Chili

I love chili. It's one of my favorite foods. The only problem, though, is that when I make it, I make a lot of it.

This isn't really a problem (I get to eat one of my favorite meals every day for the next two weeks!), except that once I've finished eating all of it, I'm so tired of it that I can't eat any more for a few months.

Anyway, that wasn't why I decided to post about chili. I figured that I've made it enough times to have a recipe that I'd like to share. It's based on my Mom's chili recipe, combined with some input from Alton Brown's chili recipe in The Big Chili and some input from my friend Matt.

This is the basic recipe, and I'll follow it with some options on how to augment it:

Ingredients:

The Beans

1 lb	Dry Black Beans
1 lb	Dry Red Kidney Beans
2	Bay Leaves
2 tsp	Kosher Salt
2-3 cloves	Garlic, sliced thickly
2-4	Dried chiles, sliced (optional)
~½ gallon	Water

1. Preheat the oven to 250° While it is heating...
2. Boil the water. While it is heating...
3. Sort the beans (remove any pebbles or weird-looking specimens)
4. Rinse the beans (a colander works well)
5. Place the beans in a large, oven-safe pot (I use a 2 gallon graniteware), along with the salt, bay leaves, chiles, and garlic.
6. Once the oven is hot and the water is boiling, pour just enough water over the beans to barely cover them.
7. Place the beans in the oven, covered, and set a timer for ~20 minutes.
8. When the timer goes off, check the beans. They will likely need some more water. Re-boil the remaining water (bonus points if you started heating it a couple minutes before the timer went off) and pour some more over the beans (again, just enough to cover them).
9. Set the timer for 30 minutes and repeat the previous step.
10. Set the timer for 30 minutes. When it goes off, the beans should be nearly done. Remove them from the oven and drain them (they will be cooked some more later).

The Chili

1-2	Large onions, diced
3-5 cloves	Garlic, crushed and chopped
½-1	7oz can of chipotle peppers
3	14.5oz cans of diced tomatoes, any style
1	6oz can of tomato paste
2	15.25oz cans of whole-kernel sweet corn
1-2	Fresh jalepeños, diced
1-2 tbsp	Dried oregano
½-1 tsp	Turmeric
~¼ cup	Chili powder
~½ tsp	MSG (optional)
~12 oz	Dark beer, preferably home brewed
~4 handfuls	Tortilla chips, crushed coarsly
	Salt & pepper to taste

1. Much of this procedure can be performed while the beans are cooking.
2. Preheat the oven to 300°
3. Sauté the onions and garlic. If you are using meat (see below), cook them in the rendered fat from the meat (augmenting with olive oil if necessary). If not using meat, cook in olive oil (no need to use extra virgin, it would be overpowered by everything else).
4. Dice the chipotle peppers.
5. Briefly toast the chili powder in a dry skillet, until fragrant.
6. Combine all ingredients except for the corn, in an oven-safe pot. The pot that the beans were cooked in should do nicely, once they are done and drained. Stir to combine. Add additional ingredients to taste, keeping in mind that the tortilla chips will give up quite a bit of salt as they disintegrate. Don't forget to include both the diced chipotles as well as some of the sauce from the can they came in.
7. Bake for 1 hour, covered.
8. Once removed from the oven, stir in the (drained) cans of corn.
9. Serve, generally over rice with some shredded cheddar on top.

Accents

Depending on whom I expect will be eating the chili, I may go either for a vegetarian or a con carne version.

For the vegetarian version, I will generally add another pound of dried beans (small red beans, navy beans, ...; whatever looks good), along with one more teaspoon of salt and another bay leaf. In the chili, a package of fake ground beef works well, but it generally disintegrates in the oven and provides only a hint of flavor. Tofu chunks also go well, but remember that they will not provide any real flavor, only absorb it. If you use tofu, you may need to add more of some of the other seasonings, especially chili powder. You may also want to drain the tofu first.

For chili con carne, I like to use 1-2 lbs of meat, an equal balance of ground chuck (80-85% lean) and ground pork. Ideally I would use equal portions each of ground chuck, pork, and lamb, but I can never find all three at the same time, so I have never tried it. Brown the meat before cooking the onions and garlic, then cook the onions and garlic in the fat that rendered out of the meat.

In my latest batch, I managed to get my hands on some ground lamb, but I did not find any ground pork. Combined, I had about 0.6 lbs of 80% lean ground chuck and 1.3 lbs of ground lamb. The chili came out quite well, except that it tasted very strongly of lamb. Next time I would discard some of the fat that rendered out of the meat, as I think that provided most of the lamb flavor, and there was quite a lot.

Bad Burgers

Recently, my company had its annual picnic. It's probably about like any other company picnic, really: A couple guys bring their grills, a couple others bring food, and the vast majority of people donate $5 so they don't need to think about it and can just eat.

Well, this year, only two grills showed up. And this is using the term 'grill' pretty loosely. Each was a tiny little propane-powered vertical vertical heater. Now, I don't have a problem with propane. My grill is propane-fired. But in this case, I realized that other people do have a problem with propane: One of the tanks was empty.

With charcoal, you can tell how much you have. You can't run out without noticing. But with propane... Well, the tank stays the same shape and size no matter how full it is. So if you don't really notice that it doesn't slosh when you pick it up, you might still think it's full.

So back to the story: There's one small grill roaring away, and one that has a tiny little flickering flame in one corner. The two chefs decide to use the grill that has fuel for cooking, and the grill with the pathetic little candle-flame for keeping food warm until it is claimed.

Then the CEO shows up and claims the dead grill.

Don't get me wrong, I really like our CEO. He's an amazingly nice, honest, and straight-to-the-point guy. Plus, he's the new replacement for the bad-tempered owner of the company who used to be the CEO. Think Steve Jobs from Pirates of Silicon Valley, but not so successful and without the great ideas to back up the temper.

So what does this mean? Well, at first it means that he stands there in his apron and laughs about the tiny flame. He flips the burgers that are on the grill a few times, and all is well. Then those burgers get claimed. And he throws a fresh, barely-thawed patty on.

What do you think would happen at this point? If I was cooking, the lid would go down for at least five minutes, then I'd open it and see if any cooking happened at all. Does the CEO do that? Nope. He watches the burger like a hawk for about thirty seconds, and then he mashes it with the spatula, hoping for the sizzle that you get when you squeeze a mostly-done burger on a hot grill. Instead, the patty spreads out a bit and just sits there, silently.

So he waits a bit longer, and mashes it again! It's still raw, there's no juice available to squeeze! The patty takes the abuse silently, spreads out a bit more, and starts to sink though the grate.

You'd think that at this point he'd stop mashing it and let it be. A couple of guys in line for food even mention this, pointing out how it is starting to fall through the grate. In response, he laughs and mashes it yet again!

The poor patty has completely lost its chance of ever being edible at this point, and there's nothing else on this dying grill, so the three guys in line (myself included) move to the line at the other grill, hoping to never see such burger torture ever again.

But unfortunately, the two "chefs" at this grill don't know a thing about cooking either. There is one done burger and three almost-done burgers, along with about six raw patties, two kielbasy, and some chicken breasts. One spatula-jockey just stares at everything, looking confused, while the other mashes the three mostly- or completely-done burgers mercilessly, and occasionally flips one over.

I don't know how many of you out there know how to cook a burger, but unless you're at a fast-food joint where the goal is to serve a tasteless puck of meat, you do not, under any circumstances, mash the burger. Not during cooking, not during formation, NEVER! It may make a cool sound when you squeeze all of the juices and flavor out of it on a hot grill, but that's exactly what you're doing: You're turning what had the potential to be a flavorful, juicy burger into a bland, tough, puck of meat.

So finally the guy in front of me points to the burger that's obviously done and conveys this concept of doneness to the guy manning the grill. The burger is immediately served to him, and he walks away. I continue to stare at the next burger, which by this point is completely done, as the anti-chef flips it over and over, as if expecting it to yell out, "I'm DONE!" when it is ready.

So I say, "That one's done," get my burger, and walk away.

Next year I'm bringing my grill, with the stipulation that I will be the chef on it. And I will spatula-block anybody who tries to squeeze my burgers!