Sunday, I made chili,* with ground sirloin (! on sale), chorizo sausage, a big red onion, crushed tomatoes, fresh red and green bell peppers, pickled piparra peppers, canned green chilis and fresh shishto peppers, seasoned with chili powder, a little extra cumin (a little goes a long way but it is essential to Midwestern chili), smoked paprika, basil, cilantro and bay leaves. Plus a little garlic and whatever else looked interesting.
It was good, and thick enough to stand a spoon in. As usual, I made dinner for four and froze the remainder.
Tuesday, I started the saved chili thawing in the microwave and heated up a small can of corn with red and green peppers, a small can of tomato sauce, a small can of mild green chilis and a couple of piparras, snipped into small sections, plus a bay leaf. I added the frozen chili as soon as it was thawed enough to break up, and let it simmer for ten minutes with the lid on.
It was an improvement -- a little more heat, a little more complexity, and still thick with ingredients.
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* Chili purists, consider it "red stew." Midwestern chili varies widely from the original, from the Mediterranean-spiced Cincinnati stuff to the ubiquitous and mild red beans and elbow macaroni church potluck version to purist peppers-and-meat with spice levels that will make your hair line up to enlist in the Marines. By Texas standards, a lot of it isn't "chili," but we've got to call it something.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
1 comment:
Let the Chili War Comments begin!
RobertaX, your concoction sounds complex and delicious; potpourri is French for chili, yes?
The tendency for the pot to shrink, i.e., the chili's volume increases, is a constant for me and is either a feature or a bug depending on freezer space.
Texas purists' stance puzzles me as I figure chili was cookie's way of using those dried cattle-drive beans; if a cull from the herd made its way into the pot as delicious chunks of protein, so much the better.
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