Mostly Meat Chili

I do not make chili nearly as often as I ought, though the reason may be that I do not know how often that is. Seeing as how I received a new pot from my parents for Christmas perfect for chili preparation, I saw no excuse outside of laziness to not shut myself in on this snow covered day and prepare a pot of chili.
The weekend exposes a fine opportunity to make large quantities of freezable food, facilitating quick meals throughout the week. Chili sets me up especially well for chili-mac, a favorite of mine since our first encounter at Steak n Shake.  My chili however typically falls short of expectations leaving me continuously searching for innovations in the recipe. Today, my root recipe consisted largely of meat which was a departure from the norm as I am used to beans in my chili.  I have however heard rumor that proper chili goes without.

Browning in the new pot

The recipe started with ground beef and sausage, two and one pounds respectively.  Both browned and set aside.  Next a white onion, finely chopped, was also browned to an extent. Interestingly it was not long ago that I was rather timid about my browning. Fearing overcooking I would stir too often and pull food from the heat before the fruits of the act could ripen. It was not until I saw an episode of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef concerning the subject that I realized the loss of flavor I had brought upon myself.

Once the onions were done, all other ingredients were added. This included a bottle of beer, a cup of water, beef bouillon, four cloves of garlic, an 8oz can tomato sauce, half a can of tomato paste, 3T chili powder, 2T cumin, 2t paprika, 2t oregano, 2t sugar, 1t coriander, 1t unsweetened cocoa, and a few spritzes of Louisiana hot sauce.

Tonight's beer of choice

Cooking sealed over low heat I checked in on things every thirty minutes to make sure matters were not progressing too rapidly while ensuring they were in fact progressing at all.  Two hours in I removed the lid and added a water, cornmeal, and flour (gluten free flour) mixture to thicken things up.  I'm not sure if this was necessary and I've never added a thickener like this to chili before, but the root recipe called for it and I figured I would see what difference it made, though, not having made this recipe without the addition I do not have a basis for comparison.

Regardless, another 30 minutes of cooking uncovered resulted in an incredibly rich and flavorful dish.  The meat, when originally served, was still in chunks larger than I like to see in a bowl of chili.  This I remedied with a potato masher.  Normally when making chili I add spice throughout the process (a trick I learned watching some chili cookoffs on Food Network) however this time I am glad I didn't, because the heat and spice rendered quite adequately.  All in all, reasonable success, though I'm still convinced I could do better.  We will see how it fairs in the context of mac later this week.

The finished product

DnL8Tar

-PCM-

Meat Sauce v1.0

Being of at least 50% Italian decent (100% on my fathers side, ?% on my mothers side) I grew up treated to my Nonna's meat sauce on holidays.  Often imitated but never recreated, to my memory, this was the best meat sauce ever paired with pasta (though my memory of the sauce is fuzzy at best at this point in my life).  Years ago I was given my mothers meat sauce recipe which I believe was adapted from my Nonna's recipe.  Over the subsequent years I've abstracted from that recipe my own meat sauce style.

These days I don't follow a recipe when I make this type of sauce.  That being the case, I inevitably end up making each batch differently.  My basic preparation tact is throwing together good ingredients until the sauce looks and tastes right.  There are a few rules I tend to stick to but I typically ad lib the rest.  This being the case I'm calling this post v1.0.  I'll be posting subsequent sauce adventures as well, not that I ever plan on re-using any of the recipes, but it should make for decent reading and who knows, maybe I'll learn something by going back and reading over them (and I'm sure I can definitely pick up something via any user comments / suggestions).

In making the sauce I realized I didn't have any ground beef sitting about so the meat in the sauce ended up being bacon and sausage (not exactly healthy, but tasty... everybody loves bacon).  This batch started with a caramelized onion (ie, I started by caramelizing an onion).  To that I added four large celery stalks, one large green pepper, and 3 decent sized carrots, all diced.  I call this drop 1.

Drop 2 consisted of diced portabello mushrooms and more EVOO, of greatest import.

With drop 3 we reintroduce the meat.  Looking above I think I forgot to mention that I cooked the meat separately from the rest of the sauce.  Thus I will mention it now.  I cooked both the sausage and bacon in cast iron as I am want to do.  I did not completely cook them through though since they would cook more in the sauce and I did not want them to be a mess.  Everything that goes into the sauce, including the meat, gets a rough chop, and only a rough chop.  This ends up making the result pretty rustic in texture.  A few crushed garlic cloves go into D3 as well.

Drop 4 is all the liquid and spice content.  I went with fresh tomatoes, which is not always the case.  8 roma tomatoes diced to be exact ( seeds and juice included ).  To that I added a little over half a 7oz can of chicken broth, some more EVOO, some bacon grease, and 4oz tomato paste.

As far as spices go, here's a list, it's extensive and ordered by quantity.

• Basil
• Salt
• Thyme
• Oregano
• Fennel seed
• sage
• pepper
• 2 bay leaves 

I simmered this down for two hours.  About 30 minutes deep I realized it was too thick and threw in 15oz tomato sauce to add some more liquid content.  One thing to note concerning liquid is that I NEVER add water to my sauce.  My mothers recipe called for water, but as far as I can discern, watter serves no purpose other than watering down the sauce.  Better to add a liquid which brings with it some flavor component.  

30 minutes before the end of cooking, add one good glass of red wine (good red wine, something you're going to drink with the meal, none of this cooking wine nonsense).  This is also an ideal time to start thinking about getting your water on to boil.  

The pasta in and of itself requires some technique.  I cook it slightly below al-dente.  After that I throw the sauce in with it and cook it all together.  This seems to help the pasta soak in the sauce.  I dump some parmigiano reggiano on top of that as well just to add a salt component to the table.

Plating comes paired with green onion and parsley. 

the finished product