The Nightstar Zoo

Green chili is excellent with nachos. Though I don't add too much, or I'll need a couple gallons of water as backup. Red isn't too bad, and when ground and mixed with vinegar/soy sauce (lots of Chinese dishes do that) it tastes really good, and IMHO slightly spicier than greens.

As fate would have it I just cooked up a huge batch of chili and I'm saddened by it. It's lacking... something. So anyone who thinks they have a kick ass chili recipe please share. I'm partial to including ground turkey and kidney beans.

But I thought you said they just ate red chile?

Naw, I'm sure they were men. They just didn't understand the true wonders of Green chile. Convert now and save your life from the doom of red chile!

Jacques Pepin has an excellent recipe in one of his books.

I'd share, but I don't use a recipe...

I just chuck stuff into the pot.

Lots of tomatoes, lots of browned ground beef, lots of soaked kidney beans, lots of chili powder, and whatever I can find in the spice cabinet that looks like it belongs in chili.

I've never had a bad batch, except for the one batch that got a bit too much chili powder. That batch got saved by me extending it into a second pot by adding more ingredients.

_________________
Fandemonium 2010 -- No Boundaries.
http://www.fandemonium.org
Friday - Sunday, August 6th - 8th, 2010
Nampa Civic Center - Nampa, Idaho (Only 20 minutes from the airport!)
(Idaho: It ain't just potatoes anymore.)

I think you and DB may be confusing the dish 'chile', which we don't eat in my family (probably just not the right culture for it) with its main ingredient 'chilli', a genetically modified form of the fruit of Capsicum annuum, which we do.

I had green chilli on a pizza today. It's a funny thing that we use green chillies only for slicing fresh, cooking or pickling, and red chillies (which are the same species) mainly for powder.

Now here's where we get technical. Red chillies actually contain more capsaicin than green ones. Green chillies contain 30 to 600 ppm of capsaicin, while red chillies contain 600 to 13 000 ppm.

Chillies and capsicums are not peppers. Capsicum is part of the family Solanaceae, while pepper (Piper nigrens) is of a different family, Piperaceae.

Source http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/med- ... EPPER.html .

Yeah sounds like what I usually do when I'm not screwing it up.
I brown 1 lb of turkey chop meat, then add 1 can of kidney beans in their own juices, 1 can of diced tomatoes in their own juices, 1 chopped onion and 3 minced garlic cloves, then I usually add some cumin, pepper, and chili powder. I think the biggest problem is that when I brown the meat it tends to come out in chunks and be too chewy. How do you avoid that?

Well, if this is chunk turkey, not ground turkey, then you've probably got the heat too low. You basically want to sear the outside and set up a good Maillard reaction, and cooking the chili itself will cook the meat fully.

If you're using ground turkey, it's supposed to come out in chunks. But still you're probably not using enough heat, which is why it's chewy.

_________________
Fandemonium 2010 -- No Boundaries.
http://www.fandemonium.org
Friday - Sunday, August 6th - 8th, 2010
Nampa Civic Center - Nampa, Idaho (Only 20 minutes from the airport!)
(Idaho: It ain't just potatoes anymore.)

I always use the ground turkey. But when I say chunks I mean that it cooks in big ol slabs that stick together and the only way to remedy the situation is to crumble them or mash them up afterwards. Is that the normal process or am I doing something wrong? I definately used a low heat setting though. How high should the heat be and why is high heat better?

Well ground turkey always clumps up like that for me, no matter how I cook it. About the only thing you can do is bust it up with your spatula while you're cooking it. One thing I've had good luck with is using a BIG skillet to brown the turkey in, so I can get it all out in one thin layer, half inch to an inch thick. It's easier to keep busted up that way. Course, if you don't have a skillet with a copper or aluminum bottom, the heat transfer isn't all that great, which adds more problems. But that's why I always spend the extra money on my skillets. My big skillet has a big fat aluminum plate in the bottom, it heats nice and evenly all the way across.

As for the higher heat, you want to brown the stuff a bit to give the nummy flavors. That's the Maillard reaction I was talking about. Little technical term I learned on Good Eats, it basically means "Cook it hot so it turns brown, cos that makes it nummy"

_________________
Fandemonium 2010 -- No Boundaries.
http://www.fandemonium.org
Friday - Sunday, August 6th - 8th, 2010
Nampa Civic Center - Nampa, Idaho (Only 20 minutes from the airport!)
(Idaho: It ain't just potatoes anymore.)

So when you cook chili do you usually use ground or chunk? And for that matter what is chunk turkey? I've never heard of it before.

No, I am pretty sure I know what I am talking about. Green Chili the actual crop, not chili the dish.

And the red chili may be higher in the actual capsaicin count, but that does not mean that real men do not eat green chili. No one just eats red straight. When it is powdered it looses some of the affect the green chili keeps.

That, and green is a cooler color. So there.

In other news of interest to noone but myself, I solved my chili-mystery. Apparently when cooking with ground turkey instead of ground beef it changes everything. With ground beef you can brown it first and then add the sauce ingredients. With turkey you have to prepare the sauce first and then add the meat allowing it to cook in the sauce and soak up the moisture and flavors. Failure to do so results in chunky, rubbery, bland chili which was exactly my problem. Not sure why turkey works differently from beef but in any event mystery solved.

That's very true - well done!

My guess would be that it has something to do with the fact that one's a bird and the other's a bovine.

Maybe. I was thinking it might have to do with beef having more fat than turkey and thus more of it's own juices to cook in. Plus I buy lean turkey so I'm sure that only exacerbates the problem.

Well there's only so much testosterone spurting one can stand. If you really want a man's chili, try black. The Man sauce is black. If you put any significant amount in your chili, you'll wish you hadn't.

That said, red tastes better (more meaty, and I like the flavor of Cayenne, regardless of its spice). The great thing about that is you can always add more to make it spicier without substantially altering the flavor.

Vermilion ought to post his chili recipe. It's excellent!

Just to keep things straight:

The dish made from ground meat and sometimes beans is called "chili". It's a mass noun (no plural form) like "rice" or "soup".

The spicy vegetable matter is called "chilis" (plural), "chili peppers", or "peppers".

The sauce is called "hot sauce".

Thank you.

Fine. For the purpose of this board I declair it as such, just so there is no confusion. But FWI, chili, chilli, and chilie can all refer to either the fruit or the dish. A little confusing, but look it up if you don't believe me.

Fine, but turn the heat up. I'm chilly.

_________________
Fandemonium 2010 -- No Boundaries.
http://www.fandemonium.org
Friday - Sunday, August 6th - 8th, 2010
Nampa Civic Center - Nampa, Idaho (Only 20 minutes from the airport!)
(Idaho: It ain't just potatoes anymore.)

There's no reason to be fairy about chili. In fact that would be a bad idea, possibly painful even

A phenomenon known as the "Flaming A," often suffered the day after eating really hot chili. Or chile. Or chilie. But not chilly.

I fell in to a burnin' ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames climbed higher
And it burned, burned, burned
The ring of fire
The ring of fire