Don’s famous chili

This may be the last cold weekend we get till next fall, and since it is Super Bowl weekend, we thought we’d start it off with Don’s Chili. This is a home-made recipe based off of years of horsing around. To REALLY make it great, toss in some diced chipotle peppers and it’s adobo sauce. We usually make a small pot on the side of that patch, since Don’s the only one who can eat it.

Ingredients

2 TB of olive oil

1 Sweet onion, chopped. We like big onion pieces for the flavor.

2 Heaping TB of minced garlic (we buy ours by the big jar)

1 LB Ground chicken

1 tsp Fresh ground pepper, we use the McCormick peppercorn medley

2 1LB cans of crushed tomatoes

3 14oz cans of roasted, diced tomatoes

2 14oz cans of black beans

2 TB of chili powder

1 tsp Smoked paprika

1 TB of cayenne pepper (less if you want it not too hot)

1 tsp of onion powder

1 minced fresh red bell pepper

Instructions

Put olive oil in large pot over medium heat. Toss in chopped onion and when it’s about transparent, toss in garlic,  cook for a minute more. Toss in chicken and cook till it’s done. While it cooks, grind in the pepper and stir. The pepper medley because it has a great taste. We haven’t used black pepper in years in everything from fried eggs to, well, chili.

Pour in the cans of tomato products and the black beans. Stir. If you don’t have fire roasted diced, that’s fine. We used to use petite diced before Hunts came out with their Fire Roasted, which is GREAT in spaghetti sauce as well.

Put in the chili powder, paprika, cayenne, onion powder and stir.

Cut up the bell pepper and fold into the mx.

After it reaches a low boil, drop the heat. Stir constantly. Add more chili powder or cayanne if desired. This sauce is full of flavor, but is pretty mild.

Cook for at least an hour, but it really doesn’t need much more than that.

We usually serve it over brown rice, with a plate full of grated cheese in the middle of the table. The girls like it with Fritos (sacrilege!). But we give it to them anyway. A fresh french baton is better.

Alternate serving.

Toss in a small can of Chipolte, minced with adobo

1 minced jalapeno pepper, or REALLY thinly sliced

Toss in a can of minced green chili peppers

Cholula hot sauce is great. Empty a small bottle into the pot. OK, maybe half. Wonderful flavor

Add the 4 above ingredients and you’ll have a world-class Chili. BUT, 3/4 of our family won’t eat it.

You’ll win awards though!

If you like the Chipolte flavor, but not the heat, we sometimes use dried Chipolte powder, lightly dusted on the top. It doesn’t take much. You can also spinkle in a little of Tabasco’s Chipolte sauce for flavor and a little zing.