Saddle up, Word of Mouth! This month, How to Eat – the blog attempting to define the ideal way to enjoy Britain’s favourite dishes – is moseying on down the trail, crossing from Texas into Mexico in order to settle, once and for all, what constitutes the ultimate chilli con carne. The International Chili Society insists that this cannot be done. “From the time the second person on Earth mixed some chile peppers with meat and cooked them, the great chilli debate was on; more of a war, in fact,” proclaims its website. But what do they know? Being American, they can’t even spell “chilli”. And, clearly, they have never encountered How to Eat, where, each month, after the moderators have sieved out the threats of violence and the dust has settled, a nation invariably comes together as one and, smiling wryly to itself, admits: “You know what? That weird, bald fella who writes How To Eat? He was right.”* So, without further ado, let’s get to rustling up the perfect chilli.
*This may be a slight exaggeration. Subs, could you check back and make sure that I am always right? Cheers.
Base
How low can you go? Jacket potato, that is how low. Or chips. Or even mash. Like Paul McCartney and Kanye West, “potatoes” and “chilli” are two individually brilliant things which, when brought together, produce something deeply unpalatable. Texturally, it is all wrong. When combined, minced meat, beans and potato morph into an unedifying slop, both lumpy and granular, that feels far too filling. You need crampons, not a spoon, to conquer this rapidly solidifying, stodge-mountain of carbs, meat and thick sauce.
No, there is a reason why white (longer grain, eg basmati) rice is the go-to chilli accompaniment. That is because in its light, clean, toothsome blandness, it is the perfect palate-cleansing foil for that relatively heavy meat sauce. Unlike potato, rice takes on a coating of sauce, but does not become waterlogged by it. You can play around with wild rice etc, but please do not pretend that using brown rice is a nutty new taste sensation. Serving anything on brown rice is like being forced to eat from a hessian sack full of sawdust.
Rice, similarly, trumps nachos, tortilla or bread. Served over nachos or with them lining the rim of bowl in a childish turret formation, the nachos become soggy and unappetising. Serve those nachos on the side, as de facto cutlery, and you are providing someone with loads of tiny misshapen spoons patently unsuitable to the task of scooping up chilli. Tortillas are an equally impractical delivery apparatus, and only remain popular because they seem to be a thematic Tex-Mex fit. As for bread, on an arc from brittle, parsimonious pittas to crusty farmhouse loaves, it all pairs poorly with chilli. Just as you should not eat bread with a chunky bean soup, so too, if combined with chilli, bread forms a bloating, oddly woolly and (like potato) texturally odd mouthful. In short, it feels too much like hard work.
Toppings
Chilli should be a one-bowl meal: no avocado side salad. And no serving the sour cream, cheese etc in dinky little ramekins which a) force you to assemble your own meal, and b) because bars and restaurants serve them in such tiny, miserly quantities, always leaves you desperately scraping at the sour cream pot with a knife. Everything you serve with your chilli should be thick enough to sit on top of it, around the plate (so they can be used, in effect, as dipping sauces), and should be deposited in generous dollops. Basically, if you can still see the surface of your chilli, that is a fail.
Cheese: Grated straight from the fridge, any reasonably good mild cheddar is perfect. The stronger flavours of mature cheddar are wasted here – it is too domineering, as is sweaty, pungent parmesan. Any cheese must be added at the last minute as, particularly if using monterey jack, if it sits on the hot chilli for too long it will melt into an unedifying greasy quagmire. Some people favour feta or crumblier lancashire cheese with chilli, but both lack the pleasing meltability of supermarket cheddar.
Sour cream: Yes, yes, yes. God bless its fresh, acidic twang. Of course, any half-fat, fat-free or bizarre almond-milk alternatives are strictly verboten.
Refried beans: No.
Guacamole: A bone of contention. One (misguided) party argues that guacamole adds colour and that its lime, onion and coriander flavours cut a zingy swathe across the chilli. On the other wing, there are (righteous) people adamant that there is something deeply and unpleasantly incongruous about having this cold, thickly blitzed gunk on top of a plate of hot food. Sour cream is a soothing emollient to the chilli. Guacamole is a course in itself; a starter best eaten with nachos.
Salsa: See guacamole, but even worse, as even the freshest salsas do not hold together in a way that you can blob them atop your chilli. Finely diced tomato and onion will tumble about, introducing clanging conflicts of temperatures and flavour at every turn. As for the more viscous, gluey jarred salsas, they are invariably a ludicrously sweet gloop that would be an insult to your chilli.
Fundamentally, rice + chilli x cheese ÷ sour cream = perfection. It leaves you with heat, meat and rich, rib-sticking flavours, but also cooler, fresher components, held together in a taut complementary tension. It allows everything to shine, particularly the chilli. Adding anything else would upset this equilibrium.
Garnishes and condiments
There is almost nothing that requires garnishing with chopped parsley/coriander. It is like someone emptying their hedge trimmings over your tea. Finely sliced fresh chillies and/or jalapeños should also be avoided, as should adding chilli sauces, such as Tabasco or sriracha, at the table. If you cook heat into your chilli, it is smoothly amalgamated into the the dish, whereas dressing it with fresh chillies and chilli sauces introduces unpredictable, destabilising raw heat. If you have patiently created a chilli with real depth and complexity of flavour, why jeopardise that? The only garnish a chilli needs is a handful of crushed nachos, for salty, crunchy contrast.
The chilli
Meat: Mince is fine, but if you really want to go to town, there is something far more satisfying – in terms of fibrous bite and muscular resistance (hat tip, Jamie Oliver), about slow-cooking a piece of beef brisket or stewing steak, then shredding the meat in the sauce before you serve it. “But it feels like pulled pork,” people howl, as if the world has shifted on its axis. But have no fear. You are not doing a sponsored skydive for charity. You are just eating some different-shaped meat. If you want to a chuck in some chorizo too, who could object? Chorizo makes everything better. (NB In food, that is. I am not a qualified medical doctor.)
Seasonings: Getting busy with the ground cumin, cinnamon sticks, paprika etc is definitely worth it, as is investing in ancho and smoky chipotle chillies, rather than just using plain old blunt, brutish chilli powder.
Beans: It is difficult to go wrong here: pinto, black beans, borlotti for the mavericks, the more the merrier. Kidney beans are vital.
Vegetables: Beyond the obvious (onions, tomatoes, garlic), there is little to add and certainly no role – unless you roast and skin them and cook that plump flesh to a disintegrating tenderness – for the ubiquitous bell pepper. Nothing ruins a chilli more than bulking it out with great, bitter, watery chunks of red or green pepper. Essentially, any veg in a chilli should have melted indistinguishably into the sauce.
Veggie chilli
This is an entirely different beast to a meat chilli: naturally brighter and lighter in its flavours, and one where, conversely, you want some of the ingredients to retain their structural integrity. Veggie chilli stands on its own merits, particularly when no attempt is made to directly substitute the meat (Quorn has all the character of polystyrene packing material). It is also versatile in that, with every ingredient you throw in, you are building in flavour. Which is not to say that anything goes – see below. Cooking a veggie chilli also requires significant patience, given that ideally you will need to add the vegetables in stages, in order to ensure that they all emerge cooked to a T (the commonplace crime here is undercooked ingredients).
Acceptable: Onion, tomato, celery, carrot, broccoli or cauliflower (stems, no florets), finely sliced kale/cabbage, peppers (with above proviso), butternut squash, assorted beans: kidney, pinto etc but also chickpeas, cannellini, butter beans.
Unacceptable: Leeks, peas, mushrooms, snotty, sludgy courgettes, aubergine, lentils (pulse overkill and they lack the beany heft you expect in a chilli), sweetcorn (wrong in any hot food), sweet potato (the clue’s in the name, twice) and standard potato.
How to serve
Rice, chilli, sour cream, cheese, crushed nachos (optional), guacamole (if you really must). Dinner plate or wide, shallow bowl. Some people have conniptions if you serve the chilli and rice together. Why? Do they want to sprinkle the rice on top? Serve each side by side? Lunacy! Make a well in the rice and ladle the chilli in, so that it lubricates the grains. And, crucially, do not serve too much bloating rice (around 40% rice, 60% chilli).
Chilli abuses
Potatoes (eg chilli-topped fries) we have covered above. Like Celebrity Big Brother, it is dumb junk. Exciting for a couple of mouthfuls; a slog to finish. Topping burgers or hotdogs with chilli is also bizarre, given that any reasonably potent chilli will swamp the flavour of the patty or dog, which would only be positive were you attempting to mask a crap product.
When
Lunchtime or evenings; chilli is not a breakfast dish … is it?
Drink
Cold beer, room-temperature red wine, iced water or even milk, if you accidentally dropped the chilli powder as you were cooking.
So, chilli con carne: how do you eat yours?
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