My slow cooker is full of chili, plugged in and ready to percolate overnight. I am not sure why I volunteer to make chili for the annual SC planning meeting. Everyone I know has a family recipe. My family didn’t eat chili when I was growing up so with each pot I drift from recipe to recipe looking for the elusive “perfect blend” of ingredients. For this event, I hastily ripped the “6-Hour Chili” recipe from a William-Sonoma catalog. How can any recipe from William-Sonoma be bad?
I didn’t read the recipe until I was cruising the grocery aisles searching for ingredients. At this point, I realized that I might regret my haste. The recipe is beanless and calls for 5 pounds of ground beef. I quickly calculated that to be almost 1/2-pound per person. Hummm, that’s enough to give the oldsters at the meeting an instant heart attack. On the spur I decided to improvise, replacing 1/2 the ground beef with several cans of kidney beans. How does that effect my other ingredients? I have no clue. So, after an evening of chopping onions, mincing 5 garlic cloves, adding 8 tablespoons of chili powder AND 2 cups beef broth to the ground beef (also a few things like cumin, oregano and chopped tomatoes), my master piece is complete. Will this be the perfect blend? Stay tuned…….
