I think this one is the big daddy. Chili, Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff
You can go to www.chili.org and swipe a few blueprints from past winners of the contest in Texas. I've used a few of them but usually just end up doing my own thing. No beans ever. One thing that I always do is after I brown the meat I drain just about all of the grease and add a few beers. I'm not even sure why. Saw some texans make it that way many years ago and just adopted it.:grin:
whats the difference between a microwave and an ass hole? a microwave won't brown your meat. boom boom ching
Say it with me now, E-C-O-L-I I'll be a browned meat ass hole all day long to avoid going through that misery. I also hate to puke. Worst freaking thing ever. I'd rather be kicked in the nuts.:hihi:
One of my goals is to develop my own chili recipe or steal a good one from someone else. My daughter has been wanting me to cook chili cheese fries, all from scratch. Here's a tip I found in a recipe book for making french fries or hash browns: Boil the potatos for 10 minutes, let them cooland then cut them up for fries or shread for has browns. This helps get most of the water out.
...or you can fry them but only till the edges barely begin to brown and let them cool. This is called blanching. It does let the moisture from the outside escape as steam to leave the middle relatively dry so the fries don't turn to rubber. By the way the processed fries are made from potato flakes via extrusion. and they fry up fine the first time because the process is controlled to make the inside more dry than the outside from the get-go. I think the outside layers have sugar in them for browning.
When I am doing thick fries, I fry (blanch) them first at 250. Then, while they are cooling, I crank the heat up to about 400 and hit them for no more than 60 seconds to crisp up the outside. Usually I am lazy though. I just use the thin set of blades for my mandoline and fry them in one pass at 350.
