Experimenting with chili con carne

Chili con carne is a stew made with ground meat (mostly beef, but in some recipes also venison and pork and turkey, if you want to be a healthy kill-joy), cumin, chili powder, garlic, onions and chili peppers. Beans, bacon, tomatoes are options (that I all use in my recipe - see below). Although a lot of uncertainty exists on who was the inventor of this dish, one thing seems for sure: the chile con carne is not Mexican. To the point that a 1959 Mexican dictionary defined it as a "despicable food passing itself off as Mexican, sold in the US from Texas to New York". (Although Mexicans friends tell me they have carne con chili, which sounds indeed VERY different).

The dish was born in Texas, most probably in San Antonio. (I wish I had a bowl last year when I was there...). It was something that cowboys could cook or heat up while marauding on their horses. From the end of the XIX century, Latino women called chili queens sold chili con carne at the San Antonio open market, until 1937, when a health ordinance put them out of business (health nazis existed at the time as well, apparently).

I love chili con carne. This is a simple fact. My first contact with it was when I was 25, living on my own in Brussels. My girlfriend of that time had left me for some loser, and a half British half Italian friend thought that the best way to get over it was to drink my own weight in alcohol, and chat up some Scandinavian girls. Which we did, not necessarily in this order. The morning after I couldn't open my eyes, and I was in a mystical state known as "hung over". But my friend - who had slept at my house - had the solution: he took out of his bag a can marked chili con carne, he warmed it up in the microwave, and he served it to me over rice at 10am. (I never inquired why he was traveling Europe with cans of chile con carne in his bag: at the time it seemed like an entirely reasonable thing to do).

After two bowls of this spicy, heavy concoction, my hangover subdued, and my appreciation for this stew raised enormously. And I kept on buying those cans for a few years, until my future wife repeatedly told me that it was the most disgusting thing she had ever eaten in her life, and kind of killed the joy.

Fast forward to Chicago, 2009. I am watching the Food network, and there is this African American couple (at the time I didn't know the Neelys) cooking something that catches my eyes: it is chili con carne! They are using fresh chiles, a lot of spices and tomato, and it looks AMAZING. My love is rekindled, and I start experimenting with chili con carne, this time using all fresh ingredients, and doing the whole thing from scratch.

The more I kept digging into several recipes, the more I understood that apparently the real chili con carne doesn't have beans. This is a big blow for me. Because - as I said here - I LOVE beans. And my first chili con carne had beans in it...and the Neelys' version had beans...But apparently there is even a song in Texas:  "if you know beans about chili, you know that chili has no beans". 

This caused me a lot of troubles. As I said many times, it doesn't matter to me if a given dish is not exactly the real deal, provided that it is good (the Chicago pizza, for instance). But I do hate people that cook stuff that is not traditional, claiming it is traditional (carbonara with cream, for instance...). After serious consideration, I decided to continue experimenting with the bean version though, because if it now seems clear enough that the original chile con carne originated without beans, it is also clear that at some point, in San Antonio, beans were introduced in the stew, probably by people extremely poor (for a history of chili, read this). I won't claim mine is the real deal: but what I can claim though is that it is smashing good.

Before starting to cook it, I had wrongly assumed that the backbone of chili con carne were the chiles. Not so. The real backbone is the chili powder: some recipes do not even have fresh chiles. Again, there are a lot of discussions around who invented the chili powder: a German, an English immigrant, a Mexican...who knows? But the thing is that by the end of the XIX century, this powder started to appear in Texas, and allowed the birth of a legend. And by 1977, the Texas assembly declared chili con carne the official Texas plate.

Since I moved here, I have made chili con carne numerous times. It never comes out the same. Never. I think it is because of the fresh chiles I use: their heat varies enormously, depending on the soil they were grown on, and the time of the year. Sometimes a jalapeno will be so hot that it will be impossible to eat. Some other times, I can eat it raw, no issue. But this is my final recipe for the moment. I am very happy with this, although I am still looking for more heat. If, while experimenting, I develop an even better recipe, I will let you know. And if you have advice for me, just drop me a line.

The Tuscan Foodie Chili con Carne recipe
A word of caution about the chiles I use in this recipe: remember that by taking out the seeds and the veins of the chiles, you are reducing their heat by 70%... it is up to you: if you want your chile to be VERY hot, leave the veins and the seeds. If not, you can take them all out or do a mix of both. And be mindful of what I said about handling habaneros...

Click here to download this recipe.

Ingredients (serves 10-12): 

- 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 2 small onions, chopped
- 4 thick bacon slices, chopped finely (optional)
- 3 poblano (*) peppers, chopped
- 4 jalapenos (*) peppers, chopped
- 4 serrano (*) peppers, chopped
- 1 habanero (*) pepper, chopped
- 3 tablespoon chili powder (I use medium hot)
- 1 tablespoon cumin
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- salt and ground pepper
- 2 pounds (1 kilos) ground beef (I use 80/20, with 20% fat)
- 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 large can of tomato sauce (you can use diced tomatoes, it will be chunkier)
- Sour cream, for garnish
- Shredded cheddar, for garnish
- 1 can of beer, optional

Directions (have a look at the photos below)

1. In a large pan (I use a Dutch oven), cook the bacon until it becomes crisp, stirring. You do not have to add any vegetable oil or butter, because the bacon will release a lot of grease. However, if you decide NOT to use bacon, you need to melt some butter. 
2. Add all the chopped vegetables and spices: the garlic, the onions, the peppers, the chili powder, the cumin, the paprika and stir so that everything gets coated in the fat of the bacon. Add salt and pepper: don't worry at this stage, you can always add salt and pepper also at a later stage in the process. 
3. After 10 minutes, when the vegetables are softer, stir in the meat, small batches at a time. You need to break the meat up with a wooden spoon, so that there are no large patches. It is a tedious process, but it will go relatively quickly. Cook the beef, stirring it, for 10 minutes, so that it is all broken up and it is not pink anymore. 
4. Add the beer, if you are using it, and let it reduce (5 minutes), while stirring. Add the tomato sauce and the beans, and stir.  If you think the concoction is too dry, add some water, one table spoon at the time. Lower the heat so that the chili is simmering, and cook for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.  
5. To serve, transfer chili to bowls and garnish sour cream and the cheddar. Remember: the chili con carne will get better (and hotter) the next day... 

The different phases of the process...