By But I like cocktails and lurking
If you have a house full of children or grandchildren and don’t have a lot of time, this should do the trick. My grandfather called this ‘cowboy stew.’
I have no idea why.
1 pound ground beef
1 12 oz bag of frozen chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped garlic or 1 teaspoon powdered garlic
1 package of chili seasoning for 1 lb of beef
1 capfull of Zataran’s liquid crab boil
1 teaspoon ground cayenne (if you like hot)
1 beef boullion cube
1 -28oz can of chopped tomatoes
1 -10oz can of Rotel tomatoes
1 -15oz can of whole kernel corn
1-15oz can of seasoned black beans or ranch style chili beans (go with the black beans)
Corn chips
1 bag pre-grated cheddar or Mexican mix cheese
This is a very simple chili /not chili that you can toss together in a few minutes. The only real effort required is to brown the beef. If browning it in a skillet is troublesome to you, then get a microwave cooker/drainer for meat or just put it in a covered microwave-safe bowl in the microwave. If the beef is frozen, then 1 lb takes about 4 minutes on high. If not frozen, 2-3 minutes. If that doesn’t do it, repeat at 1 minute intervals until all of the pink is gone. Drain it, chop it in the bowl with a spoon, and mix in the chili seasoning.
Put the cooked, seasoned meat in a pot. Dump in all of the other ingredients willy-nilly. Turn heat up to medium high until the mix boils. Turn down to simmer and cover. Stir occasionally. When the onion is cooked to clear it is done. Start to finish this should take less than an hour.
Serve in a bowl over hand-crushed corn chips (I like restaurant style chips, some people prefer Fritoes). Top with grated cheddar or Mexican mix cheese. Don’t wear a sombrero when you cook or eat this. It is Tex-Mex, not Mexican. Cowboy boots are OK.
If you are slopping your young spawn with this leave out the cayenne. I don’t, but they love it anyway.
For all of you non-bean chili people there is no insult, nothing I can say, that will punish you as severely as a life without black beans in your chili.
I, personally, prefer chili beans. I’ve never considered using ranch beans, though; I use those in my taco meat, much to the enjoyment of everyone who’s ever had my tacos.
Pinto beans for chili, in my opinion. I’m assuming that’s what you mean by chili beans.
Right. I buy canned “chili beans,” which are just pre-seasoned pintos.
Yeah, I do that also. I use the Hanover.
The answer is pinto, navy, and black beans.
All three make a patriotic mix of red, white, and almost blue.
Kidney beans are not for chili (or anything else).
Kidney beans are awful. I like black beans, just not in chili.
much to the enjoyment of everyone who’s ever had my tacos
… are we doing “phrasing” around here?
1 pound ground beef
Gaaah! You MONSTER.
Real meat or GTFO.
I use country style pork ribs (on the bone, for extra juicy flavory goodness); cook in crock pot with beer and seasoning until they fall apart. Sometimes a decent cut of steak, sliced (not that awful pre-packed “stew meat” the grocery store sells).
I put ground beef in my chili. But I also use cumin.
… Do people not usually use cumin?
I don’t see cumin in the recipe for this article. Also, I know people who don’t use it. But for me, it’s not chili if you don’t use cumin. Hot dog sauce and the kind you put on spaghetti is something else. I mean the type you eat out of a bowl, that has to have cumin.
Hot dog sauce
I am stealing that too.
I don’t care for normal chili, hot dog sauce is the only kind I like.
I don’t make my own, I buy Castleberrys. That Hormel stuff is awful.
Chili powder is usually mostly cayenne, paprika, and cumin.
So the ‘chili seasoning’ has you covered.
Most commercial chili powders contain cumin. If you’re making your own from scratch, yeah, cumin to taste. I use commercial powders if I’m in a HUUUUUGE rush, but otherwise create my own blends.
And for the meat, I use thinly-sliced-on-the-bias skirt or tri-tip steak, browned and then simmered into the sauce. Beans go in during the last thirty minutes if they’re canned, otherwise they start falling apart.
I use a lot of cumin in my chili.
I just try to keep a nice ratio of chili powder to cumin. Like… 2 or 3 parts chili to one part cumin.
I’m almost the reverse on that. But I also put a lot of jalapenos in it because I think it adds a better flavor than just the chili.
I find that using a good commercial chili mix (as well as bbq rubs) just allow for a higher level of consistency. But I’m also really kind of lazy.
Try this one sometime, it’s awesome: https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/chili-3000/c-24/p-73/pd-s
And if anyone decides to buy that, just go ahead and buy the biggest bag they sell. The jars don’t last long.
The child (turning 8 today, holy crap) doesn’t like beef. At all. I wonder where I went wrong.
Also, you’re completely wrong. Nature intended chili to be pure, without infesting it with beans. I may make this (for myself!) without beans, just because.
I would be so disappointed if I ordered chili somewhere and it didn’t have beans in it–even kidney beans, and I hate those motherfuckers.
Pair it with a nice sweet, moist corn muffin and a bit of honey? Oh, you bet!
Mmmm. Moist.
[chili troll]
Nature intended chili to be pure, served on hot dogs, out of a Cincinnati based fast food chain.
[/chili troll]
Note: I miss Friday lunch at skyline, which I only did about 1 per month, although the group I met did it every week.
I thought Cincy based fast food chains would serve it on spaghetti.
There’s a Skyline not too far from where I work. In South Florida we seem to get all kinds of random chains from other states to appease the transplants (and finall
wtf?
“And finally we’re getting WaWa soon. Can’t wait”
That is the standard, but I prefer the hotdog over the spaghetti.
3 cheese coneys make a good lunch. With the hot cheese when they have it.
Why don’t you just put it all in a casserole, you monster?
Skyline and Gold Star are traditionally served on spaghetti, but they are disgusting that way. On a hot dog with a mound of fake cheese, mustard, and onions though? Now that’s where it’s at.
Can’t forget to mention using those chilis for chili cheese fries.
Basically, Cincinnati chili shines as a condiment and fails miserably as a chili
I order mine without the mustard.
Cincinnati chili shines as a condiment
so much this, I am stealing that.
“Basically, Cincinnati chili shines as a condiment and fails miserably as a chili”
As I understand it, Cincinnati “chili” was never intended to be a true chili, but rather, a modified version of Mediterranean meat sauces that were brought over by Greek and Macedonian immigrants. I don’t know how it came to be called chili, but a lot of disappointment could be avoided if they would have used a different name.
My understanding is the Greek word sounds somewhat similar to chili, so it got translated that way.
Gold Star chili is one of my fondest memories of living in Cincy.
Chili, as God intended
Looks like watery cincy chili.
I have never seen that before in my life, must me a northern KY thing.
Not really. It doesn’t have any of the cinnamon and chocolate of Cincy chili and, of course, it’s like 75% tomato juice.
Only real commonalty is the spaghetti.
It is an east of I-75 thing from what I can gather. I’m from a county closer to Lexington than Cincinnati and everyone I’ve ever known makes it this way. That includes family and friends further south.
It’s very similar to the ‘chili’ my grandmother used to make, and she lived in northeastern Pennsylvania her whole life. Swap out the garlic for sweet peppers and the spaghetti for elbow noodles and it is pretty much spot on. No idea where she came up with the recipe, she never went further south than Scranton.
There is thing in Kentucky and other parts of the Appalachian South (and surrounding areas) called “gulash” which is somewhat similar to what you described.
It’s a tomato juice based soup with elbow macaroni, cubed potatoes, shredded beef roast, and assorted other filling ingredients
My grandfather was Hungarian, goulash was the traditional way. I’m familiar with the American style of goulash though, and it is similar. Pretty sure that’s where grams came up with elbow noodles instead of spaghetti, and she never liked garlic. But her chili had the cloves and bay leaves, which I haven’t seen in American goulash.
I’m just going to chalk it up to another reason why the moniker of ‘Pennsyltucky’ is appropriate for the area I grew up in.
Hungarian Goulash
I appreciate everyone who pouts “NOT REAL CHILI”; i agree
that said, this is closer to what most people around the country actually eat that happens to use that name. My mom made something very close to this every week of my life as a kid (because its !@#*(&!(*#$ *easy*) The only thing slightly different here from the normal is the crab-boil. Black beans or pinto beans (or a some of each) were standard. Not pre-seasoned tho.
call it yankee bean-stew or something and just get over it.
yeah, that was not supposed to be a reply.
(slinks back off)
COMPUTER!
by “this” i meant the OP above, not the cincy thing
My wife called my chili ‘soup of beans’ when I made it for her the first time. And she refused to eat it. She said that her mother used to make her eat soup of beans when she was little and now she hates it. That didn’t last long before she was asking me when I’m making more of it.
lol.
that’s pretty much what everyone else is saying too. If people would just call it “Sopa de feijão” or whatever the world could move on and the purity of ‘chili’ will remain inviolate.
“Sopa de feijão”
Typically with black beans. But not always.
“the purity of ‘chili”
As with so many other things, you could just replace ‘purity’ with ‘my own opinion’. Because that’s what it really comes down to.
The crab boil shit is just a savory/spice add on. You could get the same thing with HP Brown Sauce, Maggi, or worcestershire.
What in the actual fuck is that?
Delicious soup chili that pairs excellently with a grilled cheese sammich
Don’t forget the pickle.
O fuck yeah. Kosher spear on the side. Goddamn, it’s delicious
Also, peanut butter sandwiches or peanut butter and crackers.
*wipes tear from eye* …sing one song for My Old Kentucky Home
It does have a tomato bisque look, if you ignore the beans and the pasta. It looks like something I might have made as a hungover youth to avoid having to go to the grocery store, and I actually mean that in a value-neutral way.
Mind you, I eat scrapple and enjoy haggis, so I have no room to criticize anyone’s culinary tastes.
What in the eve rloving fuck is that? What in the motherfucking name of all that is chili is THAT?!
Delicious, man. Knock out the cloves and bay leaves (now idea what the bird who wrote that recipe is talking about with that) and add some cumin and you’re ready for a flavor party in your mouth.
Give it a try sometime
The beans/no beans argument may be up there with pan pizza. I don’t take the same stance with chili as I do with pan pizza–which, while it can be very tasty, is not, in strict point of fact, pizza–but I have Texan in-laws who definitely feel a certain way about the subject. And that’s east Texas, so I can’t even imagine what people in the more western parts of the state think of it.
I will say this. The best chili I’ve ever had was basically just a thick stew of rehydrated chilis of various persuasions with cubed chuck. If you like beef, and you like peppers, why complicate shit?
That is chili.
Anything else might taste good but it isn’t chili.
Beans are a side dish to the chili, but they’re not part of the chili.
Once I saw people pouring chili over noodles, it’s kind of like a new Yorker watching people dunking their pizza in Ranch dressing. There’s a certain “WTF why would you do that?” otherworldly element to it, like I’m going to walk out of the room and be back in HS in my underwear to take a test I forgot to study for.
Beans are to be used when you can’t afford enough meat to fill out the stew. They are there to stretch the amount of people you can serve.
Yeah, some chili, beans, and fresh baked cornbread, that’s a hearty meal.
I hate cornbread. My mother, grandmother, and aunts made that stuff all of the time when I was a kid. And I grew to hate it. I still will not touch it. We used to call it dog bread. And there’s not many things I will not eat, it’s a short list. Cornbread, butter milk, beets, pears, and sweet potatoes. Those things are not fit for consumption.
There is a North/South divide on cornbread as well. So you may prefer the other style.
I hate cornbread.
I can’t even
I’m sorry the women in your family made lousy cornbread.
God damn, fresh beets are awesome, especially roasted beets. Beets and sweet potatoes add excellent caramel depth to any beef hash.
Did you get sweet cornbread? That’s not really cornbread, that’s a corn muffin. Again, perfectly tasty, just not really cornbread. Also, just cornbread by itself is pretty lame. At least slather it in butter and eat it with blackeyed peas. In my family we’ve always made it with whole corn if we’ve got it on hand, diced green chiles, maybe some bacon.
Pro tip: stop boiling your hamburger meat
I brown it in the cooker before adding the rest of the ingredients.
WTF is a cooker?
It’s a cylindrical hollow thing made out of steel with a flat bottom and large opening at the top. Sometimes it has handles and/or a lid. You can put stuff in it and put it over some type of heat to cook things.
The colloquial slow cooker.
I think I typically say pot, but you can’t say that too loud these days, someone may overhear and call the authoritah. A saucepan has a single long handle and no one makes sauce in a 4-5 quart ‘pot’ with 2 handles on opposing sides. What the hell am I supposed to call this thing? A cooker seems appropriate.
The beans are in the chili so that you can signal to others that you have had chili.
I’m also in the no beans camp – but I usually don’t eat more than 30-40 grams of carbs a day.
I’m not going to bother linking; not to the column, not to the mindbogglingly retarded comments.
Krugabe’s TDS and obsession with the Republikkinz has ceased to be amusing. It’s just tedious and a little bit sad. That guy needs to be strapped into a rocking chair and issued a set of (childproof) knitting needles.
He’s 64, dementia can start kicking in at that point in time.
The reason you Grandfather called this Cowboy Stew is becsuse he was a knowledgeable man that knew that chili does not ever have beans in it.
Or tomatoes for that matter.
I make a very simple chili. Here’s everything I put in it. Ground beef, pinto beans, tomatoes , jalapenos, chili powder, white onion, cumin, olive oil, and corn meal. The corn meal has to be stirred in before heating or it will clump. Just a trick I use that gives it a nice texture. I also food processor the peppers, onion, and tomato to near juice, I hate chunks of stuff in chili. I go heavy on the spices, good chili should leave a few holes in your stomach by the 2nd day.
Forgot to add salt to that list. I use sea salt.
Oh, and tomato paste. I use a can of that to thicken it.
?
smdh
i think its a little funny that many people will tsk-tsk anyone who asserts that other words in the english language have fixed meanings and aren’t merely ‘defined by usage’ and will act like the purists are being pedantic twats who fail to appreciate the fact that all vocabulary is in a constant process of re-invention…. but then when you alter the formula for fucking BEEF STEW by so much as a single ingredient they freak the fuck out like you’re mixing OJ and milk.
Cornmeal. Ok? Did I need some bullets as well?
I think the cornmeal addition is my own. Not sure how I came up with that, but it gives a very nice texture.
My favourite corn meal is hominy.
no, i was just saying it was funny that most people were screaming that “beans” were an unholy violation of the sanctity of chili, meanwhile you were busy just throwing whatever random shit you could get your hands on into the stuff.
*personally i don’t care at all (see above poorly-threaded post); although if i want it thicker, i just simmer it longer. Although its an interesting idea and i might try it if cooking for kids anytime.
I wonder what would happen if instead of the tomato paste, I tried to thicken it with a roux instead? I should try that.
It would probably taste fantastic. I don’t think there are many dishes which can’t be improved by the incorporation of a well-made roux.
I just made chili last night, and NOW you give me this idea.. wtf do I pay you for?
Masa.
Steak, chopped into cubes
Italian sausage, cut into chunks
Ground pork sausage
Pintos
Black beans
Kidney beans
Red beans
Onion
Ro-Tel Tomatoes and jalepeno
Masa at the end
Brown all meat
Add Six Gun chili seasoning, (Stater Bros)
NO Hamburger
Believe it or not, I mix OJ and milk all the time in a blend with protein powder; two parts OJ to one part milk. Tastes like the Creamsicles of my childhood (and that’s a good thing). You can also amp up the milk component by adding powdered milk before blending.
“Tastes like the Creamsicles”
Exactly what I was thinking when I read the first sentence.
Bow Chicka Wow Wow….
I need to come up with a better example then
I am aware that some people blend dairy/citrus in smoothie applications all the time. Its just that, symbolically, its something that every child knows is an unholy-act which violates all the laws of
breakfastnatureAlso, Heathers.
Change it to stirring toothpaste in a glass of orange juice, then.
Love OJ and milk!
This recipe is very similar to what we ate when I was a kid, minus the crab boil and corn, so I shouldn’t hate on it too much. It was okay, until the first time I had chili with actual steak in it.
My chili recipe is pretty ordinary, but I like to saute the chili powder, onions, and garlic for a good long while.
You ever notice how Indian food has such a strong flavor of spices? It’s because they saute the spices first (and also because they use a shitload of them). It really takes my chili game to the next level.
Add some chocolate, and things get even more interesting.
Only if it’s dark unsweetened chocolate.
I know very little about cooking, but my sole revelation in my life so far was discovering that ‘fats transmit flavor’; and that you need to let the aromatic things break down in the oil for their flavor to be imparted on the rest of the dish.
My wife gets really annoyed with me because I cook with onions and garlic and I don’t saute them first. The flavors blend just fine. Wait until the next day and it’s better.
So here’s the Green Lantern Chili recipe: (For God’s sake, unless you’re Batman, you don’t want to eat this.)
1 ½ pounds lean sirloin chunks
2 teaspoons of cumin
2 teaspoons of paprika
1 teaspoon of cayenne
1 cup minced onion
½ cup of chopped green pepper (optional)
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ teaspoons of salt
½ teaspoon of dried basil, crushed
1 tablespoon California chili powder (hot)
1 tablespoon Gebhardt chili powder
1 tablespoon Hot New Mexico chili powder
1 16-ounce can of tomatoes, cut up
2 8-ounce cans of tomato sauce
2 16-ounce cans of dark red kidney beans, partially drained
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
Tabasco sauce to taste
½ cup water
Wait… no peppers in that chili? It’s supposed to be spicy! (:
The one pepper with no capsicum is optional. Nice.
Oops, that’s actually Green Arrow’s Chili Recipe. My bad.
But does the Green Arrow have a sidekick like Kato? Oh wait… that’s the Green Hornet. Wonder what his chili recipe is like?
The Green Arrow has had quite a few sidekicks, none like Kato. Off the top of my head there was: Speedy, Arsenal, Artemis, Red Arrow,
You realize Speedy, Arsenal, and Red Arrow are all the same guy? Roy Harper is almost as bad as Hank Pym at coming up with new names.
He’s had all of those names, but there have been other sidekicks who used them as well.
Wasn’t 3/4 of them crippled drug addicts?
Sounds like standard cafeteria chili.
Apparently chili is the new deep dish.
This was never going to end well, was it?
All cooking threads end up going sideways about 5 minutes in.
Good thing it’s almost lunch time. These posts always make me so hungry.
GAO: “right-wing extremists” responsible for more terrorist attacks in the US than Islamists. Take a look at the list if you want a laugh: skinheads, supremacists, and neonazis lumped together with Sovereign Citizens, survivalists, tax resistors, and plain crazy people. They may as well all be taking their marching orders directly from Limbaugh, I tell ya.
Well, I mean, you might as well just throw all the Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in there too, since they’re social conservatives.
They’re not that brazen, yet. Note how they’re talking about the number of “attacks” rather than the severity of them or the causalities involved. As we all know, painting swastika graffiti on a synagogue is no different from murdering a dozen people.
I’m so glad that the Government Accountability Office is working hard to keep the American people accountable to their government.
This method of “compare very narrowly-defined Muslim-terror to basket of “ALL OTHER”, and then call that ‘all other’ Right Wing” is super popular with the media.
See = cover of NYT in wake of San Berdoo shooting
There have been a handful of diff academic / think-tank efforts to put a sheen of credibility on that same exercise
(*eg. the New America foundation, the GTD at U Maryland, Ari Prelenger’s study @ west point on ‘right wing extremism’)
they’re all bullshit. I’ve gone through every single one of them and they’re basically using the same sort of statistical number-fudging that anti-gun activists use. (e.g. enlarging the definitions of ‘violence’ so that suicides are examples of gun violence; soften the definitions of criminals so that accidental shootings are considered crimes, etc)
These are the same people who get absolutely giddy when there’s even a possibility that a terrorist act wasn’t perpetuated by Muslims. It’s just pathetic.
Even Ron Bailey was trying to pretend that somehow “thousands of instances of property-destruction by Earth Liberation Front” over the last 30 years was “proof!” that muslims were not a significant terror threat.
Just lower the definition of “terror” to include tens of thousands of various events, ranging from 1on1 violence with no political connection at all (eg. “hate crimes), to acts of political violence which have no actual intention to cause mass-casualties at all (arson of empty property)….
….and then pretend that you can compare these things to “attempts by a single religious group to indiscriminately murder large numbers of non-believers”
Its not just “apples/oranges”… its “all the fruits and veggies on earth vs. “oranges”
Its intentional categorical obfuscation. Which is why they use the term “extremism” instead of terror in the first place. It helps mask the inherent dishonesty of the exercise.
There is another key problem with statistical analysis of terrorism: people aren’t stochastic processes. While it is useful to make an expected value calculation when allocating scarce resources, saying it’s statistically unlikely (even when the statistics are honest) because of past events is just plain wrong. When there’s a million people who want to kill you, the questions of opportunity, means, and motive are more important to calculating probability and severity than just past events.
GAO: “right-wing extremists” responsible for more terrorist attacks in the US than Islamists.
They plagiarized the SPLC list? That should be verboten.
I’m thinkin it’s about time for glibertarians to get a proper education about the world. So here it is.
Hillary lost because men and Russia
And here you thought you knew everything.
Speaking of beans, the NYT rides to the rescue:
During a visit, the difference between “acting” and “acting out” necessarily comes to mind. Why is there no stream of gripping films about the thousands of troubled Americans with easy access to guns who can lethally act out their darkest grievances on family and society day after day?
Why does the NYT editorial board make no mention of the reality of life in cities like Chicago? Why no mention of the stolen futures and the pointless subjugation and entrapment of generations of impoverished Americans? Why no recognition of the harm done by the Great Society, and the mire of the poverty trap it brought with it? Why no mention of the petty tyrannies perpetrated by liberal city governments since time began? Could it be the limousine liberals have a rosily delusional fantasy history of their very own?
Death Wish, Dirty Harry, Taken, John Wick, …
… which the bien pensants at the NYT accuse of glorifying violence.
My chili goes something like this:
A pound and half of the fattiest ground beef I can get my hands on: 80;20 or 75/25
bag of (liquid) chili sauce (or chili powder with a small can of tomato sauce)
Brown meat, drain some of the fat, add sauce. Cook down. Eat with lots and lots of sour cream and extra sharp cheddar.
No beans, no enemies at night.
On the topic of stews, I am thinking about pozole right now and it’s making me very hungry.