Award-Winning Chili

[Beer and Wine Journal mostly features content focusing on how to make beer and some other fermented beverage whose name escapes me. Sometimes, however, we’ll post a food-related article if it has a tie-in to beer. This is one of those times.]

 

A lot of food blogs make you wade through some long, nearly-irrelevant personal anecdote before they finally get to the recipe. I hate that. You hate that. Everyone hates that, so I’ll keep this short and to the point.

Below is a chili recipe that I made and that won the 2018 Austin ZEALOTS Chili Cookoff. This was the 15th year the ZEALOTS (my homebrew club) held the cookoff in conjunction with the holiday party, so I was very honored to win. The recipe is mostly a variation on a recipe I found in Texas Monthly and had made a few times. That recipe, in turn, was a modification of a previous recipe that had won some awards in CASI competitions. (What’s CASI? It’s like the BJCP for chili.) This recipe has quite a few ingredients but is inherently simple to make — just cook the meat and “gravy,” then add the spices and simmer. The biggest key to success is using fresh spices. I’ve added some specifics about the spices I used, but ordinary supermarket spices should work just fine. The second biggest key is to simmer it as gently as possible — and stir frequently enough that it doesn’t scorch.

This chili is spicy, but not ludicrously so. If you like kung pao chicken or chicken vindaloo, you’ll be in the same ballpark of spicing level. Enjoy!

 

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