Cooking Stuff

A Post Entitled Finally!

∞ posted 3 months ago contains 24 notes and reblogged from blissandzen

blissandzen:

I’ve been working on my chili recipe for years, and damn if I didn’t finally get it right tonight. I like spicy, but I’m really not into pain, so I’ve been after a truly spicy chili that doesn’t require the attendance of a fire brigade to eat, and has just a bit of a molé flavor to it. And I found it. K insisted I record it so I can do it again. Y’all ready?

1 lb ground beef
1 lb hot pork sausage (Jimmy Dean’s worked fine)
1 lb dry beans (I’m partial to red kidneys, but type doesn’t much matter)
1/4 lb mushrooms (K thought I was crazy ‘til she tried it)
2 cans whole tomatoes
Half a head of garlic, crushed or chopped fine
2 large onions, chunked
3 T chili powder
4 T red curry paste
1.5 t cayenne pepper
1 T + a bit of cocoa powder
1.5 T blackstrap molasses (or maple syrup or sorghum)
Lawry’s seasoning salt
Black pepper

Soak the beans overnight, dump the water, add to a large stew pot (our 1 gal crockpot wasn’t nearly big enough.) Open the tomatoes, dump the juice into the pot, hand-crush the tomatoes into the pot. (Just grab them and squish them through your fingers, it’s fun. It helps to hold them deep in the pot while doing this, or you’ll be cleaning the entire kitchen later.) Turn the pot on medium low heat. Slice and add the mushrooms. Brown the beef and sausage together in a skillet, and while it’s browning, add the onions, garlic, chili powder, curry paste, and cayenne. Let it cook, stirring all the while, a few minutes longer than strictly necessary to just brown it, and somewhere in there coat the whole thing generously with Lawry’s and black pepper. You’ll be gumming up the skillet a little, but that’s okay. When it’s a little overdone, add it all to the pot, put the skillet back on its burner and add a cup or so of water to it and stir and scrape all the good gummy stuff loose. Add that to the pot, too, along with the cocoa and sweet stuff, and let it all simmer a couple hours to thicken and finish cooking the beans. If it needs more liquid, add water, leftover coffee, or whatever flips your switch. When the beans are done, grab bowls, spoons, friends, sour cream, cheese, beer, and cornbread, and get to work.

I’m convinced it was the curry paste and cocoa that had always been missing.

Oh, and I didn’t actually measure any of that shit, (though I did actually count the onions and the cans of tomatoes,) so feel free to adjust in any direction you please. And it’s not strictly necessary to season the meat as it cooks, but it’s the only way I’ve ever found to keep me from making a meal on it as it browns. That dose of cayenne up front keeps me out of it til it cooks.

Edit: Tart reminds me I forgot to list the tablespoon or so of cumin I told her I added.