Posted on 10/03/2009 1:53:18 PM PDT by JoeProBono
You've read in my five previous columns history is all a matter of perspective. Well, today I'm going to challenge your perspective with the most serious topic you'll ever see in this space.
Chili.
That's right. With the season just changing from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, a steaming pot of chili looms on my horizon, and on many others.
There's nothing better on a cool day than a bowl of chili. It’s more American than apple pie and the hot dog. And, in that same context, I'm going to break one of the cardinal rules of journalism. You never talk about people’s politics or their religion. It just invites an argument and trouble.
Well, there is an unwritten cardinal rule ... you never disparage someone else’s chili recipe.
Until today, that is.
While America debates health care, the war in Afghanistan and nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, it’s safe to say a person’s chili recipe should rank right up there among the world’s most pressing debates.
I’m not here to cast aspersions on anyone’s chili recipe — that blend of meat and spices and aroma that lures us into overindulgence during the cool months — but I’m afraid this area of our state is chili challenged.
I come to this conclusion, for want of any other proof other than my own observations, because people in this area of Oklahoma tend to make casseroles and call it chili.
If there was an 11th commandment, it would be: thou shalt not throw together a bunch of stray ingredients that sear the palate, meld it with barbecue sauce, hot sauce or beans and then call it chili.
For my expertise and pedigree, I offer the following.
My chili recipe actually comes from the Civil War — the four years this country couldn’t agree on just about anything and killed each other to prove it. So why should the topic of chili prove any different?
My great-great-grandfather was a Texas sorghum farmer, living just south of Greenville.
From family stories handed down generation to generation, he was an exceptional cook for his unit, the Confederacy’s 22nd Texas Cavalry, to the point he apparently concocted the Christy chili recipe for his company between battles.
Anyway, he handed down his chili recipe to his son, Jim Christy, who served four years in the Texas Rangers back in the 1890s, and who moved to southwest Oklahoma and opened Jim’s Lunch in Granite. And, of course, chili was the mainstay of pre- and post-Depression lunch counters the nation over.
No less an authority than renowned Daily Oklahoman & Times columnist Ray Parr wrote in his “Parr for the Course,” on Aug. 17, 1975, about my great-grandpa’s chili:
“For deluxe dining, Jim Christy served chili for 10 cents per bowl — and it was a man-sized bowl, with plenty of crackers. Old-timers around Oklahoma City still talk about Baxter’s (restaurant) chili. But that’s because they never had a sniff of the real stuff, Jim Christy style. When old Jim got his chili simmering on the stove you could smell it the entire length of Granite’s booming business district. I was 12 years old before I knew restaurants ever served anything but hamburgers and chili. During my expense account years, I have tried out gourmet eating from New Orleans to San Francisco. But none of it has ever approached that Jim Christy chili.”
That recipe was handed down to one of his two sons, my great-uncle Barney, who operated Christy’s Lunch on Weatherford’s Main Street for many years. I’m sure anyone who went to college at Southwestern would attest to his legacy of fine chili.
And, about a year before he died in 1987, we made a trip to Weatherford for our last visit with him. As was his habit, it was one big genealogy lesson and bull session. Plus, he handed down the family chili recipe to me.
It came written on brown kraft paper, penciled on an old, worn paper bag. But, it was like the Shroud of Turin to me — entrusted with the family recipe for “Texas Red.”
And, I was sworn to its secrecy, on penalty of my everlasting soul, with the caveat I never make my chili too spicy, use exotic meats or other assorted road kill, put beans in it or divulge the ingredients.
Colleagues here at the paper have asked for the recipe, but it’s still safely tucked away. Not even my wife knows its secrets. And, someday, I’ll have to decide which of my three sons to pass it along to — for posterity.
So the next time someone tells me they make a good bowl of chili, I’ll just have to shake my head and chuckle.
That’s right, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, drawn a line in the dirt, questioned your heritage and your veracity ... and your chili.
Yikes!
That’s great! I’m gonna save that picture!
“Why not add a slice of birthday cake, too?’
*snort*
I make five gallons of chili at a time at the restaurant where I work. The recipe, from the owner’s grandma, includes sugar.
I just cook it. I offer no editorial opinions. But I do tell customers that they can add tobasco sauce.
I really want to think you for your opinion. Nonetheless a big part of cooking chili is the family & friendship bonding
and sharing. It isnt so much about who can yell the loudest about making chili with or without something.
I suspect few people enjoy cooking chili around you.
Chili Ping
Few people enjoy being around me at any time.
Right on, baby.
My chili has beans.
OK, thoroughly confused. He said to put no beans in the chili, but I see the recipe below lists them. So which is it, beans or no beans?
FRANK X. TOLBERT’S ORIGINAL TEXAS-STYLE CHILI
2 ounces beef suet (may substitute vegetable oil)
3 pounds lean beef, preferably stewing meat
3 to 6 ancho chile pods, boiled 5 minutes, cooled, stemmed, seeded and chopped, reserved in cooking water (may substitute 3 to 6 tablespoons chili powder or ground chile)
1 teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon crushed cumin seed
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
2 to 4 minced garlic cloves, to taste
2 to 4 extra ancho chile pods, stemmed and seeded (but not chopped), for extra seasoning if desired
2 tablespoons masa harina or cornmeal
Cook suet until fat is rendered. Remove suet. Sear meat in fat in 2 or 3 batches. (Use oil for lower cholesterol, less grease.)
Place meat in large pot with ancho chile pepper pods and as much pepper liquid as needed to keep meat from burning (about 2 inches of water above the meat).
Bring to boil, then simmer for 30 minutes. Add remaining ingredients except masa and extra anchos. Simmer 45 minutes more, covered. Stir only occasionally. Skim off grease.
Taste and adjust seasonings. If not hot enough to suit you, add extra ancho pods that have been stemmed and seeded but not chopped. Add masa harina to thicken liquid. Simmer another 30 minutes until meat is tender. Makes 6 to 8 servings.
Well, yes. I do know how to make good chili.
I spent 4 years perfecting a chili that everyone loved, and I crossed out, appended and rewrote parts by taste, every batch I made. I had one copy of the recipe, and I lost it in a move. I haven't been able to bring myself to start over yet. I can throw together a batch of chili that everyone likes, but that one recipe was awesome. I wish my memory for stuff like that was better.
My father-in-law, up in Jersey, thinks chili is a soup made out of chunks of bell pepper, kidney beans, meat and chili powder. But the biggest chili insult of all, came when I moved here to Kentucky. They put spaghetti in their chili. I went to a school fund-raiser supper for my son, and ordered a bowl of chili. It had spaghetti in it. I said, "What the hell is this?" They didn't know what I was talking about. I explained that chili didn't have noodles in it. They informed me that around here, a lot of people make it like that. I then informed them that they would likely be run out of Texas for putting beans in it, and probably shot for using spaghetti.
I’m a Texan and I have always had beans in my chili. silly
If ya like it a bit on the warm side... (uses pork also. Double the beef, cut the pork, if u r a purist)
Orvil Newton’s Renegade Chili
1 ½ Lbs chuck or round beef
1 ½ Lbs lean pork
¼ lb good smoked bacon
One medium yellow onion
6 to eight cloves garlic
fresh chili peppers: a habanero, a couple of poblanos, a couple of jalapenos and a couple of fresnos
dried whole chili peppers: four to six New Mexico red
2 tbs cumin (Or more if you like)
2 tbs oregano
2 tbs paprika
a little salt and black pepper
NOTE: NO TOMATOES - NO BEANS
Chop the onion and garlic
Slice the fresh peppers and remove the seeds
NOTE: wear rubber gloves and safety glasses. I’m not kidding.
Cut the beef and pork into one inch cubes and trim off as much fat as possible
Chop up the bacon and cook in a large skillet
Set aside the cooked bacon and sauté the beef and pork in the bacon grease.
Remove the beef and pork and place in a large stew pot.
Sauté the onion and garlic.
Add the sliced peppers when the onion is translucent.
Add the spices and stir together over the heat for a minute or two then add it all to the stew pot.
Add the dried peppers, add water to cover, cover the pot and simmer for a few hours.
Let cool and skim off the excess grease (Or not).
Best if allowed to sit, refrigerated, for a couple of days before serving.
Serve with pinto beans and tortillas.(And cold Lone Star)
Uncle Tom’s Real Cowboy Beans
2 cups dried pinto beans one ham hock one medium yellow onion four cloves garlic salt and pepper to taste
Soak the beans in water overnight, then rinse. Throw everything in a slow cooker for twenty four hours.
Serve with anything. If the chili is too hot for you mix in some
When you put beans in chili, you make Sam Houston cry in Heaven.
Sounds good
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.