I like chili (one wonders if I would make something that I don’t like – I would speculate not…)  It’s especially good this time of year.  When things start to get cold (see how I avoided that whole chilly pun there?)  it’s a deeply happy thing to sit down to a warm bowl of chili.

You’ll find many variations of chili; with meat, without, with beans, without, chili verde, white chili, vegetarian chili, it goes on and on…   You could likely start a fist fight in Texas if you put the wrong thing in someone’s chili.  As far as heat is concerned that’s a personal thing.  Some people pride themselves on eating five alarm chili – some actually say they enjoy it.  I believe this is for masochists.  That’s just me though.  I like to actually taste my food rather than having it burn the inside of my mouth like I was being accosted with a red-hot poker.  Again that’s just a personal preference.  This is somewhere around a one to two alarm – call it one and a half for sake of averaging and such mathematical things.  It’s spicy enough to let you know you’re not eating something boring without causing irreparable damage to your taste buds.

This recipe is a bit of an amalgamation.  After some repeated attempts my other half (that’d be the Andrew part of name) settled on this as the ideal chili – at least for him – I like it too.  A basic chili consists – in it’s most rudimentary form – of chili peppers, onion, garlic, and cumin, and some sort of chopped or ground beef.  This is not a rudimentary chili.  This is an everything but the kitchen sink kind of chili.  But it’s got balance…perhaps even poise if you’re into such things.  I just like my food to taste good and it does that with reckless abandon.

So what do you need for such a chili? Continue reading →