Hey, they don't pay me right now at my job... and I don't think ahead. As you can likely tell by his shirt, he got plenty of awesome presents as it was.
As the day has gone on and I've given the subject more thought, however, I realized that I could give him the greatest present of all: stress-relief.
You see, I have been prodding Matty for close to two months now to post our award-winning chili recipe on the blog. He's been either too busy or too unmotivated thus far to do it... and it's keeping him from contributing. I figure that if I take the burden off his shoulders, guess what on Earth we put in the chili, and get a post up, it'd make his day. A great side-effect? It'll surely make your day too.
That being said, here it is. The big one. That which our blog's measly reputation hinges on: Captain Candy's Catastrophic Chili.
"If the recipe is that good," you might think, "why share it with us lowly peasants lurking in the blogosphere?"
A good question, but one that is easily answered. Since we waited forever and a day to actually post this recipe, measured things... less than accurately, and hardly remember what we put in to begin with (I wish you could see this crumpled, pencil-scrawled sheet of paper in front of me), I don't think we're in any danger of losing a fortune on this one. Besides, we only actually took the 2nd place medal (out of 14 entries), our egos have been kept in check for now.
To be honest, the chili wasn't even our idea. Our church hosts a "Chili Cook-off" every year, and every year you know where to find us when that day comes around...
Not at the cook-off.
We don't have great memories, so we've never quite made it there. This year, however, we didn't have too much of a choice. The pastoral associate at the church, a very bright guy named Bill, knew about the Culinary Conquistadors and knew that we had a bit (keyword being BIT) of cooking experience. He hounded us week after week about when he was gonna see our name on the entries list and how he couldn't wait to try that Conquistador chili. He wasn't being obnoxious, just probably knew that we didn't have the gumption to enter ourselves.
Finally, without Matty's permission, I put our names on a slip and we were in the running.
When that fateful weekend came around, we hit the store, grabbed some ingredients, and went to work. given how long ago it was that we actually made the chili, I'll skip the faulty narrative and stick to the phases of preparation. Here is how it all went down.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Captain Candy's Catastrophic Chili
Serves: ???? (a crock-pot's worth)
Cook Time: ~6 hours (though you won't be present the whole time)
Phase I: Meat and Flavorings
- What you'll need
- Coarsely ground beef (2.5 lbs+)
- Bulb of garlic (6 cloves)
- Salt & Pepper
- Onions (1.5 cups+)
- Olive oil (a few Tbsp. to cover the electric frying pan
- Preparation
- Thaw the beef, chop it up. Keep it chunky. Microwave, hot water, whatever you need to do to make sure it's not frozen and can be worked with.
- Chop up your onions. We diced them, but not finely. pieces were probably 1/2 in. long.
- Crush your cloves of garlic. We used a garlic press, I recommend one if you can find it
- Add oil to electric frying pan, turn to 300°F. Heat oil.
- Cooking
- Put beef into the electric frying pan / heated oil.
- Add prepared garlic and onions
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Allow the mixture to cook for a few minutes until the beef and seasonings are browned
- What you'll need
- Variously colored bell peppers, the more colors, the more fun (1.5 cups+)
- Celery, chopped (1.5 cups+)
- Preparation
- Chop that business. Like onions, don't go too fine.
- Cooking
- Drain meat and seasonings
- Add new oil to frying pan
- Add chopped vegetables
- Sauté vegetables for 5 min. or until soft
- What you'll need
- Kidney beans (40.5oz. can)
- Dark red kidney beans (30oz. can)
- Can of tomatoes with oregano, basil, and garlic (28oz) [You may want to try the kind with diced green chilies in it as well]
- Spices
- Oregano
- Ground black pepper
- Basil
- Chili powder
- Hot paprika
- Cinammon
- Crushed red pepper
- Preparation
- Drain beans
- Cooking
- Add drained beans to vegetables in electric frying pan
- Add seasoned tomato mixture
- Stir, add spices to mixture. Now I realize that we haven't given you any measurements, but honestly we didn't measure it either. You've just got to work with what you have and guess a bit along the way. We continually tweaked the spices toward the end to equalize spiciness, saltiness, sweetness, tartness, etc. to meet our qualifications. We'll come back to this... just put in a couple shakes for now and try not to overdo it.
- Combination
- Add everything, meat, vegetables, etc. to crock pot
- Simmer the mixture for several hours (4-5 hrs.) The flavors need to "become acquainted", as one of our aunts likes to say. Don't bother taste testing for a while.
- We kept a bit of overflow simmering in the electric frying pan for testing purposes... we had very little faith in ourselves and wanted to avoid polluting the whole batch if possible. You may want to try this too
- What you'll need
- Buffalo sauce (We used a brand called "Moore's", 16oz.)
- Frank's Hot Sauce
- Srirachi asian hot sauce
- Limes (two)
- Mixing it up
- Juice both limes, add the juice to the chili
- This is where any semblance of a scientific approach falls apart. We added the entire bottle of buffalo sauce, squirts of Frank's and srirachi, and fiddled with cinammon, hot paprika, and chili powder. Here are some pointers:
- The lime juice and cinammon add a sweetness to the mixture with a bit of tartness from the limes
- Srirachi sauce adds spice, but almost a little sweetness as well
- Frank's has more distinct flavor than the srirachi sauce, thus adding more spice that equalizes the sweetness
- Chili powder, hot paprika, and crushed red pepper all add spice
- Salt and pepper are useful for normalizing any oddities
- Pray that it works out and don't give up until you find a flavor you like
It wasn't exact, it wasn't elegant, but it was pretty dang good. For once, you don't even have to take just our word for it either.
What we learned from all of this is that chili is something that is meant to be toyed with and is hard to mess-up. As long as you have a consistent base with the beef and vegetables, your originality will come from how you season it. In our case, the limes and srirachi are what really made the difference, I believe.
You don't even have to use beef if you want to try something different. The chili that took number one in the cook-off was a green chili-based, shredded chicken chili. It was made by a woman who was a much more accomplished cook than we and was thus a tasty departure from the norm. If you're confident, try something crazy!
Now that it's Spring, chili-season may have passed for the most part... but if you're looking fora different spin on a recognized classic, we suggest giving this one a try. Captain Candy has never let anyone down... at least not yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment