Shaker's Chili...now with bonus Nachos!

Inspired by the start of football season (goddamn Packers suck already) and spurred on by the Nachos? thread, I decided to make myself some homemade chili nachos.

Here's what you'll need:

1lb ground beef 1 Green Pepper 1 Yellow or white onion 1-2 Cloves garlic 2 Cans diced tomatoes 1 Can of chili beans (you can use black beans too if you want...but I like the "chili sauce" these things are in. It adds flavor) Pickled jalapenos 2-3 Chipotles in adobo Beef stock base or broth (try to avoid bullion where the first ingredient is salt) Chili powder Cumin Bay leaf Oragano Frozen corn Tortilla chips (I like the Tostitos Gold kind, since they don't get all soggy for nachos!) Shredded cheese...I like colby jack.

First thing's first: Chop up your bell pepper and about half a large onion. You should have about equal amounts of onion and pepper.

Brown your beef in a little olive or canola oil with your onions, green pepper, and garlic. (I LOVE the smell of this mixture while it's cooking mmmmmmm)

While that's browning, open all your cans of everything. Chop up a couple of the chipotles (I rinsed them first, a little less slippery to work with), and a handful of the jalapenos.

Once your meat is cooked, add the cans of tomatoes, the can of chili beans and the chopped peppers. Make about 1 1/2 cups of beef stock with the base mix in hot water, and add that for a yummy beefy flavor. Add a good amount of cumin, chili powder, the bay leaf, and a little bit of oragano.

Now, just let it simmer for as long as you want. This mixture is intentionally a little thin to begin with, more like a soup. I simmer it without the lid and it reduces down and concentrates nicely. I cooked this batch for about an hour and a half because I like the veggies to still be firm and a little chunky. Add some frozen corn in the last 20 minutes or so of cooking. Mine looked like this:

Now, instead of just stopping there with a great bowl of chili, I decided to move even more into the realm of gutbusting junk food with nachos!!! (mostly because they're damn easy to do)

I don't like a whole lot of topping on my nachos, especially when chili is one of them. I keep it simple, with just some finely chopped onion and a little more chopped jalapeno.

you, of course, might want to add sour cream, guacamole, black olives, salsa, etc etc etc.

Spread a good layer of chips out on your plate, and top with good ladles of chili. Top with some chopped onion and jalapeno, then load on the cheese.

Ideally, you'd stick this under the broiler or salamander right now. But since mine is 2 stories above me and I'm lazy, I just nuked mine.

NACHO NACHO MAN I WANT TO BE A NACHO (WO)MAN