Improving on Heston's Chili / A Good Chili Recipe.

It's that time of the year again and I want to make some chili, but am having a difficult time finding a good recipe.

I watched and read Heston's Chili recipe and immediately see things that i THINK could be done better. Like smoking the Short Rib, the addition of coco, coffee or chipotle in the chili (I'm hispanic ok...) or even sous vide finishing butter.

Wondering if anyone has given this recipe a go (coughchriscough) and has any recs or if anyone has any recs on a good chili.

I would just hate to go though this whole song and dance and come out disappointed in the end.

Thanks in advance!

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tshewman

Have done the recipe 3-4 times now and only successful once on obtaining the devil's penis. :-) I have tried it "by the book" and it was phenomenal. I tried it by also adding chipotle WITH the list of peppers and it was phenomenal. The last I doubled the birds' eye to maintain some heat and also added the chipotle. So, the chipotle I can recommend with experience. I'm not a huge cocoa fan of my beef and only coffee in (infused) my beef sauce on occasion (however, I do not drink coffee because I don't like the taste of it alone-so that should be considered). But I can highly recommend the recipe. It's a few steps, and all are easy, just takes a bit of time (and keeps well frozen. :-)

omgitsjulian

Did you use beef "mince" or short rib?

tshewman

Both. You combine the pulled short rib and the mince (ground beef) he cooks in the last cooking stage. Unless you are asking did I grind SR for the last part and yes for first two tries, chuck for the others. To be honest, I was so focused on the layers of flavor, I'm not sure if that make a huge difference. I (and those who ate it with me) were simply amazed at how much depth in flavor there was to a chilli.

mike.minasian

This is a fantastic chili:

http://ansonmills.com/recipes/538?recipes_by=meal

5! different types of chili gives it an amazingly complex assortment of flavors. Whisking in the nixtamal mush at the end is optional but produces a cool result.

tshewman

Interesting recipe. Doing Heston's chilli (and some of his other recipes) has made me look at things allot differently than before. For example, in the anson mills recipe, the beef stock is....well....beef stock. What if we start to marry the flavors and add levels from this.....by cooking some of the aromatics in the beef stock with the chilli powder blend....., maybe also brine or cure the ribs using the (or similar) spice mix. Take some of the fat from the chilli infused stock and use it to cook the onions and garlic of the body of the chilli.....When watching this it was easy to see (and in the end taste) how the flavors are married and the levels (depth) are complimented. Please know this does not suggest the recipe is poor by any means. My mind simply says "what if"....

mike.minasian

Definitely. I think you could very easily adapt and enhance the recipe. I think it does a good job of getting "core" flavors in, but always room for expansion and improvement. You could SV the ribs, alter the beef stock etc.

tshewman

I thought about SV the ribs (in ISOP), but it has to be done with the stock, and beans (ISOP has Kidney beans) and all the aromatics. Unless done this way, I suspect the merging of flavors wouldn't be as complete. And that would be one big SV bag and I also wonder how he caramelization of the ribs would be carried through. Great thinking exercise!.

omgitsjulian

After doing the math on hastens chili's i feel its more practical to use the recipe you've provided (thank you for this). Question about storage; have you stored this chili and if so how and when do you incorporate the nixtamal mush?

mike.minasian

I think storage after step 6 makes sense although I haven't done it.

omgitsjulian

So i just finished with the chili and spice blend. I'm thinking of throwing the short rib in the sous vide and then smoking it...

My questions -

- It's difficult to see the texture of the short rib. Which texture do you feel it best represents here - http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/short-ribs-time-and-temp

- Also Smoking - I was thinking of smoking the short rib with apple wood for a few hours after coming out of the bath. Do you feel the flavor would be too overwhelming?

-Sadly I'm still questioning the addition of the nixtamal mush... i would like to reserve this without an additional step. ugh. I might omit it, do you feel that this is a must?

Chris_Young_80640

So somehow I missed this delightful trip down memory lane. The only reason we didn't smoke a bunch of the meat (IIRC) was that the producers of the show deemed the necessary equipment to inaccessible for the home audience. Our recipes had to—in theory—be do-able at home.

omgitsjulian

I thought i would give an update...

I ended up doing a mix of Hestons, Ansonmills and a bit of my own doing... Turned out so well i thought i would pit it against my fellow co-workers "legendary" chili recipes...

I think it turned out pretty well, but could still use some work