Thursday, January 9, 2014

I've Altered the Meal,
Pray I Don't Alter it Any Further!

I've absolutely loved my Mom's chili for as long as I can remember. In fact I've absolutely loved most chili that I have tried over the years, yet I've always gone back to my Mom's as being my favorite and the absolute best I have had. The last several years I've been entering various chili contests and I've been changing the base recipe around a bit each year to make it more my own. I have finally settled on what I feel is the best it has been since I've started making it. And hey, why keep amazing chili to myself?


What you'll need:
(Items in italics are additions I've made to the original recipe.)
  • 1.5 lbs ground beef
  • Your saved bacon grease from the freezer
    (The link is to a 6 second video I did on how to properly filter/save bacon grease for cooking with later.)
  • 1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
    (Or use fresh if you want it to take forever to make.)
  • 1 16 oz can of light
    red kidney beans
  • 1 16 oz can of pinto beans
    (Or you can cook pinto beans with 1 lb of ham hock for an even better experience and get a bean meal out of the deal, but again it will then take forever.)
  • 1 8 oz can of tomato sauce
  • 9 oz to 12 oz of real bacon bits
    (It's even better if you cook bacon yourself and crumble it up.)
  • 1 large green pepper chopped
  • 1 cup celery diced
  • 1.5 cups onions chopped
    (I just use frozen diced onions for this, no one enjoys cutting onions.)
  • 5 oz of Velveeta cheese cut up into dice sized cubes or smaller
    (Do not go overboard on this, I've tried 10 oz and 8 oz, both were way too much.)
  • 3.5 tbsp minced garlic
  • 4 tbsp chili powder
  • 2 tsp cumin
  • 1/2 tsp paprika
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 to 1/2 tsp bhut jolokia (ghost pepper) dust
    (This is only if you want it a lot more spicy, I tend to leave this out so more people other than myself can enjoy the chili.)
  • 1.5 tbsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper

What you need to do:
  1. Melt a large portion (two or three golf ball sized chunks) of bacon grease in a large skillet.
  2. Brown the ground beef in the bacon grease on medium-high heat.
  3. Drain the about 95% of the meat grease from the pan.
  4. Add all of the ingredients to a large cooking pot.
  5. Rinse all four cans with a small amount of water (about 1/8 can each) and add the water to the chili.
  6. Stir extremely well and set heat to high.
  7. Bring chili to a boil.
  8. Set heat all the way low and cover the pot.
  9. Simmer 5 hours or longer as needed stirring occasionally.
  10. Add your favorite toppings (I like cheddar and oyster crackers) and enjoy!
  11. Leave me a comment below on any alterations you make to the recipe and how it went.
  12. Share this post with all of your fellow chili lovers.



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