Legion I am sure that U know Good Chili isn't supposed to have Tomatoes nor Beans in it...

There comes a point of practicality where its too much of a good thing. sometimes less is more.

That is correct, and no ground meat either.

WOW Pat and I are on the same page for once....yeah Lincoln was a real no-good-nick....too

No tomatoes, no bean, and no meat...what the hell IS in your chili?

Yeah, really?

Nooooooooo, plenty of meat, just no ground meat. The meat must be cut into cubes from whole cuts of meat. You do it yourself, along with cutting all the other ingredients. Everything fresh if you can find the spices, high quality dried if not.

Yeah, buddy. I make Chili from mega-beef and hard core everything else, and NO BEANS.

Beans are a side dish if you wish it.

I actually bought Chantal cookware initially to cook chili, then found it useful for lots of other things.

Depends on where your from. In Tejas, beans are a no no but then again it depends on your tastes. I've had great chili with and without. Hot enough to make your eyes water or smooth enouth for a 4yr old to eat and enjoy. The key is a blend of spices and textures. If you like it real hot and blend of mustard powder, chili powder, ginger powder and chopped habs and jal-os, onions and garlic (a little) makes a nice full bodied flava.

No beans indeed. I'm now to the point that on my next batch I'll be ready to leave behind the last vestiges of tomato - the little tin of tomato paste I've been putting in. And the cube steak, mmmmm tasty.

I've never met a pepper I couldn't handle - though I can't say I've ever tried raw habanero. The problem tends to be the aftermath. Wife usually shoos me off to the garage for the entire day after Chili Night, and the kid just giggles like crazy, "Eewwwwww, Daddy, that's gustin!!!" (3.5-yr-old-speak for 'disgusting').

One of the keys is roasting your own cumin seeds. Red-hot iron skillet - drop in the seeds, shake pan once, drop the seeds out. Grind up the roasted seeds and cook your meat in the pan you used to roast the seeds.

You're on your way to chili nirvanna, no doubt.

I don't like the flavor of Habanero's, the heat isn't the issue, I can and have eaten them fresh and raw. I grew them in my garden one year.

Habs are a Carribean flavor pepper, not Central or South American like Jalepenos or Chipotles, both of which I like a lot.

It'll be interesting to taste these new ones for their flavor, despite the hot.

this talk is sure making my mouth water. i'm anxious to hear how the taste-testing goes. send leftovers to arkansas c/o bigchillcar.. ;)
ryan

Chili flavor is key. Habaneros, un-intuitively, go much better with sweet and fruity and overall lighter flavors. I pureed some habaneros with fresh ripe mango and prepared a chili with turkey instead of beef. Purely experimental and used red onions and various colored sweet peppers for color. No chili powder or pureed dried chilis, no tomato- it ended up sorta yellow and not red. Was delicious, have been itching to try the next evo of it but lately have been obsessed with my Texas Red. I think once I do the next batch with no tomato whatsoever, I'll have perfected it - don't take my word for it, ask Tim Walsh. He gets pressed into service for all the new evolutions :eek:

I'm curious also about this new chili. The challenge with every type of chili is bringing out the flavor while balancing the heat to the diners' preference. Myself, I prefer to pour sweat and hallucinate, but that usually leaves me with a lot of leftover chili...no one else will eat it.

i need these leftovers! :)

A short note, on how Texas ruined chili....

Way back when, in Mexico, the pig was the domestic farm animal of choice. This is mainly because they had pigs, but also because the humble pig would eat pretty much anything and was a hard worker when it came to finding something to eat on its own. Thus, the farmer could concentrate his labors on something else, or nothing at all, and the pig was left to wander around and fend for himself. This suited both the farmer and the pig.

When the gringos stole Texas from Mexico, they began to raise cattle, as most of Texas was not good for anything else and cows were quite large and large animals sell for more money at market than small ones. They are also willing to travel great distances to the market, unlike the pig.

Inevitably, after learning to make chili from the fine folks in New Mexico, some Texan reasoned that since they had more cows than pigs, it was handier to make beef chili. This was but the first step down the path to ruin.

Subsequently, once Texans had figured out how to grind up a cow, ground beef was used for chili. This was a terrible turn of events, but it soon got worse. This new-fangled grinder enabled them to make chili even less palatable, as they could use lesser cuts of beef for the chili and save the good ones for steaks. If you doubt me, go buy a package of “chili meat” from the grocery store and compare this to “ground beef.” Compare the ground beef to steak. See?

Yet another blasphemy occurred with the development of chili powder. It was now too much work to prepare a good chili puree when the average Texan was armed with a can of chili powder, which could be sprinkled into a batch of chili.

The last straw was when the cowboys began adding beans to their chili, to make the meat go further and to give them a means to entertain themselves around the campfire at night. Texans will forever deny they are responsible for adding beans to chili, to the point that nowadays, any serious chili cook-off in Texas will proclaim Beans Are Not Allowed somewhere in the official rules. This is a result of the popularity of the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles, which enlightened the whole country about what the cowboys had been up to, back in the day. What a sorry state of affairs.

At long last, Texans learned to make beer (sort of) and added insult to injury by serving it with their chili. One sampling of Pearl and most people swore off beer for life.


What you must learn from this:

If you cannot find a pig for your chile, do what the Mexicans do and use a small goat.
If you do not have Mexican beer in your house, go buy some immediately.



JR

And God said, "Let there be chili", and there was chili, and God saw the chili and that it was...GOOD.

Good point, JR. I forgot how Mexicans regard our chili as a mere passing fad, a flash in the pants (err, PAN). My wife makes the serious green chili with pork - now that's some good stuff. She makes the sauce fresh and simmers the pork in it for hours. Good times.

Starting to realize my house may need a 12-step program for chili-eating...

stomach...empty...must...un-subscribe..

Texas aka baja Oklahoma was bought and paid for, not stolen. Same goes for california and Arizona.
The US did use some rather agressive negotiation techiques tho.

Has anyone else used carol shelby's chili packets? Basically spices, salt, and cayenne.
When time is an issue I use carol's chili mixins as a base and then add stuff to make it my own.
As far as store bought it's hard to beat.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1166033204.jpg

BTW when I was a kid I remember every house had a string of dried red chilis dangling from the front porch. My grandmother (Las Cruces, N.M.) would give me a small one to chew on when I was hungry and it wasn't lunch time yet.

My wife (whose maiden name is Gallegos, 2nd generation in the US from Mexico) can't eat my chili because she says it's too hot.

That there is commie speak...