etc. The flavor would come from what the cook could find growing wild such as field onions, jalapenos, red chilies, garlic, oregano, etc. When meat was scarce beans would be used to stretch the portions. Chilies were used to cover the smell/taste when meat would be going slightly off or the gamey taste of the wild animals. Flour or cornmeal was used to thicken the broth and make the mixture more filling but not necessarily more nutritious. I also doubt that tomatoes were used much at all because they don't do well in the wild here. The chili would be served with corn pone which is basically just a rougher precursor to the cornbread we eat today. Eggless, sugarless, cornmeal bread baked over an open fire.

FWIW I put beans in chili ... their natural starches are a good way to thicken the broth without using processed flours.

snowbunny

I might chuck them in, but I don't like beans - I wish I did - not liking them complicates both BBQ and Mexican meals.

And you are right of course about cowboy fare. Hunger is the finest ingredient.

Leslie

All the old codgers say that you absolutely CANNOT cook the beans in the chili. It is just chemically wrong! I don't know the science behind it but I've heard it preached so many times from so many people I just accept it as true. If you want beans in your chili you add cooked beans to the chili at the very end. This is easy enough if you are using canned beans. I usually freeze a cup or two of pinto beans when I make a pot anyway - to use later in chili or soups. For chili I include the bean juice and I smash about half of them with a fork (to thicken the broth) and leave the rest whole.

My mother never put beans in her chili. If we were going to have beans and cornbread that was one thing but chili was something else entirely. She didn't use fresh ingredients either, other than maybe an onion, but she wasn't averse to dried onion flakes or powder either. With her it was dried spices (chili powder, garlic powder, oregano, salt, pepper), ground beef, one can stewed tomato, one can tomato sauce, one yellow onion, water, and a couple of teaspoons of flour. Other than the canned tomatoes hers was probably closer to authentic chili than anything you get these days. It was wonderful.

I love cowboy and trail trivia. The cook was probably the most important member of any drive. If he was talented and well established he'd get the same trails with the same bosses over and over again. He'd plant pepper seeds and hearty tubers among the mesquites (away from where the cattle and horses could trample) and harvest them when he came back that way again. You can still find these wild patches across the Southwest US.

CelticRover

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/re...10000001687650

Yorkieabroad

We had a bunch of friends over at new year and i put out a wee buffet, including a pot of chili. A true Texan friend (one of the few I know) complimented me on how good it was "even if you did put beans in". You should have seen his face a couple of bowls later when I told him (after checking he wasn't carrying) that not only did it have beans, but it also had no meat! It was a veggie version....I sometimes make one with one of those tubes of "soyrizo" that look like something that might happen on one of your dogs bad days, but actually cook up pretty well. Normally it would have ground pork or beef or a combo, and I always put beans in.......never heard that about adding them at the end though Leslie-will have to try that next time

Leslie

Another good vegetarian filler, just don't tell anybody , is oatmeal.

MrEmjoy

What's your Soyrizo recipe, I've used it but not in Chili, personally can't stand the veggie chilies I've made in the past even if they did taste OK, it just wasn't hitting the spot.

Yorkieabroad

not actually my recipe - picked it up in HEB and modified a bit.
1 pack Soyrizo
1 onion
2 or 3 cloves fresh garlic
1 green, 1 red pepper
1 can diced tomatoes or 3 -4 fresh tomatoes skinned and diced.
black or kidney beans (dried and precooked or canned, whatever I have on hand)
Diced Jalapenos (amount depends on who is eating it)
Chili powder

If its just for the kids, I also add in 1/2 to a cup of applesauce().

Fry garlic, brown onions and peppers, then soyrizo for 5 or 6 minutes. Add everything else in and simmer.

Its a way of getting something thats not meat into my 9 year old who loves going round telling folk that he is highly allergic to fruit and vegetables. He eats a lot more of those than he every realizes

A few years ago I arrived to pick him up after his first day in a new pre-K class to find a big note next to the door:-

Allergies
Jimmy - peanuts
Alice - Milk
My son - all Fruit and Vegetables

Little sod had convinced the teacher that he was highly allergic cos he can vomit on demand at the smell of bananas and strawberries. We had a long chat about honesty and the difference between "not liking" and "being allergic"!!