Chaos, confusion and me

I like a good strong chilli-con-carne but in Sweden it’s mostly done using ground beef and white beans. They can be quite good but after tasting a Texas no-bean chili I realized that there are far better ways of cooking a chili. So surfing the net for some no-bean chili recipies - I found quite a few - I settled on some simple ones; most of them named Texas Red Chili but also some with modest names like “The Worlds Best Chili”.

I’m not going to supply you with any links since I do not want the original publishers to be held responsible for my massacre of perfectly good recepies. When cooking chili or any foreign dish you usually have trouble finding the proper ingredients. Trying to find ancho chilies, birds-eye chili and such in Linköping is pretty much like trying to find surface water in the Sahara desert. You may get lucky but …

So I cheated and made my own recepie based on a mish-mash of the recepies I found and what I could find in the store. I’ll list the ingredients below but beware; I did the conversion from the metric system (the sane world) to the silly system (US and UK) in my head so you better recheck those calculations before trying any of this yourself. I also did all translations regarding ingredients so they may yield exiting result if I got them wrong.

• 800g (1¾ lbs) beef
• 1 red paprika
• 1 Habanero chili
• 2 Jalapeno chilies
• 3 cloves of Garlic
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 2 tablespoons of chili powder
• 1 dice of beef stock
• 1 can of Guiness
• a dash of Chipotle BBQ-sauce, should have been a Chipotle chili if I had found one
• 1½ tablespoon of chopped Oregano
• 1½ tablespoon of chopped Coriander
• nearly 1 tablespoon of ground Cummin
• way too much brown sugar

I started with dicing the meat into small kubes 1cm². I then chopped up all chilies while cursing myself for not buying protected gloves. I once made a really hot mexican chicken casserole with out gloves and while taking a shower afterwards, well aware that I shouldn’t touch any sensitive parts, I pushed a lock of hair from my forehead. I got quite a burning sensation on my forehead and after that I was very very happy I hadn’t put my fingers anywhere else. One of the recepies says that sticking a finger up your nose after chopping up the chilies is like putting a hot soldering iron up your nose. I can understand the simile. Lacking gloves I decided to only handle the chilies with my left hand keeping the right hand on the knife’s handle at all times. Duh! Obviously I screwed up which I realized later.

Well, back to the recepie. I chopped up the garlic and fried them in a lot of butter (I like butter) until they were brown. I should probably have had less heat but you can’t do everything right. I poured the garlic inte my cast iron pot and started frying the meat. I had turned up the heat to full and used some more butter. The aim of the exercise was to give the meat a seared edge, not necesarily cooking them all the way through. I just love the smell of fried meat. Well, I love eating meat, preferably closer to rare than to medium rare. I fried a little of the meat at a time poring the finished pieces into the pot. Then I poured all of the chopped chilies, which I had in a bowl of water, into the pot along with the water. I mixed the flour and chili powder in a bowl and poured it over the meat and chilies in the pot. I then dissolved the dice of beef stock in a cup of warm water and poured it into the pot followed by a can of Guiness. Most of the recepies mentioned dark beer and you can not get darker or better tasting beer than Guiness.

I realized that I had probably added to much liquid but you can’t win them all. I turned up the heat and put the pot to boil. Meanwhile I chopped up som fresh herbs, Oregano and Coriander, and added ground Cummin and a little over a tablespoon of brown suger to the mix. I poured all this into the pot which was now boiling nicely. I turned down the heat and left it to simmer. Going to check on it every now and then. After about an hour I turned up the heat some, hoping to get rid of that excess liquid. I opened a can of beer and sat down to watch another episode of “Band of Brothers” in my home theater. While getting the beer I noticed that a lot of water had dissapated from the chili. Maybe turning up the heat wasn’t the thing to do. I stirred the pot, turned down the heat and put a lid on. Now for some WWII action.

After “Bastogne” I realized that I shouldn’t have turned the heat up at all. Some of the meat had got burnt at the bottom of the pot. I turned the heat way down low, stirred it well and left it to simmer some more. All in all I probably let it cook for 3 hours. I should have left it too cook on low heat for much longer. The original amount of liquid was probably as it should have been but I just had to tamper with it.

The taste? Well I could have (should have) left if on the stove for a few hours longer if there had been more liquid, i.e. if I hadn’t turned the heat up. But it tastes ok, it’s fairly hot and the heat keeps growing on you. In two ways, you like the taste better and better and each mouthful adds to the heat from the chilies. It’s an additive heat and not a burn and fade away sort of heat. I could probably use some other chilies to get a smoother transition but overall it was ok. I do believe that the chili would benefit from being cooked in larger batches.

Lessons learned: It’s ok if there is a lot of liquid in the pot at the begining. Do not turn up the heat but let it simmer for a long long time at low heat. If there is to much liquid near then end thicken it using Masa Harena (corn flour). Stir regularly to make sure it doesn’t burn at the bottom of the pot.

Technorati Tags: chilli-con-carne, chili, Linköping

Posted by Edward on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 20:04:48.