OK, I'm venturing out. My church is sponsoring a chili cook-off today. I am making my first entry into competitive chili. This stuff seems to be a religion over here (Give me my jambalaya any day). I've assisted in 3 previous chili cook-offs, but never gone it on my own. There seems to be a large difference in competitive chili vs eatin chili (sounds almost counter intuitive to me). Anybody here a serious chili aficionado? I don't have a "go to" recipe dialed in yet. I've been playing around with mine and still have a ways to go. Give me your tips and tricks, or share your recipe. It's funny, several people have emailed me telling me they are looking forward to trying my chili today. I didn't even tell anyone I was cooking. I guess I cook so much at the church and around town that it was sort of expected. I hope I don't disappoint.
Most competitive chili consist of cubed meat and no beans. In my opinion the correct spice mix to get that sweet and slow throat burn is key. Good luck :thumb:
I prefer True Texas Chili. NO BEANS, NO TOMATO. Competition chili can kiss my ass. Just diced beef (not hamburger), red chili, cumin, onions, garlic, and perhaps a bit of mesa flour to thicken it. Cook it down for three hours at least. Here is a camp recipe I like: 6 lb diced beef 1/2 lb lard 1 cup chili powder 1/8 cup paprika 1/8 cup cayenne 1/4 cup cumin 1/4 cup garlic powder or diced garlic 1 large diced onion 1/8 cup crushed red chili 1/8 cup salt 1 and 1/2 quarts beef broth (Bouillion cubes in water is fine) mesa corn flour Brown meat in hot lard lower temp and add seasonings cook for a half hour, stirring frequently Add broth Cook 3 hours more stir in a tablespoon or more of mesa flour if it needs thickening Stir occasionally I serve my chili over hash brown potatoes. Sometimes instead of adding diced onion to the chili, I sprinkle a bit of fresh diced onion over the chili on the plate. No cheese. Don't put no goddamn cheese on my chili.
Gee Red, tell us how you really feel!:hihi: Funny though, people around here are every bit as passionate. My recipe worked pretty well today. Mine was the first one gone, but didn't win the popularity/donation contest (our preacher put $125 in his own cup). All for a great cause. I think if I do it again, I'll just donate the amount that it cost me to make it. I'd make more than my donations!
hey Kyle, its the effort that counts! I'm sure you done good. I headed up a gumbo cooking team at work one day, not easy to cook outside at work for us inexperienced chefs on someone else's gas grill and company pot. Our gumbo was as good as any, but we didn't get many votes, we were on the last row, everyone was full of tasting before they got to us, so not many visitors or votes. That's ok, we ate plenty of our own gumbo for lunch!!! :grin:
real chili has no beans, real Texas Chili, there are alot of really good competitive competitions in south Texas around the Houston area, and there are always teams or guys from Louisiana who place really high. My mouth is watering right now, for some good Tejas Chili.
i'm not the biggest beans in my chili fan but my wife actually likes them, so we're in a fundamental disagreement over it. but i love tomatoes in chili.
I entered a chili cookoff contest one time and came in fifth out of 30 entrants. The contest was a fun one for raising money to incorporate handicapped playground structures for Abita's park. I used brisket and roasted it first and then cut up the brisket meat into a very small dice. This made the chili easy to eat, with little chewing effort and changed the texture from that of ground meat. It wasn't a sanctioned event with rules about starting everything from scratch with the meat at a certain temperature, etc. I used dried chilis of several types that I de-seeded and pureed after soaking in hot water. I also used another chili powder that I heated in a dry pan first with some powdered cumin. I also used achiote (annato seeds) to give the seasoning an exotic flavor. I used fresh as well as canned tomatoes and sweetened a little with Steens cane syrup (to balance the acid from the tomatoes). When the chili was ready we added a bottle of Abita turbodog as a ceremonial sacrifice to the Abita chili judging gods. It didn't work...they obviously preferred Andygator. :thumb:. The guy that won, had his meat diced large and it was chewy with way too much cumin. It was actually a little bitter because of it. But he had what the gringo judges were looking for. His chili did stand out as different and he won because, whether he knew it or not, he was cooking for the taste of his customers...the judges...who were from Abita. The sanctioned events have professionally trained judges who use a scoring system based on objective as possible criteria. They taste for initial flavor, texture, aromatc herbs, identifiable spices, Piquante-ness (afterburn) etc. They taste like chefs taste as opposed to how customers taste. We had a lot of fun and I plan on entering next year because it wasn't a serious event. I thought it was great that the ladies from the senior citizen club who wore cute outfits and fun hats placed second...well ahead of me. .
Steve, since we are moving to the area, I'll have to enter too (or help you). Just the kind of stuff I'm looking forward to about coming home
