Meaty Chili

Meaty Chili

printable version

This is definitely not a recipe from my childhood.  It is cut out from a newsletter that my mom's friend, Sherry Johnson, a real estate agent, used to send out.

The back of the recipe shows the agents name and picture as well as the address it was mailed to.

My mom lived at that address in the early '90's.  I remember my daughter being at that house when she was a toddler.  

Instead of 2 lbs. coarsely ground round steak I used 1 lb. ground bison because I only wanted to make half the recipe and ground bison is what I had on hand after shopping the meat sales last week.
After the chili was cooked, I forgot I had used bison.  Nobody in my house questioned the meat either so that confirms that bison is a very close substitute for ground beef.  My family always notices when I use ground turkey instead of beef.

I really hate it when recipes give an amount as a large onion.  I used approximately 1 cup of chopped onion.  So in a full recipe I would recommend 2 cups.  I believe this is a 2 cup plastic storage container where I had my onion previously stored so I put the chopped onion into it and it filled about halfway.

I knew that my anti-slimy-food kid would not be eating this chili anyway so I didn't worry about the ratio of onion to meat.  It was a fairly even ration, maybe even a bit heavy on the onion.  I used to not like onions much.  In my late 40s I grew to like them more as my tastes matured.  I also see them as an easy way to get extra fiber and vegetables.  I think onion flavor, when in meat dishes, is pretty mild.   This onion was sharp enough to make my eyes water when I chopped it but it still was very mild in the chili.

I mixed my spices together in a pinch bowl before adding to the meat.  I think this helps ensure a more even distribution.  I omitted the hot pepper sauce.   The recipe said 1 1/2 c. whole tomatoes, drained.  Whole tomatoes just didn't seem like the right version to add to chili so I used diced tomatoes instead, in the same amount.  Mine happened to be "fire roasted" but I think "chili ready" would also be a good choice.

   

The recipe said to let simmer 1 hour.  Skim off fat while cooking.  I try to eat a low-fat diet so I drained the fat after the meat was browned and before adding spices and tomatoes.  I think this was a better option.  I stirred the chili every 15 minutes while it simmered for the prescribed hour.  In the beginning there was enough liquid to have most of the meat submerged but by the time it was done there was very little juice left so skimming fat would've been a challenge and likely taken what little liquid there was.

I sprinkled half the spices, stirred, and sprinkled the rest. 

Can you imaging big, lumpy, whole tomatoes in here?  I mean, how many would there even be in 3/4 cup.  Maybe 3!  After I dumped the tomatoes in, I used the 1 c. hot water ("hot" as my tap would go) to rinse the tomato measuring cup as I poured the water into the pan.

This is how my chili wound up after the 1 hour simmer.  You can see there is very little juice.  My husband ate it with noodles and said he thought it was a little on the spicy side and the kid definitely would not have liked it.  Husband has a pretty high tolerance for spicy.  I ate mine while watching the Superbowl on top of a layer of bean dip and fritos.  I did not think it was spicy at all.  The H.E.B. Bean Dip has a bit of spice to it and that seemed to over-power any spice in the chili.

I put some of the leftover in a tortilla with cheese and had a nice taco.  I also did not find it spicy in the taco format.