I save my cinnamon for apple pie and not much else !
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Yeah! Same here. I make a big bottle of chile sauce every two , or so, weeks. I go to a store that will have their “leftover” peppers for $1 for like a couple pound. Whatever they have, I’m saucing a whole mess of it. So my chili changes per the peppers I get there.
I love the floral nature to habaneros; but there’s so much more out there. maybe some aji if it lands in my pepper bag, since we’ve been chatting about those yellows so much.
The chocolate works, IMHO. I think the cinnamon killed it. I brown as well.
Not looking for heat so much as pepper flavor.
Completely agree. I think the pickled jalapeño rings can give it a little okra magic in chili but maybe I’ll just toss in some okra too I really like it a lot.
The texture of okra is something you love or hate. I adore that sliminess.
Good idea with the pickled jalapenos. Gte some of that pickled zip from the escabeche.
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On another thread someone said we need a chili thread with fall drawing near. We already have “How do you make your chili,” but it is a few years old and with all of the newbies here from CH, I thought it might be fun to start fresh.
My recipe: cut a brisket into one inch cubes and brown them in bacon fat with some diced onions. Add a good bit of New Mexican red chili powder, a little cumin, a little Mexican oregano, some salt, and some heat. I like ghost peppers or habaneros. Both have great flavor and add a wonderful zing. Add a few glugs of bourbon and enough vegetable broth to enable you to simmer it. Tighten it with masa if you must, but I don’t add that step.
This is the definitive accompaniment (assuming you have beer and cornbread and just want a little relief from the heat) to very hot chili. I learned it from an El Paso chili head. Yeah, I know it sounds weird.
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You’re right about beer and cornbread @Vecchiouomo I like your recipe too.
Here are my pearls of something…
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If your grocer stocks Fiesta spices, they have a good selection of dried chilis and chili powders. McCormick’s is solid, but I find the Fiesta offerings more fun (and often cheaper). We go through a lot of Fiesta cumin, NM chili powder, dried arbols, dried cascavels, and dried anchos, and steak seasoning.
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There are few things as perfect as a braised oxtail. I cry when I see the price (old enough to remember give away prices.)
You also illustrate why people keep game meat. When it’s ground up and put into chili, spaghetti, whatever, you lose the gameyness, or hide it well.
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I like my stews and chili kind of funky tasting…i got no problem adding fish sauce or anchovies either…but you’re right too, it’s part of a blend and i’m not into moose steak or venison steak, but that wild boar tastes great to me no matter how it’s served.
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Back in the fifties, there was a Dallas business called Shanghai Jimmy’s Chili Rice. As I understand, it was served in a cup, layered. The layers included chili, celery and relish that I recall - I think there were at least 5 layers. I assumed the celery was raw but maybe not. I never experienced it. It was the topic of a lot of discussion on Roadfood (dead and gone) and some Dallas forums. We had a Tex Mex restaurant here that had a dish called Lady Jane’s chili rice on the menu, pre-pandemic, but it has changed hands a couple of times and it’s no longer on the menu.
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I like a diversity of chile peppers, too, but the most I’ve ever used was 5. Always ancho and chipotle, almost always guajillo. I’m very traditional. But I also like ‘old fashioned chili con carne’ at some Tex-Mex places, which uses anchos almost exclusively. I’m not a heat-seeker any more, at all.
I’ve read the best selling dish at early Tex-Mex restaurants was Chili spaghetti or Mexican spaghetti and some old-line Tex-Mex places still have it on the menu. So, sorry to the Texans who proclaim a canonical list of ingredients and despise Cincinatti style chili - Texans were eating chili over pasta a decade and a half before Cincinatti. I like CSC 4-way, don’t like kidney beans, and with a lot less cheese on top than seem the standard, baked. It’s my substitute for boring mac n cheese.
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I’d be pretty sure the boar was a wild pig; but probably a female. Uncastrated boars don’t have the best flavor. On CH, one poster referred to it as piss pig (which I thought was cute as hell), which is a natural for uncastrated males.
I love fish sauce and have a few varieties. It’s the prefect “there’s something else in here” ingredient.
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I don’t go kidney, either. Black, pinto or great northern for me; or, all three.
Never heard of that. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that it’s true, but should point out…
We don’t do it any more.
As for your notion of the “canonical list of ingredients”, I don’t think it’s the pasta that offends purists. ChiliMac is a thing even in Texas, (or maybe not). The disconnect stems from the inclusion of cinnamon, broccoli, crickets or whatever the hell else they put in there. It may be delicious, but don’t try to tell a Texan it’s chili.
Clearly, it’s not. 
My company merged with a bigger one and after about 6 months, they had everyone in my department fly over to their DFW-area HQ for a meet & greet week. My boss had visited our location a few times but we hadn’t met much of the larger department. He and I had already bragged at each other about our cooking but he was sure he was better, for no reason other than he was an arrogant git.
A “teambuilding” event that week was in an old converted barn in Fort Worth. They had a comedian and lots of booze and light hors d’oeuvres. It wasn’t until after the magician closed out his set that we learned the main event was to be like one of those competitions on the Food Network.
We had 40 people broken randomly into 5 teams of 8. There was a food pantry with decent provisions, seriously bad utensils and cookware, and each team had 2 propane burners. And 3 rotating “genuine chefs” to offer advice.
We were told we had 45 minutes to put together competition chili. On my team were 3 women, including the department VP, none of whom could cook (the VP’s comment was, “That’s what restaurants are for!”). Of the 4 other men, one guy, Butler, said he was a decent cook and the rest professed ignorance.
So Butler and I started batting ideas around and decided meat was a yes (they had sirloin that we had to saw down into chunks with a knife about as sharp as a butter knife) and lots of different chilis was a yes (they had many types fresh in the pantry; we showed 4 of the non-cooks how to blister them over the propane burners).
But when it came to beans he put his foot down.
TEXAS chili does NOT have BEANS!
We went back and forth a bit and finally my beer-addled brain came up with a solution. “How many people here are actually from Texas, originally?” Turns out there were only maybe 6 so he gave in on the beans thing. There were plenty of side jobs for the rest of the team to help out with and we could hit the pantry at any time as ideas came up, plus making beer runs for others.
After time was called everyone got little paper cups and tasted everyone’s chili and voted on it.
Results by team:
A - zero votes (it was hideous)
B - 8 votes (my boss’s team - the chili was pretty good, better than most home cook’s that I’ve tried)
C - 2 votes (pretty bad but I guess someone liked it. Or “team spirit”.)
D - 36 votes (Butler + me + 6 non-cooks) [1]
E - zero votes (same comment as with A)
[1] You may notice the total is 46 votes - the 3 chefs got 2 votes each.
My boss took it personally and pouted about it for months. (edit) Part of what got his panties in a wad was that his chili was “Real Texas Chili” and mine wasn’t.
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yep might as well buy steak now…but the plus side is you see oxtail on a lot more menus, ie pho, poutine, a local bbq spot here smokes it…
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My dad, native Texan, b. Ballinger 1909.
His recipe always had beans in it.
I think this bean mythology, along with the idea that brisket is a Texas invention, is a product of a giant and continuing PR campaign that Texas is the center of the universe.
Add the fact they think they invented chicken fried steak too!
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lot of great texans and friends there but the PR campaign of some turns my stomach. Better days ahead I hope. Beans in chili isn’t a big deal lol!
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I don’t know about Texas chili but my grandfather was a pioneer, homesteaded in Northern Montana around 1912. He always put beans in his chili.
Knowing even back then that “If you know beans about chili, you know chili don’t have beans!” I had to ask him if real chili had beans in it.
He said chili was a poor mans food. They made it with a scrap of cheap meat and the beans, onions, tomatoes and chilis that they grew in their family’s garden. He said trying to satisfy a family or a bunch of ranch hands without beans would be too expensive.
So i figure that when chili was first made it probably had more beans than meat. But chili without beans can be good too.
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Texas is also the largest state because ice doesn’t count.
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