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obsessivelydetailedrecipes · 5 years ago

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Beef Chili

Reading time: 10 minutes

Prep time: 1 hour

Stove-top time: 2-5 hours

Serves 8 or so, keeps well.

Dried chiles: 6 ancho, 4 guajillo, 2 pasilla, 0-6 chile de arbol

0-2 chipotles in adobo

0-1 fresh cayenne peppers (or 0-2 fresh jalapeños)

½ pound bacon

4 pounds chuck roast

1 large onion

6 cloves garlic

1 cup brewed coffee

⅓ disc Mexican hot chocolate

Beer: 1 bottle stout or porter; 1-4 bottles pilsner

Salt

and optional fixings

In Northern California, at least when (and among those with whom) I was growing up, chili was a bean soup, usually with tomatoes and other unpredictable vegetable ingredients, typically very bland. I was relieved to learn the dish is much better elsewhere. In Texas, it usually doesn’t have any beans, but always has beef and, sensibly and unlike in California, chiles. It’s different everywhere, though. In Cincinnati, they put in on spaghetti.

I won’t pretend any authority to say what ought to be considered chili, except that it better have some fucking chiles in it. “Chile” is the Spanish spelling of a Nahuatl word, which I’ll continue using here, to describe, of course, what we Americans also call peppers—all the capsiceae, most notably capsicum annuum, comprising the bell pepper, jalapeño, serrano, cayenne, and more. So, if you make a bean and tomato soup and add enough paprika, I guess I won’t fight you if you want to call it chili.

But you shouldn’t. “Chili con carne” definitely originated in what is now Northern Mexico and Texas as a peasant food made from beef and chiles. Like most stew, it made use of the otherwise less desirable parts of an animal by cooking them slowly for a long time. The beef fat and tough cuts of meat provided calorie density, while chiles had the dual purpose of adding lots of flavor and cheap bulk. Dried into bricks, it was also a trail food, called the “pemmikan of the Southwest.” It seems to me there would not have been a lot of use for beans or tomatoes in this context.

That’s really a historical semantic dispute though, not a culinary one. If chili is better with beans, we should put beans in it. But, in my opinion, it isn’t. This chili, modified from a recipe by Lisa Fain, Homesick Texan, is by far the best chili I’ve ever tasted, and frankly one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

Ingredient notes

There’s a reason we use dried chiles. Drying concentrates the contents of the cells in the fruit walls and produces lots of complex, desirable flavors. But I like a little fresh chile in the mix too, to liven it up. I picked cayenne, but if you can’t find fresh cayenne, or if you just want a more vegetal note, go for the jalapenos. If you are trying to minimize spiciness, half a bell pepper would do fine here too.

Speaking of which, you should know that if you use my maximum quantities above, your chili may be much too spicy for most people. If you want to make it milder, by degrees, cut the chiles de arbol first, then the cayenne, then the chipotles. Even if you use none of those, you’ll still get a pleasant kick from the guajillos and pasillas. If you or your guests prefer zero spiciness, cut those also. Add anchos to get your quantity back up to at least a dozen chiles. (The anchos are not at all spicy.) A lot of the complexity of flavor comes from the variety of chiles, though, so you are losing something with every type of chile you omit.

It’s tempting to shortcut quality when adding things like coffee and beer to a stew, but I recommend against it. I brew a pretty strong cup of dark roast for the coffee. Porters can be made with all different kinds of spices, so if you go that route for your dark beer, it may have a noticeable influence on your flavor. I prefer stout, so that I have total control over which spices go in my chili. I personally use an oyster stout for my dark beer, but Guinness is fine. For my light beer I like a crisply hopped pilsner, like Trumer, or Peroni.

Chuck roast is usually from the shoulder and neck of the cow. Anything labeled shoulder steak, chuck shoulder, or even pot roast or stew meat should be fine. Don’t trim the fat.

Prep

Preheat an iron skillet over medium heat.

Remove the seeds and stems from the dried chiles. For larger, drier chiles, the seeds are just rattling around in there; you can pop the stem off and just shake them out. For the wetter ones, probably anchos, you may have to pick the seeds out more carefully. Try to preserve as much of the flesh of the chile as you can.

Heat the prepared chiles for a few minutes on either side in the skillet. Leave it totally dry; no oil or water. You may have to do this in batches, but when you’re done, throw them all in and add enough water to submerge them. Remove from heat, cover, and leave to soak in the warm-to-hot water.

Cut the bacon into smallish pieces, skinny lardons, half-inch squares, or whatever. Cut the onion in a medium dice. Halve your fresh chile(s) and remove the seeds, then cut in a fine dice. Peel the garlic and pound it into a puree, or just put it through a garlic press.

Cut the chuck into cubes. I prefer larger cubes, about an inch, because I think they benefit from the tissue breaking down more slowly as we stew them. However, there’s an argument to be made for smaller cubes, even as small as ¼ inch, so that we get more flavor from the Maillard reaction in our initial browning. There’s no significant impact on the texture of our chili: either way, the meat will be mostly broken down to fibers by the time we’re finished.

Stewing

Cook the bacon over medium heat in a large heavy pot until crispy. This will be your chili pot, so a large dutch oven is good if you have one. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set it aside, leaving behind as much fat as you can. We will add the cooked bacon back to the chili in a moment, but it’s not too important, so snack on it as much as you want.

Adjust the heat to somewhere between medium-low and medium-high; the larger your cubes of chuck, the higher the temperature. Add the chuck and cook, stirring occasionally and/or turning the cubes, until slightly browned on all sides, 5-10 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon (again, leaving the fat behind) and set aside.

Add the diced onions to the pan and cook over medium-low heat, low enough that you won’t brown the edges, high enough that they won’t take forever to cook. Salt them generously. Cook until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the diced fresh chile and garlic and cook for another 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Add back in the beef and bacon, along with 1 cup of coffee and 1 bottle (12 ounces) of your dark beer. Grate in the chocolate. Add water if necessary to cover the meat by about an inch. Turn the heat to high and watch closely. Reduce the heat to the barest simmer immediately when it boils.

After your chiles have been soaking for at least half an hour, drain and rinse them. Discard the soaking water; it will be very bitter. Throw the rinsed chiles in a blender along with the chipotles. Blend them into as smooth a slurry as you can, then stir them into the chili along with a few generous pinches of salt.

Check the temperature and the level of liquid every fifteen minutes or so. You should maintain the barest simmer, and keep the meat covered by about an inch. Add water (or more dark beer, to taste) when necessary. It may look thin and brothy, but it will thicken a lot before we’re through. Taste it about once an hour for salt.

After at least two hours, preferably about four, turn off the heat and let cool to room temperature. There’s nothing wrong with eating it now, but it will get better and better over the coming days. Put anything you don’t eat in the fridge.

Reheating and Serving

I think the chili is best three or four days after you first stew it. It should keep a week or more in the fridge, and it freezes fine. Whenever you’re ready to serve it, give yourself half an hour to reheat it slowly on the stovetop. It will probably be quite thick, even once it’s heated to serving temperature. Add the pilsner as your liquid to get the consistency you want. It can be better a little soupier, for example, as a tortilla chip dip, or a little thicker, for example, to put on a chili dog.

You can be as simple or as elaborate as you like with the fixings. It’s great simply served in a bowl with warm soft tortillas or chips, or you can put it on top of french fries, hot dogs, or Fritos. It’s usually offered with a garnish station, commonly including chopped scallions, cilantro, sour cream, and shredded cheddar, jack, or cotija cheese. This chili is delicious on its own, but it is nice to have at least something fresh to brighten it up, if only a little diced white onion.

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