Farming does not leave you time to cook three squares a day from scratch. It leaves you overworked, tired, stressed and ripe to make poor food choices.
This chili solves that problem for Farmer David. He has personally refined this recipe over the last 10 years into his first choice for healthy fuel. He makes it in big batches in a 10 gallon pot that barely fits on his stove and then freezes it in 16 ounce portions. The result is a healthy, delicious, complete meal as quickly as it can be warmed in a pot. It is the only reason he has eaten well through the hardest stretches of running Wishbone Farms.
41 grams of protein, 12 grams of fiber, 516 calories. That is what is in the container when you take the lid off.
Use meat for stew, not ground
Chili started as dried meat, fat, salt, and chili peppers pressed into bricks that trail cooks boiled in a pot of water. When it settled into San Antonio in the 1800's, the women selling it in the plazas were cooking hearty pieces of beef in chili sauce. That was chili for its first hundred years.
Commercial chili powder went into production in the 1890's, canned chili followed, and by the 1930's there were chains serving it from Ohio to Tennessee. The slow braised beef had been replaced by ground, because it was easy, fast, and cheap.
Roast the beef, do not sear it
Spread four pounds of salt and peppered stew on a sheet pan or two in a single layer and put it in a 400°F oven. Fifteen to twenty minutes, no turning, no batches, nothing to watch.
That is twenty minutes of hands-free time, and it is exactly the window you need to dice the onions, run the peppers and garlic through the food processor, puree the tomato paste, chipotle, and broth in the blender and open and rinse the beans. By the time the beef comes out browned, your entire base is prepped and the pot is ready for it.
Ingredients
This is the eight quart version, scaled down for a single crock pot from the batch Farmer David actually makes.
From Wishbone Farms in our Braised Beef Chili Bundle
- 4 packs boneless beef for stew
- 3 pouches (14 oz) of beef bone broth
- 2 T tallow
Everything else
- 8 cans (15.5 oz) dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 2 cans (28 oz) crushed tomato
- 4 large yellow onions, diced
- 1 lb mixed fresh peppers, coarse chopped
- 1 can (15.5 oz) garbanzo beans, with the liquid
- 1 can (7 oz) chipotle in adobo
- 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
- 1 head garlic, broken down and peeled
- 1 oz (about 5 tbsp) smoked paprika
- 1 T dried oregano
- Your best salt and ground black pepper to season the meat
The stew beef, bone broth, and tallow are all in the Braised Beef Chili Bundle. Order for Pickup on Thursday or Saturday, or have Farmer David deliver to you.
Method
- Season and roast the beef. Pat it dry. Season heavily with salt and pepper. Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan and roast at 400°F for 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned. Set aside with the drippings.
- Start the onions. Melt the tallow in an 8 quart crockpot or larger stockpot on the stove over medium heat. Add the diced onions and sweat until softened, 8 to 10 minutes.
- Add the peppers and garlic. Run them through a food processor to save time, or chop and mince by hand. Add to the onions.
- Blend the wet base. In a blender, combine the tomato paste, chipotle in adobo, and enough bone broth to blend smooth.
- Combine. Stir the blended base in with the onions and peppers. Add the crushed tomato, the rest of the bone broth, and the smoked paprika.
- Add the beef and any drippings from the sheet pan.
- Simmer. Bring to a simmer, drop to low, and hold it there partially covered until the beef shreds apart under a spoon, about 3 hours. In a crock pot, low for 7 to 8 hours or high for 4 to 5.
- Add the kidney beans and the dried oregano once the beef shreds easily with a fork. Stir them in and let them heat through, about 15 minutes.
- Thicken and finish. Purée the garbanzo beans with all their canning liquid and a splash of water until completely smooth, then stir that back in. That is the thickener — no flour, no cornstarch, no white bread, and it adds protein instead of starch. Bring back to a simmer, taste, and season to your liking.
What you might add
Depending on your pepper selection, proportion of salt and pepper on the meat, and your spice nirvana you may choose to add some of the following to make it sing to you.
- Ancho chile powder, for depth without much heat
- Chimayo chile powder
- Cayenne, if it needs to bite
- Salt and/or black pepper
- Apple cider vinegar, a splash at the end, if it tastes flat
That last one is the fix people miss. If a pot of chili tastes like it is missing something and you cannot name it, it is almost always acid.
The freezer is the point
Eight quarts yields about 16 portions. Let it cool, portion it, freeze it, and it holds for a year without losing anything.
Farmer David makes the big version — in a 10 gallon pot, which is a full day. You do not need to. The eight quart batch fits in a crock pot and still gives you two weeks of dinners on one lazy Sunday afternoon.
