TESTING ANOTHER RECIPE: Chili

Saturday Marty and I again tested a recipe for Cook's Illustrated.   This time it was for Ultimate Chili.  This is not like the chili I regularly make.  This is diced chuck, not ground; make your own chili powder; molasses, chocolate, and pinto beans, not kidney beans.  I absolutely hate pinto beans. I hate kidney beans too and I pick them out after cooking.  Anyway, I am a trooper and when we test a recipe I try it like they wrote it.

In the back the nasty beans doing the end of a 10 hours brined soak.  Marty is seeding the Ancho peppers and the Arbol peppers.  Notice smart one is wearing gloves. 

There were a sh*t load of chili peppers.

In the food processor to be ground to a fine powder.

Only the best cocoa powder will be added.

Lovely smell as it grinds.

More goodness and hotness to be added.

The 5# of chuck to be trimmed off and diced.

There is a huge amount of meat.  He trimmed and diced forever.  I was washing dishes and stirring onions while Marty chopped away.

The soup pot has the beans, lager, onions, peppers, cornmeal, other seasonings, chicken stock. He is adding the browned meat to the pot.  At this point I am telling him, it will not fit in one pot.  He is sure it will fit.

 

I was right, it would not fit in the pot.  Notice the casserole dish.  That has the extra.

All dished up.  I sprinkled freshly diced onion on mine.

As I said I don't like pinto beans.  I tasted the soup and then picked out as many as I could.  Marty likes the beans, but he picked out most of his also.  Way too many beans in this recipe.  I would cut it down to a third.  It just overpowered the dish.  It became bean soup, not chili.  With the beans thinned out, it was a very hot and tangy chili.  Would we make it again???  Maybe.  We did like the small diced chuck.