I have had a craving to make chili for a couple weeks now, so I have finally decided to indulge this craving for my first meal on my gourmet diet. With all my cooking adventures (including having stuffed chicken breasts and making Crab Rangoon), I don’t believe I have ever made chili before, so this is truly an adventure for me.
To up both the adventure factor and the health quotient, I have decided to make my chili with ground buffalo meat. I love bison burgers whenever I can get them, but I’ve never had the pleasure of cooking with buffalo, so I’m going to change that today as well.
Now, to find a recipe… I know chili generally has ground meat, beans , onions, garlic, tomatoes, and chilis (hence the name). That’s about it. I searched Epicurious.com for bison chili and found nothing. After a quick perusal over at bisoncentral.com (thanks for the link Google!), I discovered that cooking with buffalo is not much different than cooking with ground beef, so I set out on Epicurious again and just searched “chili.” I got pages and pages of recipes, which I skimmed. None of them sounded particularly inspiring to me. They either seemed too weird or too plain. Instead of choosing the best sounding recipe, I decided to make up my own based on what I learned about chili from reading these recipes, and what I know my own tastes are.
Here are my takeaways about chili from reading these recipes:
1. I was right about the basic ingredients (ground meat, beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes and chilis), but more specifically, people usually use ground beef, kidney beans, canned tomatoes, and canned chipotle chilis in adobo sauce.
2. Along with salt and pepper, cumin, chili powder, and cilantro are the most commonly used spices. A lot of people also add, strangely enough, to me, oregano.
3. People often add water, beef broth, and, most commonly (and surprisingly to me) beer to their chili
4. It seems the steps are usually: sautee the onions and garlic, brown the meat, add tomatoes and spices, let cook.
So I can work with that and make my own chili recipe. How am I going to make it unique and satisfying for me? Here are some thoughts I had while reading these recipes:
1. I want to do something different with the spices since I’m using buffalo, and the flavor is a bit gamier than beef, I think maybe even sweet. A few people mentioned they added cinnamon and cocoa powder to their chili. Cinnamon is a definite yes. I’ll have to think on the cocoa powder.
2. I love black beans, but also appreciate kidney beans, especially in chili, so I think I’ll do half black beans and half kidney beans in my chili
3. I appreciate the smokiness of the adobo sauce, but I love the flavors of canned green chilis and jalapenos. I need to think about what kind of peppers to put in my chili…maybe a combination of all three?
So now with this vague idea of chili set in my head, I’m off to the store to buy ingredients.
I ended up getting 2 pounds of ground buffalo, a can of green chiles, a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, 2 jalapenos, 2 white onions, and a can of black beans and a can of kidney beans. Also, 2 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes.
And here is what I ended up with:
Ingredients:
2 large white onions
6 cloves garlic
2 jalapeno peppers
2 pounds ground bison
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 28 oz. cans diced tomatoes in juice
1 can chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
2 15 oz. cans of beans (I used 1 can kidney beans, 1 can black beans)
12 oz. can Mexican beer (I used Tecate, because it was in my fridge)
Spices:
I don’t measure seasonings, because I season to taste and I have a good general idea of proportions. I included proportions in my recipe to guide you.
Salt
Pepper
Cumin
Chili Powder
Garlic Powder
Cinnamon
Onion Powder
Cayenne Pepper
1. Roughly chop 2 large white onions
2. Peel and mince 6 cloves of garlic (or however much you want. I really LOVE garlic)
3. Seed and chop 2 fresh jalapeno peppers (I used two fairly large ones and mostly seeded them. I like some of the heat that the seeds provide, but not all of it). I also chop them wearing latex gloves to avoid getting the head on my hands and accidentally wiping my eyes (yes, I’ve done it before!)
4. Put 2 pounds ground bison in a bowl. Season with equal amounts salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, cinnamon, and onion powder. Mix the seasonings into the bison with your hands until it’s well blended (you’ll season the chili itself later, but it’s sometimes easier for meat to absorb seasonings if it’s put in it before it’s cooked. And I don’t count calories for spices so approximate amounts are okay).
5. Heat 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil in large stock pot
6. Add garlic and stir. Cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds
7. Add onions. Let soften, stirring occasionally (I like using a wooden spoon). This takes about 3- 5 minutes.
8. Add jalapenos. Stir, then let cook about one minute, until the color starts coming out.
9. Add seasoned bison until its browned. Stir and mash it separate.
10. Add two 28 oz. cans of diced tomatoes in juice (no salt added), 1 4.5 oz can diced green chilles (with juice). Stir.
11. Chop 2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce (canned) and add to the pot.
12. Drain and add 2 15 oz. cans of beans (I used 1 can of black beans and 1 can of kidney beans)
13. Season. I added about 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of pepper, 1 tablespoon cumin, 2 tablespoons chili powder, ½ tablespoon cinnamon, ½ tablespoon onion powder, 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper. Stir.
14. Cover and let simmer for a couple hours, stirring occasionally and seasoning to taste.
15. After about an hour, add a 12 oz. can of Mexican beer (I used Tecate, because that’s what I had in my fridge). In my seasoning, I also added about an additional tablespoon of adobo sauce from the can of chiles. Let simmer for another hour.
16. Makes ten 1.5 cup servings, so serve and enjoy! I garnished it with chopped green onions and cilantro and eating it with 1 Jiffy corn muffin (made from the mix…don’t want to mess with a classic!)
Each serving is 325 calories J (with the Jiffy corn muffin, we’re at about 491 calories for the meal!) It was so so so good, and my non dieting boyfriend devoured it and couldn’t stop telling me how tasty it was. This is hearty, good for you, delicious, stick to your ribs food, that’s diet friendly. Woohoo! First kitchen experiment for The Gourmet’s Diet is a success.
