Wolf's Chili

I've been working on my chili recipe for years. It is my favorite meal on cold days. Now it's time to put it out on the net and see if anyone has any suggestions for improvements.

1 large onion
1 large carrot
1 large head of garlic
3 tbs olive oil
2 lbs ground beef (80/20 or lower fat)
1 lbs Chorizo mexican sausage
1 bottle Guinness Stout or other robust beer, such as anything by Sam Adams
1 can tomato paste (6 ozs)
1 can tomato sauce (8 ozs)
1 tbs salt
2 tbs oregano
1 tsp cumin
10 to 15 jalapeno peppers
15 to 20 serrano peppers
1 can (15 ozs) black beans (drained)
1 can (15 ozs) kidney beans (drained)
1 can (15 ozs) great northern beans (drained)
1 can (15 ozs) red beans (drained)
1 can (30 ozs) diced tomatoes (w/ juice)
Finely shredded cheese

1. Dice the onion and thinly slice the carrot.
2. Break the garlic into cloves. Peel it, then mince all the cloves. Fresh garlic is best, but if you don't want to spend the time, you can substitute a heaping tablespoon of store-bought minced garlic in step 5.
3. Cut the tops from the peppers and discard. Place the peppers in a food processer and dice them into small pieces.
4. Place the onions and carrots in pot with oil and sautee on medium high for 8 to 10 mins.
5. Add the garlic and saute for another two minutes.
6. Add the chorizo sausage and mash it up into small pieces.
7. Add the ground beef. break it apart and cook until browned.
8. Add the tomato paste and stir well.
9. Add the salt, oregano, cumin tomato sauce and Guinness. Stir well and bring to a boil.
10. Reduce heat to med low. Add all remaining ingredients except the cheese. Mix well.
11. Simmer for an hour.

Serve in bowls topped with a generous helping of shredded cheese. Enjoy.

What you don't eat immediately, you can freeze. The easiest way is to put 1 and 1/2 cups of the chili into plastic bags to freeze individual portions. They last at least a month. They may well last longer, but they are always consumed in a month in my kitchen.

You can make this chili much hotter or milder by varying the peppers you use, as well as whether you include the seeds.

If you really don't like hot chili, you can bring down the heat by removing the seeds from the peppers, as they contain most of the capsaicin - the oil that provides the sense of "heat" in the peppers. You will still get the pepper taste that defines chili, but you just won't have all of the heat. You can also uses peppers with much lower capsaicin levels, such as Anaheim and Poblano peppers - see here. Whatever you do, though, don't try substituting chili powder for fresh chili peppers. That's like substituting shoe leather for steak.

If you think the above recipe is too mild, leave in all of the seeds and add in a few habenero peppers to the above recipe. These peppers are among the hottest in the world, so add with moderation. I find one or two habeneros leave my eyes watering. Three and the chili is inedible by most humans with normal taste buds.

Enjoy. And if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

And while on the subject of recipes, do check out the recipe for Mac & Cheese over at Barking Moonbat EWS. Made it today and it's superb.

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