Around here, a pretty good selection of dried chilis at a reasonable price in lots of Latino groceries. There are lots of chilis about like guajillos sold under a variety of names-- mid size, slightly spicy, smooth-skinned with a little bit of smoky flavor. Anchos are anchos though.
Chicago too actually-- last time I was in la Villita, someone was sellling big packs of smooth chilis on the sidewalk on a Saturday. That was what I thought the normal price was. When I was in NM and got curious about those cool bunches of chilies that hang outside there, 10x more expensive.
This is more technical than gustatory, but I'm glad of the Instant Pot for chili, because I can literally throw everything including dried, unsoaked beans in the pot at once and come out with chili on the other end 90 minutes later.
(Despite growing up in Texas, I never cottoned onto the aversion to beans (carpetbagger stock)).
Oh yeah, central american dried red beans compared to dried US or even worse the canned ones are much, much more flavorful. Soaking overnight takes some of the spontanbeity out, but as long as you know that you'll make chili in the next few days, all is well. Also, diced middling cuts of meat over ground beef.
I thought a bowl of red was something else entirely.
I use tomatoes and beans. I thought the point of chili was to be as easy as possible to make and scale to feed a small army.
For me, the burning question is, how can red hot chili peppers be so good when Red Hot Chili Peppers are so bad?
6: Exactly. From the poor-people's-food perspective, no beans seems bafflingly ostentatious.
I mean, maybe in 1855 Texas, you could get bad beef for little more $/cal than beans? Who knows.
I'm glad of the Instant Pot for chili, because I can literally throw everything including dried, unsoaked beans in the pot at once and come out with chili on the other end 90 minutes later.
I just got an Instant Pot for Christmas, and I haven't done it yet but I'm thinking I want to figure out how to make chili in it. I still havn't really learned my way around the thing.
A few weeks ago we started getting Blue Apron, where they send you all the makings of a gourmet meal you make at home. And the food is good, but its a pain to spend that much time doing food prep and cooking. So we are going to stop doing that.
What I'd like to see is Blue Apron for Instant Pot, where they send you a bag of food, with all the chopping and shit already taken care of. Then you dump it in the pot for the allotted time and out comes a nice meal.
10.last: Like some kinda InstantJuicePotro?
Fish sauce isn't canonical, but it is an improvement. But fior that matter, so are beans.
Isn't Heebie a 2nd good thing to say about Texas?
I looked through Google Books for early descriptions of chili con carne. I found one calling it about equal quantities of red peppers and meat (of various sorts).
Something old, something new. Something borrowed, something blue.
It's surprisingly hard to find the canonical version of the dish.
What was that about authenticity again, old man?
Like some kinda InstantJuicePotro?
Yeah, Jucereo for the Instant Pot. Do you think I could get venture capitalists to give me $400 million to build it?
You sound like a very stable genius.
What was that about authenticity again
the most simple dish
red meat red chilies only
like writing haiku
(that last comment a banishment spell) Actually, the best chili recipe I have found is an example of Slate recursion, where their cookery column "You're doing it wrong" got contrarian on contrarian chili takes and produced something very like Ogged's primal cow pie recipe. But it's even better if you use goose fat instead of bacon grease.
10.last: a local meat market more or less does this: vacuum-packed meat, seasonings, & veg. I think it's for the slow-cooker, not Instant Pot, but same principle.
I've done red meat red chilies only, but all in all I prefer both New Mexican (pork & green chilies) or bastardized (with beans & tomatoes). Texan-style doesn't scratch that itch for me, even though it's tasty.
I don't really care what 1830s Texans ate. I'd rather have tomatoes and beans in chile.
24 gets it exactly right. So does 23, come to think of it.
Kenji's weeknight recipe is my go-to chili. Screw authenticity.
If you're going to get a coffee enema, be sure to use the authentic, Paltrow-endorsed apparatus. You don't want to give yourself a burn up there.
I have been making a similar chili for the past year or so now, and it is amazing. The recipe I found toasts the whole pods first in a dry skillet, then you seed and stem them and soak in boiling water and puree them with garlic. It gives the whole thing a mildly smoky flavor. Minivet is right, it is not a cheap chili, but it is awesome, and you can doctor it up however you like. Trust me, the chili flavors are so wonderful and rich that you will not miss the tomatoes at all, and you can combine as many different kinds of dried chilies you can find to make it sweeter, hotter, etc.
Can you get a dried chili that tastes like tomatoes and beans?
What about cumin? I add a bunch to my chili, also pinch of oregano and celery salt.
Inspired by this, I have just bought five different kinds of dried chilli.
Definitely lots of cumin, which I believe is fundamental. I am not a stickler for authenticity - I made it the first time out of curiosity. I really like lots of different types of chili, and have no issue with the tomato/bean types, but I am generally not that excited about lots of vegetables in them, as opposed to my feelings about vegetables in other stews. This is very rich and almost luxurious - the rendered fat from the long cook time (it really needs at least 3-4 hours, and is significantly better the next day) makes the sauce almost silky. I was just impressed how good something with so few ingredients was - I had always thought that what made chili awesome was all the different things people put in it.
That sort of makes me want to try it and sort of makes me realize I'd never delay gratification that long.
Where's 'smasher? I'm sure he has opinions on this. Beans, beans, beans in chili!
toasts the whole pods first in a dry skillet, then you seed and stem them and soak in boiling water and puree them
Yes (although I seeded and stemmed, and then toasted and pureed). My one bit of advice about this is that it's labor-intensive enough that you should do a big batch and freeze the puree in servings, so you can very easily make the chili later, rather than going through the whole seed/stem/toast/puree rigamarole again.
lots of cumin, which I believe is fundamental
This is my impression as well, and it's in the linked recipe.
Where's 'smasher? I'm sure he has opinions on this.
I will bet one bajillion bitcoin that Armsmasher disdains beans in chili.
Much like barbecue/barbeque/bbq/etc, it's only the fact that all the various and essentially unrelated kinds of chili have the same or a similar name that makes people want to die on a hill about it instead of just enjoying whichever particular kind they happen to be eating at the moment.
Pro tip for this particular kind of chili: use whole cumin seeds, toast them in a skillet till fragrant, then grind them in a mortar and pestle. It doesn't result in quite the same bump up in quality that replacing chili powder with whole dried chilis gives you, but it's also a lot easier to accomplish and it does make a noticeable difference.
Also: Townes Van Zandt was a Texan. So are/were lots of other great people, but I seem to remember that you're a Townes fan.
If you're going to get a coffee enema, be sure to use the authentic, Paltrow-endorsed apparatus. You don't want to give yourself a burn up there.
Likewise with respect to a chili enema.
use whole cumin seeds, toast them in a skillet till fragrant, then grind them in a mortar and pestle
I used whole seeds which I ground (in a spice grinder, because we have electricity in non-Texas) but I should also have toasted them. Next time!
you're a Townes fan
Very much! But I enjoy hating Texas too much; it's constitutive of my identity. Plus Townes is dead, so I can't hurt him no more.
I heard that, if you like all your coffee tasting like cumin, you can use a coffee grinder.
Also: Townes Van Zandt was a Texan. So are/were lots of other great people
There are a number of excellent Texan songwriters:
Willie Nelson
Guy Clark
Terry Allen
Lyle Lovett
Butch Hancock
Rodney Crowell
Joe Ely
Off the top of my head.
Terry Allen wrote the best Texas song ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dbyJPEXc1s
For supra delicious dried chiles, check out tierra vegetables - http://www.tierravegetables.com/ they are a lovely farm and their chiles are excellent. not cheap, but then they pay their workers fairly. if you can afford it, indulge and be happy about it!
also their cornmeal, sooooo good and an essential ingredient in the world's best hippy pancakes.
Nanci Griffith
Mickey Newbury "If You Ever Get to Houston (Look Me Down)"
He also wrote "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)"
I wonder if there's a guy in Iowa trying to make corn meal enemas a thing.
In almost all cases, toasted whole spices ground are much better than powdered. In the other cases, they're still better, you just don't toast them.
As any fule kno, electric spice grinders don't actually grind, they chop. Mortar and pestle is the way to go. Also true with respect to salsa made in a blender versus a molcajete. Crushing things extracts more and better flavor than chopping does.
28: I have dried serranos and aji limos (lemon drop) peppers that I grew. Will these work?
Also, if they're already dried can I still toast them etc. as per 28?
It's easy to seed them when they're fresh, but dried not so much so how essential is it to get rid of the seeds?
And I don't understand how this can be so difficult.
If you put meat on your spaghetti, that's chili spaghetti.
Add cheese and it's a threeway.
A fourway adds beans or chopped onion (specify when ordering) and a fiveway has both.
You can't access this everywhere but six is garlic and totally worth it to bring the whole thing together tastewise.
It must be awkward when the vampires have to leave early.
Ajay, where did you use for mail order child? Anchos are quite ready to find but more exotica sorts less so.
Mail order brides, too, on proofreading, but you know I meant chillies
Tragically, Indonesia will hawk entirely the wrong wares.
Nworb, these people are OK: https://www.coolchile.co.uk/
55: Waitrose had several different types. Ancho, jalapeno, cascabel, pimento, chipotle.
And any local corner shop where there are some Jamaicans or West Africans around will have bird's eye and/or Scotch bonnet.
True about Waitrose, even the alarmingly downmarket Ely Waitrose, but they don't have all kinds of strangeness referenced in American recipes, and they are 4x as expensive as mail order places. Several recipes call for canned chillies, for instance, and I have never seen those in any shop.
Yeah, Waitrose's selection is surprisingly good. You can get everything you need for Kenji's paste there apart from Anaheim/New Mexico. For Londoners, there's also Spice Mountain in Borough Market.
Several recipes call for canned chillies, for instance, and I have never seen those in any shop.
You can get canned chipotles in adobo relatively easily. And I've seen jarred jalapenos.
I should add, Spice Mountain sell online too.
Waitrose wasn't around when I was there. Is it fancier than Sainsbury's? Or Tesco?
66: yes; it's basically the food end of John Lewis. It sells not only foccacia, but a low-priced "Essential Foccacia".
It's the fanciest of the supermarket chains. Think Whole Foods, but not quite as up its own arse.
John Lewis's food end is where you put the coffee enema?
Anyway, that would explain why I never saw one. Too fancy for Lancashire.
If they put one in Morecambe, maybe Morrissey would have to update his lyrics.
There are probably quite a few in Lancashire these days. There's one in Preston, and several in Manchester, obviously, if that counts.
Preston counts. It's where you change to a local to get to Lancaster.
I know Preston counts. I was talking about Manchester, which isn't technically in Lancashire any more.
I don't even see ceremonial counties.
52: This is always associated with Cincinnati but I had it in Milwaukee, the Cincinnati of the North, at a place that's been around since 1931. I wonder where else it is?
Also you didn't mention cinnamon. Isn't that a hallmark of Cincinnati chili, the thing that makes it so distasteful to outsiders?
The thought of cinnamon and ground meat makes me want some moussaka.
Also, James McMurtry.
He's very hard to find in Waitrose.
76, 77: I didn't eat it growing up but don't mind it and some versions are good. (Skyline dip, which is Cincinnati chili over a shallow layer of cream cheese with cheddar melted on top so you can scoop it up on tortilla chips, was definitely a gateway drug.) I don't find the cinnamon flavor noticeable, but if you think of it as Texas chili-like rather than moussaka-like you'll be disappointed. All the traditional chili parlors here were founded by Greek immigrant families, I think.
Many, if not most, "Coney Island" hot dog places were started by Greeks and have cinnamon-ey meat sauces, sometimes called "chili". In Erie they actually call them Greek dogs, and the spices are ramped up, and they're so damn good. I'll be driving to the beach with a picnic basket full of goodies, but I still pull into the stand right outside the park entrance for a quick frank.
Yeah, coneys are also an option here but because I don't eat hot dogs (not a euphemism, werdna!) I didn't bother adding that piece.
I've been to the stand in Erie. It was O.K., but stupid crowded.
||
Clever visualization of presidential vote by state from XKCD - getting across all the empty land out there without squishing boundaries.
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You have a LOT of people in Florida. Someone should start encouraging them to move elsewhere.
84. Poseidon the brother of Zeus will make them an offer they don't refuse.
That is a very useful visualization, albeit hard to distinguish from any other presidential vote of the last 20 years. The value is in reminding us that one party winning with 55% or the other party winning with 55% are not such a big difference.
67: John Lewis as a large department store vs a civil rights hero was extremely confusing to me when I was in London. I walked past a "John Lewis Spring 2018" banner on my way to work.
I got a piano for Christmas! It was a wedding present from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother. Dad paid to move it from his house to mine. He even found the original price tag. $1650 in 1910. I am beyond pleased with it.
And exercise, yes, I think there's an effect of "over time" that can't be made up. I want to mumble about epigenetic changes or something, but have no idea. I know that stuff I practiced over and over in my teens comes back much more easily than totally new stuff, but that's probably brain more than muscle.
I have strong personal prejudice against skincare products beyond sunscreen being more than snake oil, but who knows?
You have a LOT of people in Florida. Someone should start encouraging them to move elsewhere.
Mother Nature is trying. You'd think they'd have got the message by now.
80: Many, if not most, "Coney Island" hot dog places were started by Greeks and have cinnamon-ey meat sauces, sometimes called "chili"
Similarly, "Texas Hots" which i have seen primarily in upstate New York and Northern PA were originated by Greeks.
87.last: I don't know much about skincare, but I don't think you should put snake oil on your skin.
90: unless you're a snake. And, this being the Internet, you can't tell.
And Pennsylvania Dutch are German and the World Series is just American, and football isn't football. It's almost as if America is nothing but a tissue of lies spun by hucksters.
re: 87.last
One of the UK companies* did some proper double-blinded trials on one of their products. There were genuine measurable effects.
That said, I'm sure that a huge amount of snake oil.
* they paid for them, naturally.
92; "almost"? Good Lord, what more do we have to do to make this perfectly clear?