Uncle Moe’s Chili For People Who Don’t Make Chili.

I threw this together for the playtest yesterday. The core of the recipe comes from here, but I had to change things around because of dietary issues. Still, chili isn’t hard. I’m sure that everybody in the universe will call this version of it an abomination, but five people ate it all, so I guess abominations are tasty?

Time to cook: thirty minutes prep; six hours cooking in a crockpot at low.

What you’ll need:

• Beef. Two pounds. I used the 15% fat stuff, but you can do whatever you want.
• Beef broth. One can.
• Tomato sauce. One can
• Diced tomato. One can.
• Red kidney beans. One can, drained. (Omit if you have religious objections to beans in chili, of course.)
• Olive oil.
• Salt.
• Sugar.
• Black Pepper.
• Chili pepper.
• Cayenne Pepper.
• Cumin.
• Rice vinegar.
• Whatever else you want in your chili. I’m not your father.
• Crockpot.

Fixings:

• Fritos. Get two bags.
• Corn chips.
• shredded cheese.
• Fresh onions.
• Sour cream.
• Beer.
• Anything I didn’t mention.

Notice how there are no measurements on the condiments? That’s because I don’t have your taste buds. Also: if you like to cook vaguely Mexican-style food, and you don’t know why it doesn’t taste quite right, it’s probably because you don’t keep cumin in the house. Go get some. And get it and all your other chili-style spices from the International aisle. The Spices aisle is for Anglos who will pay more for small containers. Same’s often true for tortillas and whatnot, although people are starting to notice that trick. Still.

Anyway: take the oil, brown the meat. Take the onions (my wife can’t eat onions) and garlic (my wife can’t eat garlic) that aren’t in the ingredient list and cook them up now, if you like. Or you could do what I did and cut up the onions into slivers without cooking them, as a garnish for later. I’d argue for that, actually. Either way, salt and black pepper the meat and turn it every so often until it’s browned up.

In the slow cooker: beef broth, tomatoes, sugar, tomato bits, whatever spices you wanted to add. Stir it together. Taste it before you toss in the meat. Doesn’t taste of anything? Add more spices. I fiddled with it until at least I got something hitting my taste buds, but I smoked for twenty years and my tongue still hasn’t quite recovered. You’ll work it out, I’m sure.

Moving on: when everything is mixed, add the meat. I did not add the liquid that got generated in browning the meat, but I did not get upset if any got in. Mix everything, seal it up, cook it for six hours on low.

Every hour or so, open that sucker up, stir it, taste the juice. If it lacks something, add it. I waited on the vinegar until a couple of hours had gone, dumped in another spoonful of sugar, put in more of the various peppers, yadda yadda. However you like.

After it’s all done, you end up with a somewhat juicy chili. But that’s OK! Why? Because of the Fritos, of course. Dump your chili on the bowl of Fritos, dump the cheese and onions on top of that, plop in a bit of sour cream, and carry it to the table. Stuff melts, stuff soaks up the juice, eat it all and wash it down with beer.

Serves five comfortably. Might start friendly arguments over the ‘best’ chili, but that’s OK. Beats most other topics for conversation, these days.