Cincinnati Chili

A while back, our friend Josh made some awesome Cincinnati Chili for us, and I’ve been craving it ever since. So we found a recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cincinnati-chili-recipe2/index.html   and decided to give it a shot.

You’ll have to look at the recipe for the instructions on this one… A lot of stuff has to go into making this. … But you have to chop up some onions … and what better to use?

The “Slap Chop” does a rather amazing job with the onions… and of course it doesn’t make you cry, it doesn’t make your hands stink… for a late night TV product, you’d be surprised how often you’d use this thing.

After getting the oil, onions, and garlic going for a bit, you add the meat and get it browning with the spice mixture:

Once that’s going well, you start adding the liquids, and basically stir things around and let them get all happy with each other until some of the liquid cooks off, and you get the consistency you want.

After it cooks down to the consistency you’d like, you can set it aside, or put it in the fridge until you’re ready for dinner… So, you can make this one ahead of time and let it chill in the fridge until you’re ready for it…

The chili is served on a bed of spaghetti with some cheddar and onion on top. It looks rather lovely, and because of the “flowery” nature of the spices, it would have been nice to have some cilantro for the top as well.

• The spices were kind of subdued… it may have been because I made it with 2lbs of meat instead of 1-1/2lbs as the recipe specified… but when I make it again, I’ll likely up the amount of each spice by about 50% or so, with the exception of the cayenne pepper… the level of heat spiciness was just right.
• Following the instructions, you’ll notice that at no point is the grease created by the meat removed from the mixture. There are several fixes here, you can cool the chili in the fridge, and the grease will float to the top and harden where you can remove it with a spoon. Or, you could use a stew-like meat instead of the ground beef as long as you cut it into very small chunks and don’t overcook them to toughness.