Greetings, fellow-members of the I Hate to Cook But I’m Stuck Doing It Club. Here is a recipe for excellent chili. I’ve been making chili for so long I can’t remember the last time I looked at a recipe for it, so what you’re getting is the distillation of many years experimentation (aka, using whatever’s in the house that is conceivably suitable for chili on the day the chili is being made).
You can start in the morning, and it will be ready for suppertime.
We begin:
Turn on the heat on the slowcooker. Throw in, in no particular order:
- 1 pound hamburger (no need to brown, raw is fine). Break up the clump.
- 1 or 2 chopped onions
- 1 bottle sun-dried-tomato sauce (any form of canned tomatoes is fine, but I love the taste of this one)
- Chopped garlic, as much as you have the balls for (I use bottled chopped, from Trader Joe’s, lasts forever in the fridge)
- 1 can white beans
- 1 can black beans (you can use red beans, but I don’t like them, so I don’t)
- 1 bag frozen corn
- 2 teaspoons cumin
- 1 can chicken stock (the key to most of my culinary success: when in doubt, add chicken stock and simmer it down)
- Various seeded, diced chili peppers (optional) (general rule: the smaller the chili, the hotter it is)
Stir it around a bit, then leave it to simmer, covered, on low heat for about 8 hours. If you are around to stir it now and then, good. If not, don’t worry about it. You want it to be bubbling evvvver so slightly. Blurp… … blurp… … blurp. Like that. If it bubbles too vigorously, blurpblurpblurp, turn the heat down.
About an hour before serving, if it looks a bit too watery, remove the lid to let the steam escape, and it will concentrate down.
This is even better the next day, so make lots. It freezes well, too. The amounts given here make, oh, 2 or 3 quarts? How many servings is that? Well, to paraphrase the immortal words of Alice B. Toklas, how should I know? Do they like it? Is there anything else to eat? Are they little kids or big grown-ups?
The chili peppers are labeled optional because I can’t stand hot chilis, so shoot me. The Mr. likes them, and adds his own chili sauce to taste in his bowl. Marriage is full of compromises.
As you may already have gathered, this is an eminently flexible recipe. Don’t like whatever? Leave it out. Vegetarian? Leave out the meat, add some more beans, and serve it with rice, for a more-or-less complete protein. Don’t like beans? Leave them out, add more meat. Can’t digest garlic? Leave it out. Try sweet onions instead of yellow, if they upset your stomach. Don’t like tomatoes? Leave them out. Some people add a can of beer to the mix. Yes, it will taste different, but you will still have a nutritious and palatable dish.
Note: there are people out there who get very… I’m not sure what word to use… intense?… about chili. If you use X, or if you leave out X, you’re fit only for a slow hanging. Phffft. Those are people who go to outdoor cook-offs and get all big-dick about making a simple basic dish, and they name their specialty something like ImmaKillYou Chili. Please. Those are not people who have to put a meal on the table day after day after week after year, within a budget and with 18 other hours of work to get done that day and who forgot to buy Essential Magic Ingredient last time they went to the grocery store.
Many, many recipes developed over a long long time in a little kitchen-corner in a peasant’s hovel. The cook used whatever was to hand. Did great-great-granny ever say, “omg we have only 1 onion in the house and I need 2 for this recipe, sorry, people, no supper for youse tonight”? Of course not. Those people who pop up in your grill and put their finger up their nose and say “oh that’s not AUTHENNNNNTIC”… well, let’s just say I have no patience for them.
