Beef/Pork Chili by NuclearFusi0n
(Editors note: I cut out a ton of pictures from this recipe, I trust people browsing this don't need 10 pictures on cutting onions or what a cast iron pan looks like)
Contents
Ingredients:
- dry red kidney beans
- canned whole tomatoes
- garlic
- pork/beef
- jalepeno chilis
- onions
- bell peppers (frozen is fine)
- salt
- pepper
- cumin
- coriander
- water
Method
1. Sort your beans, removing nasty beans, clumps of dirt, or rocks. Soak your beans in enough water to cover the beans after they double in volume for eight hours, then pop them on the stove. Simmer for about 3 hours.
2. Chop up some garlic. I like to use about one-half to one head per dry pound of beans. 3. Dice some onions. I like to use about one-half to one large onion per dry pound of beans. 4. Slice jalepenos in half, and remove the inner white membrane and seeds. Keep some if you like the heat, or trash them all if you just want fruity jalepeno flavor. I like to use 1-2 per dry pound of beans.
5. Break out your frozen bell pepper strips. Defrost them and give them a light rinse, and drain completely. Give them a rough chop, and then dry as much as possible with paper towels. Squeeze them a bit to get the moisture out. Less moisture = higher heat in the pan = better sear. More moisture = boiling and steaming instead of searing.
6. Warm up your cast iron pan to a medium low heat, pour in some vegetable oil, and sweat your diced onions for a few minutes until they are soft, fragrant, and translucent in color. You could include the garlic, cumin, jalepeno, and coriander in this sweat, but I forgot to add them. I covered them later on.
7. Wipe out the oil from the onion sweat so your pan is clean and dry. Turn the heat all the way up to let the cast iron pan heat for about 4-5 minutes, or until it's smoking hot, ready to sear. Toss in your throughly dried bell peppers and spread them around, then leave them alone for 30-40 seconds to develop a nice brown sear on the outside.
8. Sweat the garlic and spices if you didn't do them with the onions.
9. I forgot to cook the jalepenos, so I do them.
10. Add all the stuff to the pot after they are done with the cast iron.
11. Break out your meat. Here I have bone-in pork dickheadloin. I am removing the bone and fat, and cutting the meat into very small cubes for the food processor. You can also put the bones in the pot to simmer and add body and flavor, but I discarded them because my pots were getting too full.
12. The next package of pork (*Ed note, I cut out about 10 pictures of pork here to save bandwidth)
13. I got lazy and decided to skip cutting up the last two roasts and just seared them whole and dropped them in the pot to stew.
14. Rinse off your cubes. The smaller your cubes are, the better the grind will be.
15. Pulse your food processor with just a few cubes of meat about 5-6 times. Do not just turn it on, just pulse it on and off.
16. Sear your meat in the cast iron pan, and toss it in the pot.
17. Fill your empty kosher salt cellar. If you use table salt, kill yourself.
18. Clean up your mess.
19. Break out the peppercorns. You can either use them whole or grind them. I chose to grind them so I wouldn't accidently bite down on them while eating chili. My spice grinder was dirty and I was too lazy to clean it so I just ground the pepper the old fashioned way.
20. Break out the canned tomatoes. Canned tomatoes are superior to supermarket fresh tomatoes for many reasons. They are always picked at the peak of ripeness, instead of being picked green and gassed to ripen and shipped to the market. The season for good fresh tomatoes is short too, so unless it's the right time of year, you should use canned tomatoes. If you have a nice tomato plant in your backyard, and it's the right time of year, feel free to use them. I like to use about 1.5 to 2.5 pounds of canned tomatoes per dry pound of beans.
21. Drain the tomatoes in a colander, reserving the liquid.
22. Add liquid to pot.
23. Seed and roughly chop the tomatoes. Seed them by running them under running water, picking them open and roughly scooping out the crap inside, saving the flesh.
24. Salt to taste. Do not salt too early; salt and undercooked beans do not get along! By now the beans should have been simmering for at least 6 hours, and the meat at least 2.
25. Simmer for a few more hours.
26. Serve. Garnish with sour cream, toasted bread croutons, or extra virgin olive oil.
27. Did I make enough?
28. Pull the roasts. You know they are done when the bone just falls out with just a light pull.
29. Clean up!
This is a fairly basic chili. You can enhance it by added exotic peppers or more spices, but I like it the way it is. Enjoy!
edit: Be sure to stir frequently, being sure to get the beans on the bottom so they don't burn.
