Cincinnati Chili (Spiced Meat Sauce over Spaghetti)

Variations

• By the way: spaghetti and chili is a two-way, add cheddar for a three-way, add onion or beans as well for a four-way, both for a five-way. The three-way is what Cincinnati orders most. The photograph is a two-way, before the cheese.
• Coney: a small hot dog in a bun with chili, mustard, chopped onion and cheddar — the other use of the same sauce.
• With stock: beef stock instead of water makes it richer. Start it cold as well.
• Chocolate: ko.wikipedia says the idea that this dish contains chocolate is a myth. It goes without.

Tips

• The meat is not browned; it is broken up in cold water first. Two pages answer clumping mince inside a hot pan. Dan dan noodles dries it: "moist mince clumps, dry mince scatters and sticks to the noodles." Minchi breaks it up all the time it fries: "Coarse clumps make it closer to a bolognese than to Macau's minchi." Both are fighting for the same reason. Mince sets on the surface the moment it touches the metal, and grains that are touching at that moment set stuck together. Cincinnati chili separates the meat in water before the heat is on. When the protein sets, there is water between every grain, so each sets on its own. However hard you break it up in a pan, it does not get this fine.
• That fine grain is the whole dish. With no lumps, the sauce coats the strands of spaghetti and runs down between them, and it becomes one thing with the cheddar on top. It eats differently from a sauce with pieces of meat to chew, like spaghetti bolognese.
• What giving up browning costs. Laap does not brown its meat either; there, "Maillard aroma is a distraction here" Here it is given up for texture. And that removes the one thing chili con carne points to: "Mince browned for a few minutes is the only roasted thing in a chili," In this pot even that mince is never browned. The gap is filled by cinnamon and allspice, with clove — the first two are the pair moussaka calls "the signature aroma of Greek moussaka", and ko.wikipedia says the sauce is closer to a Greek pasta sauce than to chili.
• The long simmer is for the liquid, not the meat. Mince is cooked in minutes. What chili con carne says of its own pot holds here: "What the 30-40 minutes buys is water leaving and flavour moving between things that are already cooked" — only here it takes longer. It starts from a litre of water, so there is a lot to reduce, and even finished the sauce stays on the thin side.
• Take the fat off overnight. It is pot-au-feu's method: "Cooked a day ahead and refrigerated, the fat sets into a sheet you lift off whole." A pan-browned dish gives you a chance to pour off the rendered fat; in this pot all of it is in the liquid. Leave it and, with the cheddar's fat on top, it pools on the plate.
• Fine cheese, on top. Coarsely grated cheddar takes too long to melt and stays in strands. Grated very fine and heaped on hot chili, it melts from underneath into the sauce.