Lately I’ve been noticing that my freezer has been filling up with various meats. I have this thing about buying any type of meat that goes on sale. So Saturday I decide to take an inventory of what I had on hand and to make a vow not to buy any more until I have made a serious dent in the meat cache.

I discovered I had at least 12 whole chickens; about 20 lbs of ground meat, 8 slabs of ribs, and two moose roasts!

So I decided that two chickens and 6 lbs of ground beef would be cooked on Sunday.

Sunday is cooking day at the Meatriarchy house. Except in the summer when Saturday AND Sunday are cooking days. The goal for me is to cook as much food as possible so that we have plenty of quick meals at hand for the week.

Summer/spring/fall is primarily oriented towards barbecue: ribs, pulled pork, beer can chicken, sausage, hamburgers etc,

Winter is oriented towards soups, stews and other cold weather dishes including roast chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes and turnips and carrots. So I tossed two chickens into the oven and turned it to a modest 250 while I worked some magic on the ground beef.

As an aside I also had a blade pot roast in the fridge that I had picked up at Sobeys on Saturday. Actually I picked up three because they were on sale for 1.99 a pound (old habits die hard).

I had made up my mind that I would turn the ground beef into chili. But at the same time I was thinking about a purchase I had made almost a year ago when I was in Leamington Ontario last May. Leamington has a healthy population of Mexican farm workers and as such has some stores that cater to their culinary peculiarities. At one such store I discovered an excellent chipotle salsa for only 2.00 as well as some very good chili powder. But my prize purchase was a package of dried ancho chilies - the foundation of all authentic chili.

Let’s face it for most of us chili means ground beef, green peppers, chili powder, tomatoes or tomato sauce, garlic and a few spices oh and lots of kidney beans. In good hands it is a fine hearty dish in poor hands it is spaghetti sauce with chili powder. But whilst traveling in Texas 5 years ago I had been exposed to an entirely different type of chili. This was a fiery bowl of cubed beef with a deep red sauce - and nothing else. I tried to replicate the concoction last year with some ancho chili powder but my results were less than inspiring. In fact I was quite ill from it.

Needless to say I was loathe to repeat the same performance but stickler that I am for authentic Southern cooking I couldn’t leave well enough alone. So I decided that I would take a stab at it one more time with as basic a recipe that I could find. So I went to the source, well, the Internet source.

Frank X. Tolbert is a legend in Chili circles and his book ” Bowl of Red: A Natural History of Chili con Carne” is considered to be one of it’s bibles this is one of his recipies. It is simple and I didn’t need to go buy any more special ingredients. So I went with it:

12 dried ancho chiles
3 lbs lean beef chuck, cut in thumbsize pieces
2 ounces beef suet ( I didn’t use suet, the meat was pretty fatty on its own)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon cayenne
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
2 cloves garlic, chopped (or more)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons masa harina (optional)

1. Break off the stems of the chiles, and remove the seeds.
2. Place chiles in a small saucepan and cover them with water.
3. Simmer for 30 minutes.
4. Purée the chiles in a blender with a tiny bit of cooking liquid to make a smooth, thin paste.
5. Use as little liquid as possible, unless you want the chili to be soupy.
6. Pour the chile purée into a Dutch oven or large, heavy pan.
7. In a heavy skillet, sear the meat in two batches with the beef suet until the meat is gray.
8. Transfer each batch to the chile purée, then pour in enough of the chile cooking liquid to cover the meat by about 2 inches.
9. Bring the chili to a boil; reduce heat to a simmer.
10. Cook for 30 minutes.
11. Remove the chili from the heat, and stir in the rest of the ingredients.
12. Return chili to the heat, cover and resume simmering for 45 minutes, keeping the lid on except to stir just occasionally.
13. (Too much stirring tears up the meat) Add more chile liquid only if you think the mixture will burn otherwise.
14. After 45 minutes, you may add the masa harina, if you wish.
15. The masa adds a subtle, tamale-like taste, but it also thickens the chili.
16. Cover the chili again and simmer for another 30 minutes.
17. Do a lot of tasting to see if seasoning suits you.
18. Add more seasonings as you like, but go easy on the oregano to avoid ending up with a spaghetti sauce flavor.
19. Take the chili off the heat, and refrigerator overnight.
20. Skim as much fat as you wish from the chili before reheating it.
21. Serve hot.

The only thing I didn’t have was the masa harina. So I didn’t add it.

The only pain in the ass part is cleaning the blender afterwards. Other than that this is one of the easiest recipes you will make. It tastes much better after it has sat for a day in the fridge. But then again I think that is the case for any kind of stew. I mentioned earlier I had made a variation of this last year. The big difference was that this time I used dried ancho chiles instead of ancho powder. It is a very dramatic difference so I would recommend you go the dried chile route if you are going to make this.

I took a couple of pictures but they didn’t come out too well. So I found one on the net that looks sorta like it:

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