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Hey guys, it's Matt with Meat Church and welcome back to my outdoor kitchen. Today, we're making traditional Texas red chili.
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There is no more polarizing topic than chili when it comes to the world of cooking. I'm telling you, from our Facebook group, Meat Church Congregation, a couple hundred thousand people, to Twitter and everything else, the beans versus no beans, it's a hot debate. We're not here to debate it today. We're here to show you traditional Texas red chili.
Now, we have three other chili recipes on mechurch.com as well as corresponding YouTube videos. We've got what we call a Texas Chili. We've got white chicken chili that I wouldn't really consider chili, but it's my mother-in-law's recipe, and you don't argue with your mother-in-law. And then we have a brisket chili. So, every time we put that stuff out there, it's mostly meat-based, right? Other than the white chicken chili, we have no beans in it because that's not real common in Texas. So, we see the wars rage on.
So, I've always wanted to do a scratch-made Texas red chili and educate everyone on where it comes from and what it means. So, this chili is about two things: chilies and meat. It originates in Texas. In fact, it's the State dish of Texas. So, you can't argue with me. Let me, let me read this to you here. Open up my iPhone here. All right.
So, in 1977, resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Texas, a Senate concurring in the 65th Legislature, in recognition of the fact that the only real bowl of red is that prepared by Texas, hereby proclaimed chili as the State dish of Texas. So, there's some debate on where chili came from. Did it originate San Antonio? New Mexicans like to argue with that as well. In any case, the chili queens of San Antonio were making this stuff on the streets in the markets, and it was about, again, the chili and the meat. There were no fillers in it. In fact, if you go to the Terlingua chili cook-off, there are no fillers allowed: no spaghetti noodles, no rice, no beans, because chili is about the chili flavors and the meat. So, that's the deal.
So, it doesn't matter what kind of chili people make. If you're making traditional Texas red, AKA a bowl of red, there are no beans in it. If you want to add beans, you want to add all the other stuff, that's completely fine. You can still call it chili, but it's not Texas red chili. So, this is going to be scratch-made. It's going to be good. I'm excited to get into it. So, let's go.
Here's what we're starting with. We've got two types of chilies, dried. We've got guajillo chilies and ancho chilies. And then I've got three pounds of stew meat. So, you could do chuck roast like we did in our Carnegie Soda video. This is a 44 Farms product, and this will work great for us. So, let's set that aside.
And if you don't know where to get dried chilies, I thought I would show you. This is from my grocery store down the street, very common here in Texas. You could also draw your own if you want, but this is really, really easy. Overview of these: we're going to cut the stems off, we're going to remove the seeds, then we're going to sauté those a bit until they're nice and fragrant, and then we're going to submerge them in some super hot water, basically boiling water, to soften them up. We're going to rehydrate them to make a chili paste, and this is where the flavor is going to come from in your chili.
So, I'm just going to show you a couple of these. What you got to do. So, let's pick a, pick a big one. Now, let's go with this one. Take your chili, cut the stem off, and I'll dump wood on the board here to show you. You want to get rid of all that. You could also use kitchen shears if you want. You want to split it all the way open because we're going to toast this in the skillet, and also this will help you make sure that you get everything out of it. So, remove all the seeds. Don't worry, it's going to burn you up. And when they're dried like this, they're not hot. So, when you're done with it, put in your bowl.
Now, I'm going to use, I'm going with, and this is preference, but the recipe down in the description on mechurch.com, you're going to see a dozen guajillos and, you know, four anchos. You can use different types of peppers. I've even seen people do like up to like seven different types of peppers. So, it's just kind of preference and what you want to do. This is a really good method, simple with only two chilies. So, here we go. In this recipe, won't be using any dry chili seasoning by default. Now, you can add it at the end. We'll talk about that when we get to the end. So, let's drop that in the bowl. I'm going to keep cutting these up, and then we're going to put the water in.
We've got all of our peppers deseeded here, as you can see, and basically just kind of split in half. We've got over here, uh, vintage cast iron skillet over kind of medium heat. It's dry, and we're going to place these in. You're just going to put these in here until they're just nice and fragrant. You have to do this in batches, obviously. You don't want to burn these because they'll get bitter. So, it's kind of your preference here, no more than a couple minutes. Flip them around, they're going to smell really good. It's going to open them up, brighten them up. Pull them off here, put them in a bowl. Get the water. See, that's looking really good right there, and they smell amazing. All right, last of the chilies here.
All right, so now what we need to do is we need to soften these. And so, we've got some water that's, uh, that's boiling over here, and we're just going to pour it over it. You could pour water in that skillet. If your water is boiling like this and the peppers are submerged, you're talking five minutes to soften them. If you just pour water over the skillet and simmer, it could take 25-30 minutes. You just want these to get nice and soft. And I'm going to get my next ingredients. We're going to make a roux, and we're going to finish this, uh, this chili paste in a blender. So, let me go get my ingredients and we'll move on to the next step.
We still got our skillet going here. We're going to put about a quarter cup of oil in it. We're going to make a blonde roux. So, let's heat that oil up, then we're going to add some flour to it. You know your oil is hot enough when you put a little pinch of flour in and it'll fry it. All right, so this is probably a little less than half a cup. You've got to stir like crazy.
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All right, so you want to cook the flour down, and then we're going to add 16 ounces of chicken stock and stir quick.
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Assistant. All right, blonde roux. Don't want to cook it too long. So, we're going to kill the fire. Let's let that sit for just a second. Let's go back to check on our chilies. They should be nice and softened by now. Oh, yeah, they are. So, now we're going to make our chili mixture. So, we got a blender here, Vitamix. You don't want to pour this water in here because it'll be really, really bitter. So, to strain off all the water, dump the peppers in.
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Set that aside. So, now let's pour in the roux.
Foreign. Some garlic, three to five cloves. I like garlic. We're going five big ones and a little bit of salt. And you just need to blend this up until it's nice and smooth and set it aside while we move on to creating our spice dumps and browning the meat.
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I'm going to go get all my seasonings for my spice dump and we'll move on to that.
All right, let's get all of our seasonings together. I'm going to call these two different seasoning dumps. One we're going to put in in the beginning, and then one we're going to put in after it's been simmering for a little while. But I need to get my Dutch oven going to brown my meat also.
You can use oil. I'm using lard. All right, so the first one is going to be two tablespoons of onion powder, two tablespoons of garlic powder, tablespoon of black pepper. I'm going to add some beef bouillon, a couple. And then I love this stuff. I'm going with two. Dump that in. We're going to just set this aside. Gives me something to do while I'm waiting on that to melt down. Okay, this is our first dump. And the one we'll do later is some Mexican oregano and some cumin. We'll talk more about that when we get to the near the end of the chili cook. I'm going to set this stuff aside.
Now, we need to get into browning our meat. So, here I've got the 44 Farms stew meat. You can use this, you can use chuck roast. Just use something big, you know, as this simmers and breaks down, that's what's going to give you such a hearty bite. I didn't actually have to trim this up. It came pre-trimmed. Um, if you, I'm going to start putting this in while I talk to you. This is a pretty warm, maybe a little too warm. If you use chuck roast, you want to cut it up into no bigger than one inch squares. Probably going to do this in batches. You're going to want to use three to four pounds, and you don't want to overcrowd the pan. So, I'm just going to fill the bottom of the pan. I'm going to brown this much like we did our Carnegie Soda. I'm going to toss it around and just get nice sear and browning for like six to eight minutes. Um, and then we're going to drain off the liquid that's come out, and then it's going to be time to make the chili so we can simmer it.
I can see this meat's nice and browned. Gonna pull this off because I actually need to drain this Dutch oven. We're going to cook the chili in here, but I don't want all this excess fat in here that came out of this stew meat. So, let me get this out of here. I'm going to go drain the pot, and then we'll compile the chili.
All right, we've drained the Dutch oven. Turn it back on. Okay, let's return our meat. By the way, you could use some ground meat in this. I've ground my other recipes. I really like that. Gives you like a really consistent bite, but we're just going really traditional. I'm here today. So, now let's get our chili mixture. Okay, now let's add 16 ounces of beef stock.
Now, there's lots of Texas red recipes out there, and for this one, I got to give credit to my man Matt Wilson of Arlington. I call an unofficial mayor of the City of Arlington. The guy's a West Texas boy at heart. He's a true cowboy, and he brags about his Texas red. Now, I'm going in with his first spice dump, and I mean, it's a pretty big deal. The guy's won like his office cook-off of four people at least two times, so you know it's good. But no, this is seriously good. I adapted, just I changed us very minor things. I appreciate Matt for letting me use his recipe. No tomatoes in this, right? So, that's something we talked about earlier. Chili got popular on, on chuck wagons, and chuck wagons did not carry any fresh ingredients. So, I'm not saying tomatoes bad. If you look at our original Texas Chili Recipe, it's got some tomatoes in it. A lot of people use tomato paste or sauces. So, that's up to you, but again, we're going like super traditional. So, this is going to be about the chili flavor and the meat. But as always, make the recipe your own, and you know, add whatever the heck you guys want.
So, you can bring this up to a boil, and as soon as it gets to a boil, you want to drop it down to a simmer. So, the key to this for me is you want to simmer this really gently. You don't want to evaporate too much liquid. So, that's going to help get serious flavor into the meat. So, I drop down and simmer, basically as low as you can go. And 45 minutes in, we're going to add our last spice dump, and that's the point you can taste it and decide. Feed and put enough chilies in it. You could put some chili seasoning in it if you want. Make any adjustments you want at that point. And this only, this takes less than two hours total to cook. So, we'll cook another hour after we do this, but I like to simmer my chili all day. So, I like to make this in the morning and smell it throughout the day and have it for supper. The meat's just going to continue to break down. You can't overcook it, as long as you're cooking it really, really low.
All right, we'll see you guys back here in 45 minutes. Whoops, forgot something. I like to float some serranos in them whole. So, we're just going to stick these in for added flavor. And as you can see, it's, uh, it's already boiling. So, I'm going to drop the temp down to simmer it, cover it up, and now I'll see y'all in 43 minutes.
We've been simmering 45 minutes. And by the way, I didn't tell you how cool this Dutch oven is. This is an old vintage Griswold, probably from the 30s. No telling what's been cooked in here. That looks good. Wish you could smell it. You can see the, the meat's breaking down, you know, releasing some fat in here. It's looking really, really good. So, second spice dump in. And by the way, I did say this is all traditional. So, you certainly do not have to do this, but at this point, you could test it if you want for taste. And I'm just going to show you this. If you want any more chili flavoring, like I said earlier, maybe you didn't put enough chilies in it or whatever the case may be, you certainly can add chili seasoning. So, you guys know we have a chili seasoning. Put a little bit of that in there. It also, the more you put, the hotter it will get if you like a little spice. And stir this up again. We're staying really low. You know, we're done in 45 minutes or keep going. So, we'll see what the day holds. But I'm going to stir it up here, put the lid back on, and I'll see you guys a little bit.
Okay guys, it's been one hour since that second spice dump. So, one hour and 45 minutes total. I know the meat's going to be tender at this point. Man, that smells good. Again, you could simmer it all day, but look in here, man. That looks so good and so hot. So, you don't want to eat the, the peppers you put in, so make sure you don't get those. But I'm going to, I'm going to scoop out a bowl here. Man, this smells amazing. There's some big chunks of meat. I like it meaty. Oh, this looks and smells amazing. Kill all this stuff over here.
All right, well, you know, this was a little extra work, clearly. But I love cooking, and I think, you know, some of you that are going to love taking the extra time to do this. Uh, the question is going to be, is the juice worth the squeeze? But I always say, you get out of it what you put into it. So, there's something about taking the long array, long way home at times. I know this is going to be hot. Huge meat chunks again. What I like. Damn, that tastes like Texas. That's so good. That's about the chili and the meat. I'm telling you, that's traditional Texas red chili. There are no beans in that type of chili, and there's actually no debate for that. That's just the deal. If you want to make the old school Texas red chili, I would try this. Give it a shot. If you don't want to spend that amount of time, again, we've got other recipes, more of a quick chili. You guys want to throw down. But I would take the time to do this, or something special about this old school way. I love it. Never gonna get old with me.
So, you guys like this, I like what we're doing, please like and subscribe. Weekly cooking videos on this channel. All the recipes down below in the description, and as always, they're also on mechurch.com. See y'all next time.
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