The Time Has Come to Once Again Wreck the Kitchen

It's Chili Time in America again. (And it's Friday at the ACBN!)

I find it reassuring that there are certain processes in nature driven by specific and timely meteorological conditions. The flowering of surprise lilies in late summer, the migration of birds in the fall, the all-at-once shedding of a gingko tree's leaves on a single, magical day. These moments bring order to the year; they remind us that we do not exist in a vacuum, but rather in a complex and marvelous ecosystem.

I myself am not immune to such seasonal triggers.

This past weekend, the temperatures hung on the edge of chilly. They'd been doing this periodically for the past few weeks, but there was finally something different. The sky was heavier, a grey woolen blanket of clouds hanging low over the damp morning air. As soon as I stepped outside, I could feel it in my bones:

I am going to absolutely wreck the kitchen later.

From the moment the heat of summer first starts to ebb away each fall, I start planning out the things I want to make in my trusty Dutch oven–the soups, the stews, the gumbos and all the things that just don't work when it's 95 degrees and humid. One efforts stands head and shoulders above the others, though, and that's chili. I revel in making chili, and I can't help but make a whole big damn production out of it.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not a chili purist. Even setting aside my long-held and highly-public embrace of Cincinnati-style chili (which I know isn't really chili so much as a Greek-adjacent Bolognese), I will argue that most chili is somewhere between "just fine" and "pretty good". It landed high on my list of "Best Mid Foods" last year–it's a dish that's easy to make a perfectly-serviceable version of without a whole lot of effort or skill.

Wendy's makes a decent version. I like Chunky Soup's version. Three cans and a tube of ground beef can win you a chili cookoff under the right circumstances. Heck, you might even beat me and the chili that I spent a whole day making and weeks planning.

And you know what? That's just fine. I'm going to do it my way.

I'm still going to toast, soak and puree dried chile peppers. I'm going to grind my own beef. I'm going to cook beans from dry. I'm going to mix my own spice blend make stock from scratch in the hopes it makes the overall dish just 1% better than if I hadn't. I'm going to use two mixing bowls, three strainers, four electric appliances and run the dishwasher five times because for me, the point is the process.

The point is that I don't have to do any of this, but I'm going to do it anyway.

When so much of my day-to-day life is defined by the things that I have to do–the deadlines I have to meet, the places I have to be, the things I have to do to keep the lights on and the mortgage paid and the kids happy and fed and healthy and out of jail–spending all day on something I want to do is an absolute luxury.

(And, hey: it gives me something to talk about here.)

I debut a new chili recipe here every October, but I'm making none of the specious SEO-chasing-food-blogger claims of them being The Best Chili You've Ever Had or The Most Authentic Chili This Side of Texas or anything like that. They're just what I was feeling at the time–often building on each other but always trying out new approaches, new ingredients and new ideas.

(They are all pretty danged good, though.)

This year's recipe? Well, it might just be my favorite yet. We'll get to that in a second.

Chili is the headline today, but there's more than that below the break today. I've also got some fresh new music, seasonally-appropriate reading material, some Very Good Pets and more!

Won't you join me?

In which I ask "¿Por qué no los dos?"

I found myself at a crossroads as I pondered this year's chili.

How do I want to build this?

In some of my past efforts, I've made reconstitued dried chile peppers the base of my flavor, and while I love the richness and depth that it brings to the dish, that approach can be unpredictable, as it's highly dependent on the specific peppers available at the time. Powdered spices can deliver more predictable results, and often more brightness than the whole chiles can, but they miss out on a bit of oomph. I couldn't decide which approach I wanted to take this time, so I figured: hey, why not both?