Going to a chili cook off this weekend

If there is a lot of drinking or if the judges are drinking a lot make it a tad saltier than normal. Not crazy salty but enough to matter.

unsweetened dark chocolate

The Dallas Keith chili recipe has won a few contests. It bounces around all the hunting forums.

The first year we did this contest we were told (by what turned out to be a moron) that the more off the wall the chili the better. So we went with a chicken and white bean chili. Everything has to be cooked on the grounds, so we drug a smoker out there, smoked whole chickens, make a homeade stock with the bones and went all out. It was the best white chili I've ever had. One judge deemed it a "goulash" unworthy of being judged and we were generally reprimanded for not doing a red chili. In subsequent years we've roasted exotic chilies, ground our own briskets, chucks, pork, used expensive chocolates, fancy beer, yada yada. Each year we get beat by some regular old 4 alarm chili kit ground beef grandma chili.

Cajun Red Bean Chili

I made this up last year. The idea was to make some hybrid of red beans and rice and chili. It worked well. I won a cookoff with it.

Basically, you make a RB&R base, then season and brown your pork like you would for jambalaya. Then add other common chili ingredients like peppers and chili powder. I may add to the recipe a chili slurry (like in Texas red chili) made from dried tabasco peppers that I now have.

Ingredients

1.5 lb red beans - camellia brand
2 bay leaves
5 lbs pork butt - cubed
5 Anaheim peppers roasted, peeled, seeded chopped (see note below recipe)
2 poblano peppers roasted, peeled, seeded chopped (see note below recipe)
2 jalapeños
1 yellow onion
6 cloves garlic
4 tbsp tabasco pepper chili powder ( I had to order this on Amazon)
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp Tabasco sauce
96 oz chicken broth
Creole seasoning

1. Soak beans overnight in water. Drain and cover with chicken broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add 2 bay leaves.
2. While beans are simmering, prep the meat. Cut pork into 1 inch cubes, and try to leave some fat on each piece. Generously sprinkle creole seasoning over the meat and mix the meat together with your hands. Do this twice.
3. Brown the pork down really well on high heat in approx 1/8 cup of veg oil. Let it fry till it sticks...This takes a long time (about 10 - 15 minutes). I usually check one piece to make sure it is well browned.. once browned, flip and cook the other side til brown - 3-5 minutes. After the pork is browned remove it from the pot.
4. Add the onions, unroasted peppers, garlic and cook till clear looking. This is when you scrape the bottom of the pot getting all the brown gratin from the pork. After the vegetables are sauteed well, I add the meat back to the pot and the roasted peppers and mix well. Add the beans and stock to the pot and bay leaves. Bring to a simmer.
5. Add chili powder and more creole seasoning to taste. Simmer uncovered for an hour
6. Mash some of the red beans along the side of the pot with the spoon and stir to thicken the chili to however much you like. It will thicken over night in the fridge, so keep that in mind.

For roasted peppers, you want to roast at high heat until all the skin is very blistered. Remove and put them into sealed ziplock bag for 10 minutes. The skin should easily peel off. Removed the seeds and stems, and chop roasted peppers.

I'm not a fan of cinnamon in chili.

All I got for ya...

quote:

---

Smoke a chuck roast, chop it up and add to your chili along with some jimmy dean hot sausage. Dark chocolate and a good stout beer too.

---

To add to this - depending on the cook off rules and your equipment setup, an option is to cook your protein over-the-top "OTT" of the chili pot in the smoker so that the drippings all fall into the pot.

I just made my greatest chili in half a century of making them. Key was I'm growing my own chilis and using multiples. NewMex Big Jims, regular anaheims, poblanos, some pequin, NewMex Redhots though are the star. I did it with a chuck roast. Brown up a couple onions, cook and skin the peppers and get rid of the seeds. Chop em up, brown the hell out of the chuck roast pieces. The more brown the better. Add some cumin and garlic. Then put it all in the instant pot for an hour.

It was amazing.

Next time I'm adding tomatoes and beans.

Won a contest using Mexene and dark chocolate and smoked chipotle chili powder also added stew meat along with ground beet