Chili (topics must be at least 6 characters)

So I thought I was getting chili today. Turns out I’m getting chicken and dumplings. Which is fine by me. My wife’s chili is “meh”.

I’d take that trade.

Cornbread is best with beans. If you cook the beans with bacon, I think the beans and cornbread form a complete protein.

As a kid we usually had pinto beans, which would be ladled over crumbled cornbread like west texas red beans and rice. Spicy relish would be added for adults, sweet for the kids.

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Now that is one thing that i will say can be wrong. Chicken and dumplings is my whole family’s comfort food. And if you don’t roll the dumplings then we judge.

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I agree but I did find this information: Enthusiasts of chili say one possible though far-fetched starting point comes from Sister Mary of Agreda, a Spanish nun in the early 1600s who never left her convent yet had out-of-body experiences in which her spirit was transported across the Atlantic to preach Christianity to the Indians. After one of the return trips, her spirit wrote down the first recipe for chili con carne: chili peppers, venison, onions, and tomatoes.

So I’m using that as my justification for adding stewed tomatoes.

I don’t keep buttermilk on hand. I just buy cornbread mix.

I do not like or eat cornbread much, but I do love chili. I made Mark’s recipe yesterday, which I think is great, and I am enjoying the various posts about chili.

Buttermilk’s a snap to make at home. I do one and a half tbsp lemon juice per cup of milk. Let it sit for a minute to get nice and curdled. Easy-peasy.

Our family is leaning towards going mostly vegetarian, so I strongly considered making my chili with Beyond Meat instead of beef. Beyond is our favorite beef substitute so far, and my wife used it in taco soup (would qualify as chili in Cincy) last night and I honestly had a hard time telling the difference. She talked me out of it with the chili though, partly because Beyond Meat is $11/pound, partly because I only make chili once a year and she wants some goddamn chili.

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My mom could really stretch a buck and growing up we would occasionally have a dinner or Sunday lunch of just beans and cornbread. Sometimes they were pinto beans, sometimes Navy. Navy beans are actually pretty good loaded up with pepper sauce.

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This is a buttermilk substitute, and it works in a pinch, but it’s not really the same thing. Buttermilk is fermented, either naturally or by adding cultured bacteria. Lemon juice will make milk curdle, and it will add acidity, but it doesn’t really taste like buttermilk.

I made the US Senate Restaurant recipe for navy bean soup last week. I love navy beans.

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This is real:

https://twitter.com/weetabix/status/1359074254789165059?s=21

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There’s a very good powdered buttermilk, Saco, which is great stuff. Amazon.com

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Same here but there was always bacon or ham hocks, or just chunks of left over ham, in with the beans. And beans were a dish my dad, not mom, would make. He would ladle the beans over cornbread, top it with ketchup, and called it Bean Berry Poot Cake

Beyond Meat is really good. I love their burgers, and I use their hot Italian sausage in pasta sauce (I brown the outside, slice it and then cook it in the sauce). I don’t have it that much, though, because it is pricey, and it’s pretty fatty.

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We ended up buying a lot of dried beans from Rancho Gordo, where Austro got his hominy. It’s fun because of the varieties they have, and because they are just a little bit better. We then go through lots of fairly elaborate cooking rituals, but end of the day it’s still beans and cornbread. Except for black beans. Then it’s beans and rice.

No ketchup though.

Running across a whole kernel in cornbread is viscerally upsetting. I will never understand people who like that.

Always loved beans and ham hocks. Made some garbanzo bean soup with ham hock for Super Bowl.

We go through a lot of Rancho Gordo beans as well. They also make the best chili powder I’ve been able to easily source. 2 lbs of course ground chuck, an onion, a head of garlic, a can of tomatoes and six to eight tablespoons each of cumin and Rancho Gordo chili powder is easy, tasty, chili.

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