TJay
Senior Member
Since it looks like winter will finally be here I decided to make a pot of chili. Like a lot of folks I enjoy the process of making chili about as much as I do eating it. Over the years the chili I make has changed a little but not a lot. I usually use deer or elk if I have it but today I'm using elk (I have some from an elk a friend killed) and antelope that I killed last year. In regards to changes I've made to my recipe a couple of years ago a friend from New Mexico visited and brought some little cups of green and red chile from Hatch New Mexico. The brand is El Pinto and I started using the red chile in my chili. It comes in little 4 ounch cups and it really adds a deep chile flavor that we really like. Other than that I try and use a good quality chili powder like Gebhardts or something from Adobe Mills. Today I used McCormick Ancho chili powder because that's what we had on hand. And I like beans so I put beans in my chili. Growing up in Louisiana I knew a lot of people from Texas that had a lot of strong opinions on what chili should be and most of them didn't put beans in the chili. The one thing I did adopt from them was cooking chili at least all day. I don't use a lot of tomato sauce and I do use some beef broth and beer to thin it out some. I didn't really include a recipe since most people have their own but I would recommend trying some sort of red chile or red chile sauce but go easy since it is a strong flavor, the 4 ounce cup of El Pinto that I use is just about right for chili with two pounds of protein. The cooking process usually makes me wonder about the origins of chile con carne and I had heard that it originated on cattle drives in the 1800's so I did some research and found that it could be much older. For instance in the 1700's New Spain brought people over from the Canary Islands to help colonize what is now southwest Texas. They brought with them a stew made with meat, chile, cumin and garlic (sounds a lot like chili) that they cooked in big pots. Prior to that native Americans were using chile to flavor their food as well as indigenous people from Central and South America. The chili that I referenced in the old cattle drives consisted of dried meat, dried chile and suet compressed into brick form that made it easy to transport and cook on the trail. Pretty interesting stuff!
