Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Boggy's chile recipe

Boggy,
<br>I was looking back through some old threads and saw mention of you and your highly acclaimed chile. With all proper respect due a culinary wizard such as yourself, may I ask....Is this recipe a secret, or is it something you might share with your fellow campers?
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<br>As I'm sure most of us pretenders do so often, I have been trying to perfect my chile recipe for several years now. It is pretty good but I'm always thinking there must be some way to improve it. Your ideas may just be the answer!
<br>rutnut

Well now RUTNUT you got one strike against you already. You see,friend, it is spelled chili, not chile .
<br>Not a secret recipe at all and I'll be glad to share it with you. As one of my online friends, who is a very good cook himself said, this is a hard core chili recipe.
<br>Here is how she works.
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<br>In a heavy iron pot with a lid put two tablespoons of oil. I like olive oil. Heat it up good. Sear 2 to 2.5 pounds of lean meat until gray. Cut your meat into little chunks about the size of the end of your finger. You can use coarse ground meat but chunked is better. Any lean meat will do game meat is excelent. Pork doesn't work well. Too much fat.
<br>When meat is seared turn down the heat and add one 8oz can of tomato sauce and three cans of water.
<br>In a separate bowl mix;
<br>1 tsp salt
<br>1 Tbs dry minced garlic
<br>3 Tbs dry minced onion
<br>1 tsp oregano (use Mexican if you can get it)
<br>3 tsp cumin
<br>1 tsp paprika
<br>1/2 tsp Cayanne pepper.
<br>7 Tbs Chili powder (this may be too hot for you try 6. Chili powder varies by brand as to heat. I use Rosarita. You will just have to try until you find a level you like)
<br>Dump this into the simmering meat, stir it up, cover and simmer about an hour and a quarter or until tender. Stir it when you think about it.
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<br>Now mix 3 Tbs masa with enough warm water to make a thick flowable paste. Add this to the chili. Stir it up good. Simmer another 15 to 20 minutes and dish it up.
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<br>Have a good supply of Montezuma's golden spoons to go along with it.
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<br>Bueno Suerte!
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<br>BCR

Boggy: Tomato sauce?? You must live a long way east of the Pecos. Water?? That's for drinking, preferably in very small amounts if single malt is available. Substitute 2 cans beef broth (consomme if you ain't got the real stuff) and one can dark beer for all the liquids. (When the old timers couldn't get beer they had the cooks helper go stand behind a cow with a pot until ----. I recommend all beef broth if you haven't got the beer. But at least by golly there are no dang beans in the recipe! As for the essential spices you could do worse. besto.

Stocker I won't fight with you about chili. You know it is Tex-Mex and was born in the brush county south of San Antonio. You will notice that nothing in my recipe requires refrigeration. You can carry it all and just depend on getting some fresh meat somewhere. I have seen the beef broth/consumme addition but believe it is a later addition because you would have to make it first before you could make chili. Probably the origonal used beef tallow for oil but the common oil of Mexico is olive.
<br>Beans are not bad with chili just don't cook them in it.
<br>BCR

Boggy,
<br>Thanks for the reply and the recipe!
<br>Forgive me for my faux paw (see--there is another one I can't spell). Now, I understand that there is a difference between "real" chili--(I am a quick study!!) and what the rest of us eat, which are variations and changes made to suit each individual, such as the beans or no beans. I also notice you don't use any fresh peppers. Is this one of those differences? What I am asking is do you consider your recipe to be the "real" thing or a variation? Also, what is masa?
<br>As long as I am sounding very ignorant, what is the "golden spoon"?
<br>I don't have time this evening but I will get my recipe out and share with you ---that way you can critique and tell me what is supposed to be in it and whats not!
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<br>I figure if I can get mine just hot enough that folks only want one bowl, then I've got leftovers!!
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<br>Gracias!
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<br>rutnut

RUTNUT I can't say if the recipe I use is the "real" one or not. All I know is that authentic chili is a simple dish made with a few common (for south Texas) spices that would be in anyone's kitchen. It seems to have originated in the San Antonio area and southward in the late 1860's. I am fairly sure that each cook had a slightly different take as to the amount and constitution of the various ingredients. I do know that when a recipe starts calling for bean sprouts or tofu or grated coconut or chocolate chips or bell pepper or some such inane ingredient no matter how good it may taste to you is isn't authentic chili.
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<br>Of course you can use fresh spices and onions and garlic and tomatoes. There is no rule or law that says you can't. The problem in the early days was that they were not all fresh at the same time of the year. Thus the dried version. The way the tomatoes were done (in a bygone era) was to mash seeded tomatoes up as fine as possible, drain off the juice, add some salt and spread thin on a raw hide. Sun dry. To make tomato sauce they just added a little water back to the dried tomatoes and stirred them up. Using canned tomato sauce you are just eleminating the drying process.
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<br>Additions to the basic dish if you want them and added just before you eat it are many. Beans, cooked separately please, cheese, crumbled crackers, cilantro, chopped hard boiled egg, things like that. These are not however cooked into the chili.
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<br>Masa is corn flour. It's use is to thicken the chili and keep it from being too runny. Chili is not soup.
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<br>Motezumas golden spoons are corn tortillas. You authenticly eat chili by scooping it up with a tortilla. You don't need a spoon.
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<br>You are not sounding ignorant you are just learning friend.
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<br>Now you will notice that old stocker is a Canadian. They are nice folks in Canada but unfortunately they know about as much about chili as a hog knows about Sunday School.
<br>BCR

Bog ole son, I am an afficinado of canned chili and beans, the real deal, you know the stuff Dennisons brand. Here in the Great Pacific NW when one orders chili at a resturant one gets either Nalley brand or Dennisons, beans and all. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as chili with out beans until I became friends with a Mexican family a few years ago. Jose introduced me to real chili. There is nothing to compare that dog food with beans to the real deal. Jose's wife is a fantastic cook, she is from Mexico and speaks little english so I have a tough time getting recipies from her. These are the hardest working people I have ever met.
<br> I think regional foods are best when not altered for some one elses tastes. I bet you don't get much Lutefisk in Texas. in fact that stuff should have been left in Norway , it should be out lawed. But it is a staple of the Swedes and other scandinavians around here. My Grandmother made her own. If you have to ask you won't touch the stuff. As far as Chili goes I make a tasty dish but it won't win any chili cookoffs in fact I doubt if it would even be considered chili if you get rite down to it. So Heres the deal I'll put my authentic PacNW clam chowder up against your chili, no losers, just good eats.
<br>I drink really bad beer (when I drink beer) "Bud in cans". but that goes with chili, and brandy with chowder.
<br>The fineist eats there is is fresh cooked crab hot from the cooker followed by ice cold beer, with a few oyster shooters tossed in for good measure. This is not spicy just good, a shot of Tabasco with the oysters is good, but just too salty for my taste if I have more than a dozen or so.
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<br>Bullwnkl.

Boggy: I never met a chili I didn't like if it had some form of authenticity to it. There must be more variations of it than anything else I can think of. Why else those chili cook-offs? Now for those folks who eat it from the can with beans then Stag brand dynamite hot goes pretty good with a minute steak and eggs for breakfast. A fellow hardly has to work going up our mountains.
<br>besto.

Bullwinkl, speaking of bad beer. Oly pop is right in there. I used to buy it for $4.50 a case. A lot of peeled labels went into the empties:). Remember those great Rainer adds? Speaking of great adds I really like the Mt. Dew add where the guy is sparing with a Bighorn...not baaaaaad.pak

RAAAAAAIIIII NEEEEEERRRRR BEERRRRR.
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<br>YUP GREAT COMMERCIALS REALLY BAD BEER.
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<br>OLY HAA HAAA HAAAA , IT RIMES WITH BEER AND BEGINS WITH A Q. THAT WAS THE DOWN FALL OF OLY.
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<br>BULLWNKL.
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<br>no I in Bullwnkl.

Winky and all. Don't get me wrong if what you make tastes good to you and you want to call it chili go right ahead on. You got to eat it not me. Just don't think that a dish with other than onions, garlic spices and meat is pure chili because it isn't. We will speak no more of canned chili. It is an abomination before the Lord.
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<br>I ate some fish once that seemed to have been cured in lye. Was that lutefisk or gefeltefish. What ever it was I had enough the first time to last me a good while. Like the rest of my natural life.
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<br>One thing I will freely admit about the Texas gulf. We only have about three fish that are really good and good shrimp. All else is mediocre at best. Reckon you could make some Maryland style crab cakes out of the PNW crabs? You know the kind that is more lump meat than bread dough. Man do I love them things.
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<br>I getting hungry!
<br>BCR

Ahh, Boggy you didn't like the national dish of far away places like Sweden and Norway? Me either. The stuff should be against the law to have , to make , or force children to eat, Lutefisk made with lye, the same stuff Drano is made from. Who came up with this? Then there is that dried yellow colored fish stuff they call Finn and Haddie or some such spelling , just as bad as lutefisk. But on the other side of the coin I like pickled pigs feet and cheap sparkling wine. I like herring eggs the north coast Indian way, caught on hemlock boughs and boiled then dipped in butter, the butter is a consession to modern times, whale mucktuc,( fat), is hard to come by. You can only get this in Alaska and British Columbia.
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<br>My dog likes canned chili, but it gives her terrible gas.
<br>I guess it is not even good for our k-9 friends.
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<br>Bullwnkl.

BCR, cold water shrimp are mo betta' .pak

Winky, Sweden and Norway you say. Well maybe that explains the Vikings. Those old boys were just hungry and looking for decent grub to eat. I had an unckle who loved dried salt cod. Used to get in in here in wooden boxes like apple crates in the fall of the year. This was a way long time ago but I still remember when auntie Laura cooked it the smell would knock flies off a gut wagon.
<br>I like pig's knuckles too and good home made head cheese! The other stuff you mention there I never have tried but it sounds intresting. It gets me when folks say "Oh I won't eat this, that or the other," with out ever trying it. Now you might not care for what I like and vice versa because taste differs but give it an honest try anyway. Only thing I can say for sure about folks that say they won't eat something is that they have never been hungry!
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<br>pak, I didn't say Texas shrimp were the best, I said they were good. . They have damed so many rivers here we have to go steal ours from Mexico anyway.
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<br>BCR

Now Bog Dude, that there salt cod in them wooden boxes has the potential for making some mighty fine eats. Just don't go near it with lye, that just ruins fine eats. What you need to do is rehydrate a slab or two of that boot leather like fish. Begin by soaking it in cold water for a day, make certain the water is changed four or five times, get the salt out. When you think the salt is mostly gone rinse the fish well in cold water. Now procure your self a good batch of new spuds, the little tender guys you sneak from under the plants before their time. Shuck your self a batch of green peas. Boil the fish in fresh unsalted water it will be done when it flakes appart. Now melt some butter in a skillet and make a ruex, butter and flower paste, put in some ground black pepper and milk and make a gravy, oh yeah you gotta boil the spuds till done but not disolved. mix sause. spuds, peas and flake in the fish...oh man I'm gettin hungry... cook all together on simmer until hot. serve up on plates sprinkle with Allspice. This will tame the most fearsome Viking.
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<br>I bet your aunt was making one of them stinky dishes related to lutefisk or lutefisk it self.
<br>Salt cod and spuds don't smell bad at all.
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<br>I have tried food from all over the world, a lot of it I won't try again and a lot of it I seek out recipies so I can make myself. But you can't say you don't like something if you don't at least try it. Me I won't eat raw tomatos, just don't like em. But I love fried aspergrass.
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<br>Bog Man if you ever can take time off from chasin them cows come on up and we will cook what ever is swimming or laying around on the beach. Nori seaweed is not bad, and if I can get my hands on an octopus and some geoduck well the posibilities...
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<br>Bullwnkl.
<br>Jim

Light roux or dark roux? The tomato deal is one of the differences in tast. To me there isn't hardly any thing better than a vine ripe tomato early in the morning when the dew is still on it and it is cool from the night. Little salt, oh man! Eat it like an apple.
<br>One of these day I just might show up on your door step Winky.

Bog Dude, that would be a light ruex.
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<br>If you happen along this way you would be most welcome.
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<br>Bullwnkl.

You guys are making me hungry with all this talk of food. I've had Boggy's chili and it is really great. The stuff Bullwnkl is talking about from our PNW bounty is also pretty darned good too. If you throw it together in one feast, you better have some great beer and wine on hand.
<br>If you guys decide to get together for this shindig, you just let me know and I'll show up with my share of NW cuisine in tow, and a couple good bottles of wine, and a case of Dos Equis. Maybe even bring some of my wife's Phillipine cooking to top it off. Hopefully, Bullwinkl can supply a few of those fresh Hood Canal oysters, maybe a few razor clams fried in butter, the octopus is good (but chewy), and we'll have ourselves a downright good time!- Sheister

I'm going for razors this weeked.pak

We have good tides for razors this weekend also, but alas, it is spring break and the crowds on the beach will make it virtually impossible to dig, so I'll pass until the next good tide.- Sheister