January 9, 2011 Chili with Beans!

Uh oh. I've been so vocal and demonstrative about my views of beans in chili, I'm really in for some teasing from everyone. I love  El Cid chili; but I read an article in the January 2011 Cook's Illustrated that looked delicious; beans or no beans.  My take on the recipe can be found here.

The ingredients; oh yeah. Notice this also has beer!

The intriguing part was that I would make my own chili powder by toasting some chilies and grinding them up in the food processor; then turn it into a paste with some garlic, chicken broth and other stuff. Here the dried chilies are toasting

Yes, it's Ol' Blue again. I love this pot. It gets a big workout in the winter. Here I've made the chili paste and have cooked it down with a lot of pureed onion.

We sautee the meat; add some more liquid (including the beer) and stick it in the oven for a couple of hours until it looks like this:

 This chili is sooooo tender and delicous. I'm still a fan of El Cid more than this but everyone else who tried it loved it. So, I'll make it again.