THE BEST TEXAS CHILI
Just meat and peppers
What is the very best cornbread — seen on the Citizen food section’s front — good for if not the very best chili?
We looked at recipes for chili con carne (but you probably already have a favourite version of chili with ground beef and beans), arcane award-winners (but you need to order brandname spice mixtures online) and settled on this outstanding recipe, from Lobel’s Meat Bible, which has been much reviewed on Epicurious and gets a 96 per cent “would make again” rating.
“This is the perfect and greatest chili recipe on the Internet, possibly the world,” is a typical online comment.
“Wow. Life-changer right here, folks.”
Often referred to as a Texas “Bowl o’ Red,” this type of chili is elegantly simple. It’s basically just beef and chili peppers, but it’s a revelation in terms of taste and texture: silky rich with meltingly tender beef, the dried peppers and cumin seeds give it flavour that’s not flaming hot, but nuanced, warming and addictive.
You can find the suggested pasilla (milder) and guajillo (slightly warmer) dried chili peppers at Mercado Latino, 67 Montreal Rd.; Little Latin America, 764 Somerset St. West; and at Chilly Chiles online and at 5530 Manotick Main.
Plenty of online reviewers of the recipe recommend a tri-tip roast for the beef, but Joel Diener of Saslove’s on Wellington West says: “Americans like tritip, but Canadians don’t. It’s too lean — you need some fat for the best flavour.”
I went with his recommended boneless blade roast, hormonefree from Paradise Farms. It smelled sweet and fresh even raw and became wonderfully flavourful and succulent in the simmered chili.
You can find Bob’s Red Mill masa harina (golden corn flour) in most grocery and health-food stores, but if you don’t want to buy a whole bag for the two tablespoons, you can also just tear up a corn tortilla into the chili — it will dissolve, adding the same slight thickening.