Such a process recipe is my recollection of Grandpa’s cornbread. Approximately equal amounts of corn meal and flour, with some sugar, baking powder, salt, an egg or two (depending on how big a batch you’re making), some butter and some milk. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly first, soften the butter, add the eggs, milk, and butter, blend. If the texture and thickness isn’t right, add some more cornmeal, or some more milk. Pour into a greased pan and bake about 20-25 minutes at 400-ish degrees.
Anyway…
For this batch of chili, I started with the beans. We had a bag of pinto beans that have been in the cupboard for a while. I like to make chili with at least two kinds of beans, so I bought a bag of black beans. With dry beans, you have to start the day before you want chili. Saturday afternoon I rinsed off the beans, put them in a large pot, and poured in enough cold water to cover the beans, plus a couple of inches. Cover, put in the fridge, and let is soak for several hours. Going away to do something else helps.
We went shopping. Both of us were overdue for haircuts. My shoes are starting to get a bit worn in the soles, so we also went shoe shopping. Michael tweeted a picture of the Pokemon machine while we were there, and someone asked if he’d pick up a particular one. And so on, until we had dinner, then came home.
After the beans have been soaking at least four hours, but not a lot more than six, strain the whole bunch through a colander, pouring the water down the drain. The water should be the same color as your beans. Rinse the beans again, dump them back in the pot, cover them with cold water, plus a few inches (they should have swelled a bit, and you will notice the new water level needs to be higher). Put the pot back in the fridge and leave it to soak more overnight.
Once the bacon is crisp, remove it, but leave the grease in the pan. Dump in the chopped onion and peppers, stir around a bit. Add sea salt, paprika, and black pepper. A touch of cayenne can go in here, but I find if you start adding the cayenne too early, you wind up with chili that doesn’t seem very spicy when you first taste it, but starts to burn about a minute later. I’m sure someone can explain the chemistry for that. I wait until much later in the process to add the cayenne (if at all, if you are going for mild chili, or you have any of the hotter chili peppers, don’t bother!).
If you’re chopping your own tomatoes, this is a good time to do that. Otherwise, give everything a little time to cook. I bought a big can of organic diced tomatoes, because that’s what the store had out on an end cap to one of the aisles that were completely jam-packed midday Saturday. However you’re doing the tomatoes, pour them into the frying pan with the meat and peppers once the meat is all browned. Stir it all together, and as the mixture comes back to a boil, break up the larger chunks of the meat. I put four or five cloves of garlic through the press into the mix, added some more salt, lots of paprika, and lots of black pepper. Now you want to bring everything up to a boil.
Once both the beans and the frying pan contents are bubbling really good, it’s time to start putting it together. I got a third, larger pan, poured half of the meat and peppers mixture in, then started spooning the beans over with a slotted spoon. This part is tricky, because sometimes you wind up with a lot of liquid in the beans, and you may get a more watery chili than you want. So I got most of the beans into the third pot, stirred them together, poured the rest of the meat and peppers mixture in, and stirred it and watched it cook for a minute or two, then I poured enough of the bean liquid in until the consistency looked like what I wanted. Get the rest of the beans by straining with a colander if you need to, and add them to the mixture. Finally, crumble up the crispy bacon and mix it in, too. Michael had taken some of the bacon to make a sandwich midway. As I said, the amount various, and once it’s been cooking in with the rest for a bit, you don’t usually notice the pieces of the bacon.
Once you think you have the spices right, stir everything one more time, and cover to let simmer until it’s time to eat.
My cornbread from scratch came out only mediocre. I thought I was just out of practice (I haven’t made cornbread from scratch in a few years). Michael suspects that the flour in the cannister in the kitchen is actually self-rising flour, since he could taste the excess baking powder that hadn’t processed. I think to test the theory I’m going to have to make a tiny batch of drop biscuits with this flour without putting in any baking soda or powder in the mix, and see what happens.
As I mentioned before, I don’t do as much improvising on the chili when I’m making what I call Grandma’s Chili, because I’m going for a particular taste I remember. I have, though, made a completely onionless and garlic-free version of this (one of my best friends is allergic), that tasted wonderful. The secret? Chop an entire stalk of celery, including the leafy bits, and have at least four different kinds of peppers. Use the celery in place of the onion. You’ll be surprised how few people even realize there is no onion in the chili.
It was a good chili. I had a great Superbowl (it helped that my Seahawks won the game decisively).
That sounds really tasty! I like the process type recipes much more on savory stovetop or dip type dishes. Baked goods always turn out better for me with an ingredient list type recipe. (Although it’s handy to know ways of recovering if you’ve accidentally made something too dry or to wet!)
At the tomatos step, did you add the liquid as well as the tomatos, or did you drain the tomatos first?
I poured in all the liquid from the can.