Can't sleep. You fucks get to suffer too.

Got into a friendly argument at work with one of the sales weasels. He felt that chilli was ground beef, a can of beans and a can of tomatoes with a $1.29 package of seasoning mixed in.

I was fucking appalled. We bantered for a bit, and before I knew it we'd agreed on a chilli cookoff at work this last monday.

I made my chilli from scratch. Well, sort of. I didn't raise the cow or grow the tomatoes or chili peppers or anything.

I did however go out and but 2 lbs of ground beef, 2 pounds of stewing beef, fresh chili powder, cumin, lime, onion, red pepper, stewed tomatoes and oregano along with a can of shitty beer to make chilli with.

I went with a classic texas red. Made the gravy first and then grabbed a stick blender and worked my sauce base until it was liquid. Then I browned all the meat as best I could and added it to the sauce. This was after taking all the stewing beef and cutting it all into cubes about a centimeter acroos at most, then dousing it with salt and leaving it to bathe in the sodium chloride for a while. Then came the spices.

Oh, the motherfucking spices....

The fresh chili powder I got? Not so fresh. Christ. Went back out to a grocery, (At 7 pm on a Sunday...) and rebought more chili powder. Went back to wrk. More cumin, more chili powder, more oregano. About a half tablespoon at a time. Flavor slowly seeps in, and at about 2 am in the morning... it's decent. Acceptable. It's a little acidic, so I added about a quarter teaspoon of sugar and that leveled it out nicely.

Went to bed, slept for about four hours, got up at six and checked it again. It's decent. Good enough that if I actually went to a chili cookoff I'd feel like I was representing.

Took it to work. Competed. boss decided to have a survivor style vote. I lost.

Ugh.

The part that really fucks me off, was my opponent did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Can of beans, can of tomatoes, ground beef and a package of spices. Oh.... and his secret weapon. A quarter cup of brown sugar.

His chilli was practically sweet and sour. And the office liked his better.

Is there a point to this story? Yes, there is.

1) The people in my office don't know what the fuck chilli should taste like.

2) I obsess on shit like this way too much.

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BROWN FUCKING SUGAR? IN CHILLI? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Bummer, dood. Majority wins.

Your shit just ain't up to par.

Ace that motherfucker with this shit next time. (no brown sugar)

Or any of these.

Real chili doesn't have beans in it....but we always had beans and rice prepared on the side so people could add them if they wanted or to eat them as a side dish. I also like to add some ground sausage to chili in addition to ground beef. Gebharts chile powder is considered one the better ones by alot of people. Another good seasoning for Chile is Tiger Sauce if you can find it.

I have probably never said this about anything.

Fenris: that was a truly interesting post. Thank you.

I hardly ever make what I call chili (because this seems to be disputed) and when I do it for the most part there isn't meat involved, just beans and other veggies. There is probably some distinction about vegetarian chili and meat chili that people will argue about but I say whatever.

Chili is a great food and whoever makes it does it their way and I am happy to eat.

I am an omnivore, that is what my teeth are for.

Why isn't Panzer, the gourmand of XPT, chiming in?

I don't want to know what goes into Panzer Chili.

Is there such a thing as "real" ethnic food anymore? Ameicans have bastardized everything. Nothing wrong with that. Taste is taste.

Have you visited Toronto?

I'll never get why some people get so offended over the concept of beans in chili. Chili is a type of stew. Stew generally means throw in whatever the hell you want. When I make chili I use corn instead of onions and have used beef, lamb, buffalo, and Italian sausage as meat.

I never touch chili. Panzer can't do any worse than the puke in this thread.

What do chili lovers think of chili in coney island restaurants? Does it vary by location, or is it all just dumped out of a can?

That's not chili.

Just an update on the chili thread for those that enjoyed it.

Found out that the bitterness in my batch that I fought with for the better part of four hours was most likely due to a bad batch of powder. I didn't know this, but when you purchase chili powder from a grocery store they generally grind up the chilis as is... so it's stems, seeds, skin and all.

That appalls me. I'll be buying a batch of poblanos, drying them and making my own chili powder from now on. I'm going to experiment a little bit with the heat.

Was checking in a couple of sources online, and cooks illustrated has given me some ideas for some really interesting addatives. Blackstrap mollases and high quality cocoa powder to be precise. The molasses brings smoke and sweetness without getting too sweet and the cocoa powder brings complex flvour along the lines of mole.

Should be good, can't wait to try it.

Gonna change up the meat too. Ground beef is out, despite the fact that I liked the texture. Got way more compliments on the 'little pieces of steak in my chili'. I'll probably go up to five pounds of meat, I'm not sure what cut yet.

final note, both myself and the guy that competed against each other both noticed the award the boss gave out for the event has 'Annual' on it. So I'm coming back with a vengeance next year.

Try mixing the ground beef with ground bison. I just made some veg. beef soup with this and it's rich as hell !