Make This Brisket Chili If You Need the Most Meat
Hello cats and kittens, and welcome to another delicious part of the Skillet Chili Cook-Off, a seasonal cooking contest that keeps me (and my freezer) full of spicy stews.
This week’s contender from commentator Josh is very different from the delicacies we’ve tried so far. While the focus of any particular bowl of chili is usually meat, in this particular recipe the focus is very sharp. Not only are there no beans, but very little of anything else, and it’s pretty clear that every non-meat ingredient is needed to make the bite-sized pieces of brisket and chicken look good.
With just onions, tomatoes and a couple of chili peppers (jalapenos and fried poblano), there isn’t much meat to hide behind, which is good. Seasonings are minimal but carefully selected. Chili powder is ancho, pepper is smoked, cumin is fried and then ground into powder. There’s also some dried thyme, which I didn’t expect, but its green herb contribution works pretty well. Everything acts as an accent to the meat: it is slightly smoky, slightly sour and slightly spicy, with a hint of sweetness from a few hand-chopped tomatoes and lightly fruity peppers. In short, this chili is indelibly meaty in taste and content, and he’s right.
After the initial browning of the meat and searing the onions and jalapenos, spices, tomatoes and fried poblano are added, along with plenty of cheap beer, and simmered for a few hours until the meat is tender and the vegetables are tender. almost dissolved in a dark and aromatic, not quite broth.
As with chile, Josh’s comment is truncated and straightforward. I’ll drop it here and meet you on the other side.
The only thing I didn’t like about this recipe was that it was difficult to read due to the formatting, so I would recommend writing it down on a piece of paper before looking for chili peppers; It is very easy to get lost in the list of ingredients, which can lead to you missing something or adding the wrong amount of something else.
I also cut the recipe in half. I still have some of the other two chili peppers in the freezer, and adding six pounds of brisket and chicken to that stock was tricky. Fortunately, it scales well. But even with the recipe cut in half, I had to brown the meat in batches – the result is a lot of liquid in the pan, which prevents browning.
Would I change anything? I don’t know what I would become. I was initially puzzled by the lack of garlic, but I don’t miss it. This chili really respects the meat, adding just enough of the rest to make it stronger. I was tempted to add a pinch of sugar when I first tasted it last night, but the night’s rest toned down the pungent flavors and allowed the tomato sweetness to come through. However, I found myself preferring side-to-side tortillas over sourdough, but this is just a matter of personal preference.
Updated 11/13/2020 2:00 PM EST: Updated to include information on batch broiling.