Sharon’s Chili
This is the most fundamental Sharon recipe I’ve got. Not because it’s complicated (it isn’t) or fancy (it really isn’t), but because it’s the one all of us make. Me, Kevin, Dave and Barb; every one of us, multiple times a winter, always with a ball game on and always with cornbread, shredded cheese, diced onion, and a fistful of crushed tortilla chips on top. This is Sharon’s chili, and in our family that’s just another way of saying this is football, this is winter, this is home.
The Broncos Game Staple
Sharon made this all through the years her three boys were growing up in Colorado; Jeff, David, and Kevin, three hungry teenagers and a pot big enough to feed them twice over. It was a winter staple, and it came out every time the Broncos played. I’m a Texan, which means football is more or less encoded in my DNA (college on Saturday, pros on Sunday, chili and chips in front of the TV for both), and Sharon understood that about me right away. This chili was one of the first places she and I found each other.
Now I make it multiple times every winter. It’s the first thing I cook when the weather finally turns, the meal that makes fall and football feel real, the thing that goes on the stove on the rare Georgia day it actually snows. Zach loves it. Kevin still makes it. Dave and Barb make it. It’s the Sharon recipe every one of us carries.
Chile, Not Chili
Quick word about the spelling, because it trips people up. Most folks assume “chili” means the meat, that the bowl of stuff is the chili. It isn’t. “Chile” is the pepper (the word comes to us from Nahuatl, by way of Mexico), and the dish is named for the pepper, not the meat. Chili con carne means “chiles with meat.” Chile con queso means “chiles with cheese.” People hear those and figure they’re redundant, or they go looking for the chili in the queso and come up baffled.
Here’s the way through it: the chile is the whole point. The carne and the queso are just the delivery system, the thing you cook the pepper into so you can eat it by the bowl. Meat is how you get the chile to the table; cheese is another way. The pepper is the star, and everything else is a vehicle.
The Chili Queens
And if we’re talking about where this dish actually comes from, we have to talk about the Chili Queens, because they’re how “chili” entered American life in the first place. Starting back in the 1860s, Tejana women (Mexican-American women who’d been cooking chile con carne at home for their families for generations) set up tables in San Antonio’s Military Plaza and sold it by lantern light. They’d haul the pots out at dusk, reheat them over mesquite fires, and serve chili con carne, tamales, and enchiladas to anybody with a few cents until dawn. When the railroad reached San Antonio in 1877, travelers came looking for them by name.
Those women were the forerunners of the entire Tex-Mex industry. Chili con carne is a Mexican-American creation, full stop, and it spread across the country because they cooked it and sold it and kept it alive even as the city spent the 1930s regulating them off the plazas one sanitation ordinance at a time (the last stands were shut down by 1943). Texas didn’t get around to naming chili con carne the official state dish until 1977. The Chili Queens had it figured out more than a hundred years earlier. Sharon’s version comes down that long line by way of Colorado and a Texan daughter-in-law, which is exactly how these things are supposed to travel.
The Texas Betrayal (That I’m Fine With)
Now, the beans. Sharon’s chili has them, and as a Texan I’m supposed to clutch my pearls about that. Texas chili means no beans; that’s the rule, the law, the thing you learn before you can drive. But I love beans in chili. Always have. Sharon always made it with beans, nobody at any table of ours has ever once complained, and it makes for good, filling, feed-a-crowd chili.
(You can leave the beans out for a more traditional Texas bowl, or if you’re making it to spoon over hot dogs. I’ll sometimes cook a batch bean-less to freeze and stir the beans in when I reheat it. But Sharon’s version, the real one, always has beans.)
The Spice Ball and the Allspice
Two things make this taste like Sharon’s and not just anybody’s. The first is the spice ball, and it’s one hundred percent hers; I never cooked this way before I knew her. You put the bay leaf, the allspice, and the whole dried red pepper into a mesh spice ball (or tie them up in a scrap of cheesecloth), drop it in, and let it simmer at least half an hour. Then you fish the whole thing out before serving. All that flavor, none of the hunting around your bowl for a bay leaf. It’s such a good trick that I put an oversized spice ball in Kevin’s Christmas stocking one year specifically for this recipe. He still uses it.
The second is the allspice. Eight whole berries, and almost nobody expects them in a pot of chili. They don’t announce themselves; they just sit underneath everything and add a faint, warm sweetness that makes people ask what’s different about your chili. That quiet little question is the whole Sharon secret.
That’s the story. Here’s how you make it.
Sharon’s Chili
Equipment
- 1 Large pot or stockpot
- 1 Mesh spice ball or a square of cheesecloth tied with string
Ingredients
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 1 medium yellow onion chopped
- 1-2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 can tomato paste 6 oz
- 1 ½ tsp salt
- 4 cups water
- 1 tsp vinegar
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbsp chili powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 medium whole dried red chile I use arbol peppers from Penzeys
- 1 bay leaf
- 8 whole allspice berries
- 2-3 cans pinto beans drained and rinsed; one can per pound of meat, plus one for the pot
Instructions
Brown
- Brown the beef in a large pot or stockpot. When it’s nearly done, push the meat to the sides and cook the onion and garlic in the drippings. (This is a Sharon thing; browning the onion in the meat grease adds flavor. Don’t skip it.)
- When the onion is nearly translucent, stir everything back together.
Simmer
- Add the tomato paste, salt, water, vinegar, Worcestershire, chili powder, and cumin. Bring to a rolling boil for about 10 minutes, then reduce to a simmer.
- Put the bay leaf, allspice, and dried red chile into a spice ball or a bit of cheesecloth. Add it and simmer at least 30 minutes (up to 2 hours; longer is better, especially for a double or triple batch).
Finish
- About 15 minutes before serving, remove the spice ball and stir in the drained, rinsed beans. Bring everything back up to heat.
Notes
Notes
Make it yours. Beans or no beans, more cheese than I said, onion piled on or skipped entirely. This chili doesn’t judge, and neither do I.
The scaling rule. Double, triple, or quadruple it if your pot’s big enough. Don’t just multiply the beans, though; Sharon’s rule is one can of beans per pound of meat, plus one more can “for the pot.” A triple batch (3 pounds of meat) takes 4 cans. It’s the perfect ratio. Half ground turkey and half beef works fine too.
Serving. Cornbread, shredded cheese, diced onion, and crushed tortilla chips, always. Frito pie is coming as its own post (a Thursday what-to-do-with-leftover-chili situation): Fritos in a bowl, chili over the top, then cheese, onion, sour cream, and jalapeños. And the bean-less batch is what goes on chili dogs, and into my baked hot dog casserole.
Make ahead and freezer. This is better the next day, once the flavors have had a night to settle. I make big batches and freeze the leftovers in quart containers; it keeps beautifully for up to 3 months. Reheat on the stove or in the microwave, with a splash of water if it’s thickened up.
P.S. The spice ball is a genuine game changer. If you’ve never used one, get one; they’re a couple of dollars and they make recipes like this so much easier.
P.P.S. Kevin still uses the spice ball I put in his stocking. That makes me happier than it probably should.
P.P.P.S. I’m a Texan who puts beans in her chili. There, I said it. It’s good. Fight me.