A nice cold front rolled in a the beginning of the week, and we’ve (or, at least, I’ve) been enjoying some cool weather ever since. After spending about eight years in Houston, I’ve been losing my resistance to the cold every year, and at some points the 50s weather has felt downright chilly. I’ve been craving my cold weather comforts a lot more this week. When it gets chilly in the fall, I start craving my pumpkin spice latte (I know, I know...) and hot chocolate in the evening. I start wanting my heavy comfort foods—spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, mac and cheese. For a calorie counter, cool weather brings certain...challenges. I’m either downing hot, sugary drinks or plates of fat-laden carbs, or both.
Something I’ve really been craving this week is chili. Chili can be comfort food for me, but it gets a little more specific than that. To really qualify as comfort food for me, chili has to come with a whole lot of Ritz crackers crumbled on top. No other cracker will suffice—not saltine, not oyster, not Townhouse—it has to be Ritz. This comfort food has an origin story, as most comfort foods do, in my childhood. When I was a kid, my idea of “chili” was arguably not chili at all. Almost every week, my mom would make a pot of what she called “chili,” but what I would later find out was something called Hoosier chili. My mom is from Indiana, and this was how her mom made chili, so it was passed down to us. Most of the flavors you might associate with chili are absent from Hoosier chili, although there is a small amount of chili powder in it. The best way I can describe it (I do not recommend making it for yourself) is that it’s a sweet, thin tomato soup with bits of lean ground beef, kidney beans, and elbow macaroni floating in it. It is, in short, disgusting—it has nothing to do with my mom’s cooking, it’s just a terrible concept. As a kid, I did not enjoy chili nights. In fact, I’m pretty sure my mom was the only person who truly enjoyed it.
However, I found that if I crumbled enough crackers into my chili, it would not only be edible, but it would actually taste pretty good. Something about the combination really worked for me. But it took a lot of crackers. Ritz were my favorite, and I often pleaded with my parents to get the Ritz crackers—but sometimes, I was stuck with saltines, which I didn’t like but they did the job. As long as I had my crackers, I didn’t mind chili night so much. Eventually, my mom’s recipe for chili changed—I’m not sure why (maybe my dad had something to do with it), but it became a little more like what you might expect chili to be (thick, a little spicy, with typical chili flavors). One thing that remained was the elbow macaroni. It was a shock when I found out that elbow macaroni in chili is not normal. It was also a shock to me that not everybody enjoyed crumbling a ridiculous amount of Ritz crackers into their chili.
So that’s what I’ve been craving most of all this week. I was looking forward all week to the weekend, when I would have some time to make some chili and crumble some crackers into it. Last night, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up supplies, including crackers, and I did something I shouldn’t have. It has been a long time since I’ve eaten Ritz crackers—I don’t think I ever once looked at the Ritz nutrition label. I did last night, and to my great displeasure, I found high fructose corn syrup in the list of ingredients (one of the things I’ve almost completely gotten out of my diet). I put the box of Ritz back and looked at other cracker brands, and I found a store brand that have any HFCS. But it wouldn’t be the same, I decided. So I’m eating chili tonight with my HFCS-laden Ritz crackers, and I think it was a good decision.
I don’t really have a chili recipe, in case you’re wondering. As you can imagine, being raised on Hoosier chili has meant I don’t exactly have a loyalty to one kind of chili—as long as it’s not a sweet tomato soup with elbow macaroni, I’m happy. I’ve had it with chunk meat, with ground meat, with no meat at all, with beans, with no beans, etc. I am a panchilisexual. Usually, when I’m craving chili, I’ll go searching for new chili recipes so I can try something different. The version I’m eating tonight is from Cowboy Kent Rollins, who has an outdoor cooking channel and is one of my favorite people to watch on YouTube (mainly for his storytelling, but his recipes are great, too). He does his in a Dutch oven over a fire, but I think mine turned out just fine on the stovetop.
2 pounds ground beef (wild game, chunk meat, etc.)
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 (10 oz.) can Rotel (we used chunky), drained
1 Rotel can water
1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce
1 (16 oz) can kidney beans, drained (or your bean choice)
Green Chile Chipotle Relish (available https://kentrollins.com/shop-1 or 3 - 4 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, chopped or to taste
1/3 cup chile powder
½ tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano powder
2 tsp paprika or smoked paprika
2 tsp salt
3 tsp minced garlic
1. In a large pot or 12” Dutch oven brown the hamburger over medium high heat. Season with salt and pepper or seasoning of your choice, to taste. As the meat begins to brown, stir in the onions. Continue cooking until the meat has fully browned and onions are tender. If there is a lot of excess grease, drain.
2. Stir in the Rotel, water, tomato sauce, beans, chipotle peppers or relish. Stir in the seasonings. Adjust taste, if needed.
3. Cover and cook over medium-high heat until it reaches a boil. Boil a couple minutes. Reduce heat and simmer for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Serve warm with cheese, onions, sour cream, etc.
What do you want to kibitz about tonight?