Unusual ingredients

quote:

Originally posted by EliseT

OK, what's the weirdest ingredient you know of being put into chili? Tequila and coffee are as weird as I ever dared, but I once had a boyfriend who swore by cigar ashes! He'd stand at the stove, a cigar in his mouth, lazily stirring and tapping ashes into the pot. I just couldn't bring myself to eat it....I might now that I'm older and more daring.

Ahhh, but what kind of cigar . We need a brand name, at least . Surely that would make a difference .

I've heard of ashes being added as a secret ingredient in chili competitions, but I thought it was supposed to be ashes from the fire the chili was being cooked over .

Alas, the CASI web site does not have a search feature for ingredients.

I recently read that in the "old west," cowboys would toss bulls' eyeballs into their chili. If they did that, I suspect many more curious ingredients may have been added to the stewpot.

Personally, Cincinnati chili seems a bit odd to me. Of course, it was not invented by a so'westerner, but by a Macedonian named Athanas Kiradjieff.

All of the above, clothier .

And the chief of the chili police is a big pot-bellied guy who chain smokes Hav-a-Tampas and will flick ashes in every pot on your stove .

Gosh, I have no idea what kind of cigars he smoked. And I'm not inclined to look him up.

quote:

Originally posted by EliseT

OK, what's the weirdest ingredient you know of being put into chili?

I have heard of people putting beans in chili but never actually seen it done. Could be an urban legend.

My daughter likes a dash of cinnamon added to her chili.
I always add a pinch of sugar to cut down on the acid in the tomatoes.

At a restaurant once, we had chili made from Flamingos.




The only problem was when the bill finally came, we were already full from eating the legs and wings.

I bet that bill was a big one.

quote:

Originally posted by ocdreamr

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<div style="border: 1px #999999 solid; background-color: #DCDCDC; padding: 4px;">Originally posted by jfwest

The Greek style chili from the Cincinnati area includes chocolate and/or cinnamon. No Tex-Mex here!

quote:

actually the chocolate/cinnamon would be very Mexican!(we're talking Mole sauce here folks) Many Texas recipes call for the addition of one or both these ingrediants! By the way the chocolate is cocoa powder not milk chocolate candy.

ocdreamr is sooo right my grandmother used to use cinnamon/chocolate in chili and my mom can make a mean mole it seems like my whole neighborhood comes over for dinner whenever my mom makes her famous mole(that has cinnamon in it) i agree that it is a mexican thing and NOT greek or it could also be greek but im not greek so i wouldnt know for sure

Want a real chili recipe? This is from the "Cookin' in Brooklyn" televison show page on the Discovery Channel web site (no bills in this one). Quote:

Thunderbolt Chili
4-5 strips of bacon
Lots of black pepper shakes
1 package ground beef
1/2-1 lb. frozen turkey
2 onions
1 bell pepper
1 fennel
1-2 carrots
1/2 eggplant
2/3 tsp. curry powder
2 Tbsp. crushed red pepper
1-2 Tbsp. dried rosemary
1-2 Tbsp. adobo seasoning
5-7 garlic cloves
3 Tbsp. fig jam
1/2 cup yellow mustard
1-2 Tbsp. Thai chili sauce
1-2 Tbsp. hungarian paprika
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
1/3 jar of pickles (with juice!)
1 Poblano chili
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 Tbsp. salt
1/3 cup spaghetti sauce
1/2 pint of beer
1/2-1 cup rice
1 handful of baby arugula
2/3 cup cherry tomatoes
1 small package of crushed pork rinds
1 handful of cilantro
unlimited pepper jack cheese
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 can kidney beans
1 can pinto beans

To begin, pan-fry the bacon while adding black pepper to your liking. While the bacon is cooking, start slicing your vegetables. Cut your bell pepper, fennel, onions and carrots — trying to keep them all relatively equal in size. Make sure the vegetables are cut and ground through the food processor by the time the meat is ready. Grind your vegetables carefully; they should be coarse and varying in size. Slice the eggplant and Poblano chili and put those through the processor as well.

After the bacon has cooked, add some of the frozen ground turkey to the left over bacon fat. Simmer the turkey in the fat, keeping the turkey one level across so it cooks evenly. Sprinkle on some more cracked black pepper as the turkey cooks. Add your fresh ground beef and a good amount of salt to the ground turkey once it's thawed. Sprinkle some cinnamon and cayenne pepper, as well as paprika, crushed red pepper, adobo seasoning, dried rosemary and curry powder to the cooking meat.

Next, add vegetables to the ground meat. Mix the vegetables throughout the meat, allowing them to brown slightly. While the content's cooking, add pinto beans (sauce included) and kidney beans to the pot.

For the sauce, combine some garlic cloves, fig jam, mustard, Thai sauce, barbecue sauce, pickles (sauce included), brown sugar and spaghetti sauce. Puree the mixture in the blender thoroughly and add the finished product to the chili. Pour a half-pint of beer into the chili and allow it to simmer on a medium flame for about an hour. Add the rice and arugula, and finally some cherry tomatoes and crushed pork rinds. Stir evenly and serve with cilantro, pepper jack cheese and bacon bits on the side.

quote:

Originally posted by EliseT

OK, what's the weirdest ingredient you know of being put into chili? Tequila and coffee are as weird as I ever dared, but I once had a boyfriend who swore by cigar ashes! He'd stand at the stove, a cigar in his mouth, lazily stirring and tapping ashes into the pot. I just couldn't bring myself to eat it....I might now that I'm older and more daring.

Dearfolk,
This may explain something. Someone once posted about Shemwell's Barbecue in Cairo, Illinois, and mentioned that Darrell (sp.?) Shemwell dropped his ashes into a pot of something.
You don't suppose, dear folks, that ashes are Darrell Shemwell's (AHEM) "secret ingredient" in his barbecue sauce or some such?
This gives the smoker/meat connection an entirely new dimension, doesn't it?
UnEgyptianally, Ort. Carlton in That Delta Of Nothing - Athens, Georgia.

My grandpa used brown sugar and peanut butter

quote:

Originally posted by EliseT

I always suspected he was just too damn lazy to go get an ashtray!

Hopefully he could work up the will to get to the bathroom.

I put a good tea spoon of japanese wasabi

Alain

You mean you have never tried a big spoonfull on grape jelly
in chile?

There are 175 different chili recipes (including some with alligator meat, kasha, soy sauce, mushrooms, and honey) at http://www.panix.com/~clay/cookbook/chili/index.cgi but the one I like best is:

Texas Road-Kill Chili

Recipe by: Ted Rockwell

Ingredients:

4 lbs. fresh road-kill
1 tsp. black pepper
2 beers or 750ml zinfindel
1-3 tsps. oregano
2 Jalapeno peppers (chopped)
1 tbsp. cumin powder
2-4 tbsps. chili powder **
1 tbsp. salt
4 cloves crushed garlic
1 16 oz. can Cantadina tomato sauce
1 tbsp. finely chopped green onions
1 tbsp finely chopped bell pepper

** I recommend using ground chili peppers from Texas or New Mexico.
The chili pepper is the key ingredient, so your choice of chili
pepper will significantly affect the flavor & fire of your chili.


(This is REAL Chili - - So, No... There Ain't No Beans !)

Grind up 4 pounds of fresh road-kill. (Note: sometimes, due to the condition
of the road-kill, grinding up may not be necessary). Just about anything is
acceptable (armadillo, rabbit, possum, chicken, unidentified...), but stay
away from skunks since their odoriferousnous may have a negative effect on
the final result. If you live in an area where there's not much highway
traffic, or where urbanization has scared off all the critters and your
neighbors keep their pets indoors, then you can use the following 4.75 pounds
meat as a substitute:

2 lbs. ground beef (chili grind)
1 lb. venison (chili grind) .. pork is ok
1 lb. ground Italian sausage
12 oz. Mexican chorrizo sausage

I think I’d rather have a cigar smoker fixin’ my chili that a tobacco chewer.

Kellogs Frosted Flakes

I got a bowl of chili that was a little thin and there was no cornbread of biscuts to thicken it up a little so I thought why not use corn flakes, its made from corn, it was so good to, sweetened the bowl of red up a little but turned it into a nice thick chunky bowl of chili, and the corn flakes were grinded up into a powder before.