God bless the Internet.
Christina accused me of being a bit obsessed with the whole chili thing. Whatever. It's just nice to have a project that doesn't involve html layout. And what else am I gonna talk about on the blog – Bollywood musicals?
I posted a message to the Good Eats Fan Page message board, asking for approximate heating times for chili from refrigerated to hot in a crock pot. I got a really terrific answer from someone who only identified herself as "Kirsten." Not only did she answer my question completely, but she also gave me some great prep tips on made-ahead chili. Rather than repeat them, I'm just going to include them here.
Pretty cool, huh? Of course, I read this after dumping the chili into the crock pot for overnight storage, so then I had to decant it a second time into another bowl and wash the crock. This is gonna be some well-traveled chili.
I also brought in the secret weapon: three loaves of beer bread, with a fourth baking in the bread machine this morning. I'll go back to the apartment at lunch and pick up the chili and that last loaf. Between two batches of chili and five loaves of beer bread, I've been through ten bottles of beer this week without drinking any.
By the way: the cheese soup trick rocks. The flavor is fine, but it gives the chili a wonderful consistency. Of course, it adds tons of fat too, but I'm pretty sure no one asked for heart-friendly chili.
I posted a message to the Good Eats Fan Page message board, asking for approximate heating times for chili from refrigerated to hot in a crock pot. I got a really terrific answer from someone who only identified herself as "Kirsten." Not only did she answer my question completely, but she also gave me some great prep tips on made-ahead chili. Rather than repeat them, I'm just going to include them here.
The first rule is don't take your office contest too seriously. I've done a couple of 3-hour CASI contests as well as lots of office contests over the years and they are worlds apart. In peoples' choice office contests where they know nothing about competition chili, 90% of the time they'll go for the entry that looks and tastes like pork and beans with a little hamburger thrown in that's been sprinkled with chili powder. Morons! How's that for a well-reasoned argument?
The night before, combine your basic ingredients and bring it up to temperature to cook the meat through and give the flavors a chance to mingle a bit. This gives you a base to build your final product on. Don't worry about getting the spices just right then. The brightness of the flavors fade pretty quickly and chili that tastes great the night before will be relatively bland by turn-in time.
Once the meat is cooked through, let your chili come back to room temperature then store it in another container and refrigerate overnight. (Remember safe food handling applies to chili as well.)
Around noon the next day, set your crock-pot to "Warm" and pour in the chili (which you've been keeping in the office refrigerator). You don't want to store the chili overnight in the crock-pot because bringing the chili and the additional mass of the cold crock up to serving temperature would take all day. You want to heat the chili slowly. Bringing it up too quickly could scorch the natural sugars in the ingredients on the sides of the pot and leave a bitter taste that's impossible to hide.
An hour before the contest, check the temperature of the chili. The risk of burning it now is pretty small if you need to put the spurs to it. Adjust the spiciness and heat of your seasonings (salt, pepper, chili powder, Sazon Goya, etc.) to get it close to where you want it. This is called a "dump" and is used to create layers of flavor in the chili.
Just before serving, add small amounts of your seasonings as needed (a final dump) to create a fresher layer of flavor in your chili.
Good luck and have fun.
Pretty cool, huh? Of course, I read this after dumping the chili into the crock pot for overnight storage, so then I had to decant it a second time into another bowl and wash the crock. This is gonna be some well-traveled chili.
I also brought in the secret weapon: three loaves of beer bread, with a fourth baking in the bread machine this morning. I'll go back to the apartment at lunch and pick up the chili and that last loaf. Between two batches of chili and five loaves of beer bread, I've been through ten bottles of beer this week without drinking any.
By the way: the cheese soup trick rocks. The flavor is fine, but it gives the chili a wonderful consistency. Of course, it adds tons of fat too, but I'm pretty sure no one asked for heart-friendly chili.
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