The Most Interesting Chili in the World
It isn’t Saturday, but since I’ve been off work since 4:30 PM this past Wednesday (hooray for five day weekends!), it might as well be. And in the spirit of days that are or might as well be Saturdays, I’ve taken it upon myself to experiment in the kitchen and see what comes out. I went to QFC last night and bought one of every pepper that wasn’t a bell pepper (because green bell peppers are the worst and the rest are fine but aren’t the sort you want when you make chili), as well as some other fixings, and I have a crock pot full of chili going now, which may or may not leave us with eyebrows. The ingredients list looks like this:
1 Anaheim pepper
1 cubanelle pepper
1 poblano pepper
1 tsp. minced scotch bonnet
1 tsp. minced serrano pepper
1 jalapeño, seeded
3 chipotles
1 nopal cactus leaf
1 [normal sized] bottle of Dos Equis
some sage leaves from the back porch
1 cup of dried black beans
1 cup of dried pinto beans
1 shallot
2 cloves of garlic
1 white onion
1 large and one small can crushed tomatoes
1.5 lbs. stew beef
Salt to taste
Chili powder to taste
That’s a lot of peppers, but I feel like they’re in the right proportions to make it a reasonable amount of spicy. My favorite parts are the cactus leaf, because that’s just great, and not something you eat every day, and the Dos Equis, because I don’t always put beer in my chili, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. (Stay thirsty, my friends.) I’ll put an update when I taste it. Hopefully it won’t destroy our insides.
Left to right, clockwise: White onion, Dos Equis, Anaheim, chipotles in adobo sauce, shallot, scotch bonnet, Cubanelle, poblano, garlic, jalapeño, serrano, nopal cactus leaf