Bowl o'Red

Texas chili is not an arcane art. I'm always amazed to hear of the elaborate secretive hijinx of competitive chili teams. Yes, it is a team sport in Texas. If you ever see it, Chile Pepper Magazine is an entertaining read even if you only read the ads. Good photography, too.

Your average Texan isn't looking for the ultimate cook-off chili. What a Texan wants is a bowl o' red. It's meaty, it's smooth, and it is completely, utterly, free of beans. It doesn't take 10 hours to make or a special cut of meat. If you use hamburger, the clattering, wan ghosts of chuck wagons past will not circle your bed in the night.

Texas Chili:
1 1/2 lbs. Hamburger
1 fat clove Garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground Cumin
1 teaspoon Chili powder
1 teaspoon Chipotle powder
1/2 teaspoon Oregano
1 teaspoon Bacon grease ( no substitutes!)
1/3 can tomato paste
water & salt
cornmeal or masa to thicken

1. In a big skillet, brown the hamburger and leave it lumpy. Drain the grease if you want to.
2. In a pot, gently fry the garlic in the bacon grease till it's soft. Add about a cup of water to stop it frying if you need to. Then stir in the tomato paste till it's smooth.
3. Add all the meat and all the spices (not the thickener). Add water to cover, and stir well.
4. Simmer gently for about 20 min. and add the salt. How much salt? More if it will go over rice, Cajun style, and less if it will go over corn chips. If you use canned tomato sauce or diced tomatoes, you'll need a lot less than if you use paste, with is unsalted (and cheaper).

At this point, it's perfectly okay to eat. But it will taste better if you turn off the heat and let it rest a few hours.

About 10 min. before serving, mix up your thickener to avoid lumps and stir it in to simmer about 10 minutes. I use ordinary yellow cornmeal; if you have masa it tastes fine. I've seen a recipe suggest using a big spoonful of Jiffy brand cornbread mix, which makes sense if you're making it, but it's very sweet by Texas standards.

Serve it plain or over corn chips. If you're just dying for that Friday night football stadium taste, squirt processed cheese over it all. (I never touch the stuff.)

And no beans. Anathema sit!
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Austinites of a certain age will remember Hill's, a steakhouse owned by the Goodnight ranching family, serving their beef. What amazing chili they had! (And sourdough dinner rolls I never equalled at the height of my bread-god powers.) The Goodnight ranch tried a cross breeding experiment decades ago between cows and buffalo (American bison). The experiment failed, but if you substitute ground buffalo for some of the beef, the chili will taste absolutely fabulous. Hill's was a casualty of the recession of '86-'87, but reopened in 2001; I haven't been there.