5 Ways to Elevate Your Chilli con Carne
I must have cooked this dish 100 times. Here are some simple tips for a rich, smokey chilli...
I love to cook, but catering for a family of five can be a real drag. The audience provides such meagre input that it’s hard to muster the motivation to conjure up new dishes. So I just rattle out the same meals, week in and week out.
I experiment around the fringes to keep myself interested, and I make little tweaks if I think I’ve stumbled upon something good. But I often hit a wall when I can’t face the kitchen, and then it’s a short walk to the butcher for a steak pie.
There are a few dishes that I never get bored of cooking, and Chilli Con Carne is one of them. The smell of the spices and the sight of the meat, beans and tomato, married together in a steaming pot, always provokes a hearty appetite.
And there’s no pressure when this is on the menu — I know the recipe, I know everyone will be very happy to eat it and I know it will be absurdly tasty.
It is not a dish to be rushed, so it’s the perfect recipe to prepare the day before — especially useful before a day when you know you might be pushed for time. This is another reason I enjoy making it — not only do I get a meal in the bank, but I know the hours in the fridge will improve the flavour too.
Lots of people take great pride in their own chilli recipes, but I just wanted to share a few of the tweaks, that over the years, have elevated mine.
1. Start with Smoked Bacon
The first thing I do is render the fat from lardons of smoked bacon or pancetta. I add the diced pork to the pot with a splash of olive oil, and once the pork has been sizzling long enough, I remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon and use the resulting fat to cook my onion. The bacon goes back into the sauce once it’s ready to blitz.
2. Swap the Fresh Chilli for Chipotles in Adobo Sauce
I often find the heat from fresh chillis a little hard to predict. Chipotles canned in adobo sauce, on the other hand, seem to be more consistent while the sauce delivers a delicious smokey flavour too.
3. Add Smoked Paprika
Spanish Pimenton is the best and comes sweet or hot. I add a good teaspoon of the sweet version and, together with the ground cumin, it delivers more big, smokey flavour.
4. Take Your Time (if you have it)
Chilli is much better when left to cook on low for a decent amount of time. I make mine in an ovenproof pot and leave it in the oven to simmer for an hour or two. The time in the oven makes the meat more tender while reducing the whole dish to an unctuous consistency. Allowing the chilli to rest once it’s cooked also improves the dish — I don’t know the science, but I think a lot of people would agree that chilli tastes better the next day.
5. Tweak the Flavour.
No dish will ever turn out the same. So, once your chilli is cooked and has. been allowed to cool a little, taste it and, if necessary, tweak it. I keep salt, muscovado sugar, red wine vinegar and chilli powder on hand.
I nearly always add a tablespoon of the sugar so have added this to the recipe — a bit of sweetness adds real depth to the sauce. Many people add chocolate instead, but I prefer to eat the chocolate.
If the flavour is a bit flat I might add a pinch more salt or a tablespoon of red wine vinegar to brighten it up. If it needs heat, I’ll stir in a pinch more chilli powder or some hot pimenton.
Ingredients:
80g — 100g Smoked Lardons
1 Medium Onion
1½ tsp Salt
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 Large Chipotle Pepper with 1tsp Adobo Sauce
1 Large Clove of Garlic — chopped.
1 tsp Ground Cumin
1 tsp Smoked Paprika (Pimenton — Sweet or Hot)
1 tsp Chilli Powder
¼ tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp Dried Oregano
400g Tin of Tomatoes (Good Quality — I use Mutti)
2 x 400g Tins of Black Beans (or Kidney Beans)
Muscovado Sugar and Balsamic Vinegar to taste.
Method:
Cut up a red bell pepper, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with sea salt and put in the oven for 10 minutes to roast.
Add the lardons with a splash of oil to an ovenproof pot (big enough for the whole chilli) and place on the heat.
Dice the onion.
Once the fat is rendered form lardons (which are now crispy), remove them to one side, and add the onion to the pot. Allow the onion to soften in the bacon fat.
Once the onion is cooked, add the garlic, stir for a minute and then add everything else up to the tinned tomatoes. Allow the spices to cook in the oily mixture of vegetables for a couple of minutes more.
At this stage I transfer the contents of the pot to a blender and blitz it with the tomatoes while using the pot to brown the beef. If you prefer, you can blitz the tomato mixture in the pot and brown the beef in a different pan.
Once the beef is browned, mix it with the (now smooth) sauce and bring to a gentle simmer. I usually find that more liquid is required so I rinse out the tomato tin with about 250ml of water or I drain the beans and use some of the juice out of the cans. You could add beef stock too but 250ml seems to be the amount you’ll require if cooking for an hour or two in the oven. I would recommend checking the chilli every so often to ensure that it’s not drying out. If you are cooking on the stove top you can add more liquid as and when you need it.
With half an hour to go I add the beans. I use the best beef I can get so I use plenty of beans to make the chilli go further — two cans may be too many for you.
I also check the consistency — if it’s too runny I will return to the oven with the lid off.
Return to the oven for 30 mins.
Remove from the oven, check flavour and adjust with salt, sugar, vinegar and chilli powder.
Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving.
