Chili con Carne

Variations

• Chili cheese fries/nachos: Spoon it over fries or nachos.
• White chicken chili: Chicken, white beans, and green chilies.
• Vegetarian chili: Beans, lentils, and mushrooms instead of meat.
• Spicier: Add jalapenos or chipotle.

Tips

• It is built like a braise and there is nothing in it left to braise. Braising is written around collagen: the acid goes in early, and if it is still tough it wants longer. In this pot the mince was browned in a few minutes, the kidney beans came out of a tin rinsed, and the tomatoes came out of another, so nothing here is waiting to soften and more time is not the answer to anything. What the 30-40 minutes buys is water leaving and flavour moving between things that are already cooked — which is why the instruction that actually controls the dish is the one about the lid. Partly covered holds the level, uncovered takes it down, stock or water puts it back.
• And the acid that would be a fault from dry beans is doing something useful from a tin. That guide's rule is that acid sets pectin firm, "so the endpoint stops being a matter of time and moves out of reach altogether" — which is why Red Red simmers its beans for forty minutes "with no tomato in the pot" and cassoulet says "nothing acidic goes into this pot". Chana masala is the page that spells out the exemption: it puts the tomato in first and "gets away with it only because canned chickpeas are already cooked." Here the beans arrive at the state those two are cooking towards, so the tomato is no longer holding them back from anything — it is holding them where they are, which is how they survive half an hour of simmering instead of going to mush in the sauce. From dry, the order has to change.
• The square of chocolate reaches for a dial this pot has none of. Balancing flavour lists "heat and bitterness — provide contrast and break up monotony" beside salt, acid, sweetness and fat, and the dishes that work that dial sit at different points on it: horta, where the bitterness is the dish and is reduced rather than removed; carbonnade, where a hoppy beer reduced for two and a half hours "arrives at the end harsh and metallic, and no amount of brown sugar rescues it"; laap, where rice is toasted to coffee colour because gold "gives almost no aroma" and burnt is bitter, so the skill is stopping just before. Mince browned for a few minutes is the only roasted thing in a chili, and dark chocolate and coffee are both taken far past that point. A square is a dose small enough to read as depth rather than as bitterness.
• Bloom the spices in the oil to unlock their flavor.
• The longer it simmers, the deeper it tastes — go over an hour if you can.
• Thin with stock or water; if too loose, reduce uncovered.
• It's even better the next day after resting in the fridge.
• A square of dark chocolate or a spoon of coffee adds hidden depth.