I made some Chili last night. Chili is an interesting food on many levels. If you read the Wikipedia article you'll get some idea of the controversy that can be attached to it. There are almost unlimited variations and everyone who really likes chili probably have their own reciepe. I love chili so of course I have my own way of making it.

Now you can buy canned chili but it's really not worth much except perhaps putting on top of a hot dog or something like that. And there are reciepies that involve only a handful of ingredients and can be cooked in a short period of time (under an hour). But those are pretty boring in my opinion. My reciepe uses about 10 major ingredients plus spices. How many spices, what spices, and how much of each pretty much depends on my mood and what spices we have in the house. So my chili is never exactly the same taste twice. I also cook my chili for a while.

Generally the canned items and tomoatoes go in the pot first followed by the spices. If I've had a good garden the tomotoes will be either freshly picked or frozen from freashly picked. I didn't have a garden this summer so I had to settle for canned. Canned are actually better than what I can get at the market this time of year. Once that is started under a low heat I start preparing the rest. I like onions and bell peppers (and of course hot peppers) so I cut up those and put them aside. Then I cut up the meat into small pieces. The cutting all takes a while as I make a large batch. If you are going to all the trouble of doing it right you might as well make a lot. Once the cutting is done I brown the meat.

After tossing the meat in the pot I saute the onions and peppers in the drippings from the meat. Then they go in and I simmer for another hour or so. The total time involved can be as little as 3 hours but may go longer depending on how things go. A lot of it depends on how much liquid I want to simmer off. I like my chili thick.

The big problem with chili is that a) it tastes better if you let it sit for 24 hours and b) my senses are somewhat dulled by all the work and smells byt the time I am finished. So generally I only have a small amount of it the day I make it. The rest (enough for 11 large servings) is in the freezer waiting for me to have it later. But for the next few weeks or so if I feel like really great chili all I have to do is take a bag out and reheat it. The benifits of really complex and interesting tasting chili with the handiness of canned.