The Scrabbled: Making Fun of Each Other since '99

My AH 2009 Chili Contest Award Winning recipe:

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 pounds beef chuck
• 8oz pureed tomato
• 1 1/2 small yellow onion, diced
• 3-6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 jalapenos, cored and sliced (wear gloves!)
• 3 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon, preferably freshly ground (you may need more otherwise)
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp tabasco
• 1 tsp msg (for reals!)
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• salt (preferably kosher) and pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp 99% dark chocolate, chopped fine
• 1 of those cardboard containers of beef broth
• 2 Negra Modela beers

Ok, so the hardest part is the first part and involves taking apart a big hunk of beef chuck. You can skip this step and just use 2 pounds lean beef (cubed) and 1 pound ground pork if you like, but I found this turns out best: Beef chuck comes pretty large and ribbed with fat. Fat and beef cook very differently, so you’ll need to separate them. Most of the large ribs of fat should cut away from the beef pretty cleanly, but if you hit a piece or two that are too marbled with fat, just cut it off and put it with the rest of the fat. You should end up with two stacks of beef: fat/really fatty pieces and super-lean fatless pieces.

Take the fat and run it through a meat grinder. Then take the lean beef and cube it, making sure to cut against the grain of the beef whenever possible. This well ensure that a.) you don’t get any big chunks of chewy fat in your chili and b.) the lean beef will get really tender and pull apart easily.

Get a dutch oven or large pot smoking hot with a bit of bacon fat or oil in the bottom and throw the cubes of beef in to sear. It’ll fill up with juice pretty quickly but try to get a good dark sear on as much as possible. After five minutes or so, throw the ground fat in with the beef and cook till the meat is browned throughout.Toss in a pinch of salt or two and some fresh ground pepper.

Open a bottle of the negra modela and pour the entire thing in. You want the beef to be almost completley submerged in liquid, so cover it the rest of the way with the beef stock. The remaining bottle of beer and beef stock will be used sparingly to keep the consistency of your chili right. Don’t add more unless your chili dries out too much and you need to get it wet again. Let this simmer for about a half hour with the lid off. You can actually just keep the lid in the cabinet for this entire process. We want moisture to cook off and let the chili broth/beer reduce, so lids will only keep that from happening.

At this point, throw in everything else, except for the cinnamon, jalapenos, chocolate, salt, and pepper. Let simmer for an hour to an hour and a half or until the beef is starting to get tender.

While the chili is still a little watery, add the remaining ingredients. The chocolate will thicken the chili a bit so you made need to add more beer and beef stock. Add salt and pepper and adjust the flavors to your liking. It’s worth noting that it’ll be thicker when reheated the next day, so leave it a little waterier than you might like if you plan on serving later. Also, if you’re worried about the fat content, leave it much more watery than you’d like and put it on the fridge. The fat will solidify on top and you can skim it off before reheating and reducing as needed. Of course, beef fat is good fat, so you’d be a fool to get rid of all that amazing stuff.