So I finally got around to making chili. I looked for a recipe, and I found this one from Texas Monthly. As usual, I didn't follow it exactly, but pretty close. The biggest difference was I only cooked half of the recipe.
Now that I've got some experience under my belt, I have ideas about how my second time should go. Since this is more extreme experimentation, I'm only making 1/6th of the recipe. So here is what I'm going with:
2 dried ancho chiles, stems removed
1 dried pasilla chile, stem removed
1 dried chipotle chile, stem removed
1 dried cascabel chile, stem removed
1 jalapeño
2 cups chicken stock
1 pound beef chuck
1/3 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 roma tomato, diced
1/2 tablespoons cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon sugar
dash of cloves
salt to taste (I used a teaspoon, that was probably a bit too much)
Basically what I did is take all of the chiles and put them in a pot with the chicken stock on medium heat. Then I took the ground chuck, onion and garlic and cooked them on medium heat in a skillet. Once the ground beef browned, I took the broth with the chiles and put it in a blender and blended it until the chiles were broken up. Then I put the mixture back in the pot, added the beef mixture, added the tomato, and then the spices.
And I know that this is going to be heresy for some people, but I've been trying to lose weight, and the "stay at home" order hasn't been helping at all. So I cut the ground beef by half and replaced it with mushrooms. We'll see how it goes.
