Your Favorite Chili Recipe?

I'm entering a chili cook-off on Saturday. While I know I've got a really good recipe - basic, but really good - I was wondering how you make yours. Got any prize-winning chili tips?

Share yours and I'll share mine...after the contest, just on the off chance (yeah, it's a long shot) that there may be Dwellars there! :D

My hubby is entering too; he's making white chicken chili. Probably won't win (haha) but it'll be yummy!

I posted mine here awhile back.

My favorite is the one in the Joy of Cooking 1996 ed.

http://www.boston.com/dining/recipes/c/cooking_chili_con_carne.html

it's basic enough that you could probably put your own special stamp on it.

Cloud;479028 wrote:

My favorite is the one in the Joy of Cooking 1996 ed.

http://www.boston.com/dining/recipes/c/cooking_chili_con_carne.html

it's basic enough that you could probably put your own special stamp on it.

Oh man, you gotta love anything with bacon grease and wine in it! :cool: Seriously, I bet that's good.

I never put the bacon grease in it. yuk!

Bacon grease, to taste, greatly improves lentil soup. Especially an insipid vegetarian variety. If those aren't right, it's a bowl-o'-boring.

And might be made all the better if chili-fied. Maybe you can try the homebuilt chili powder in This Is The Most Recent Recipe Thread.

Bacon grease, to taste, greatly improves lentil soup. Especially an insipid vegetarian variety. If those aren't right, it's a bowl-o'-boring.

Please tell me you inform the vegetarian in question :P

my mother used to save bacon grease in a can; legacy of the depression years. GROSS!

so I rarely use bacon fat unless I'm making coq au vin or something. No, I use oil, butter, or a combination to cook those onions.

I like lots of cumin in mine. It's not chili unless there's plenty of cumin.

I have a recipe that I like, but it wouldn't go over well in a contest. It's a no-roughage version for my messed-up small intestine.

must have bacon grease plus armadillo

the 'armadili' I had in Tejas also used the blood in the sauce and peppers roasted on a mesquite fire.

serving it in the 'shell' is optional... ;)

DanaC;479109 wrote:

Please tell me you inform the vegetarian in question :P

Not at all, that's what I do with my portion of no-fun vegetarian recipe lentil soup to make it something other than insipid verging on nasty. It's easier or at least more common to get a good lentil soup using meat or meat stock. (I'm still on the lookout for really tasty vege-recipe lentil soup, just to see if it's possible. It seems easier with pea soup.)

Other lipids like olive oil also work, but not quite so well.

Reserved bacon fat seems about the best for giving fried eggs their proper flavour, though. That or butter. Veggie oils, IMHO, do better for omelettes. Half pat of butter and half a tablespoon of extra-virgin do quite well for omelettes indeed, and the olive oil helps keep the butter from blacking and smoking.