A while back I did a posting on chili where I compared no-bean chili people to flat earthers and generally said anyone who didn't put beans in chili is just bragging. Then I provided my recipe for chili that starts with onions and ends up a mess of tomatoes and beans.
Two weeks later I get to the last chapter of Serious Pig by John Thorne where he explains in great historical detail why my version of chili isn't chili at all, even if it could be called a manly beef stew. He goes on to ruin that too, though, with an interview in which a feminist food historian discusses the inherent feminine qualities of beans.
Chile(i) Powder
So of course I have to make Thorne's chili. As with everything else in this book, the recipe is no joke. The first thing you have to do is make your own chile powder, which in this case is a much more pure flavor than the commercial chili powder most people have a shaker of. The main difference is the presence of cumin, and it's a huge difference.
Thorne's instructions assume you can get a wide variety of chiles in dried form. I found a few packaged dried chiles, but there was a lot more options in the fresh chile aisle. Fresh chiles are only a few simple steps from being dried chiles, so the next thing you know I was digging for thread.
It's an easy process to describe, but it looks a lot cooler than it reads. So I made a movie. Enjoy.
The movie was fun to make and it was also a fitting farewell to a kitchen that has treated me very kindly. I moved this week, and while I'm glad to be out of there for a lot of good reasons, I leave with nothing but respect for the big, bright kitchen that hosted my wildest cooking experiments so far.
Here's the chile drying process in words:
Buy a variety of fresh chiles.
Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Spread a little olive oil on a baking sheet. Wash your chiles and make sure you pick any grocery store stickers off of them. Lay them out on the baking sheet.
Put the chiles in the oven for 10 minutes. Pull them out and flip them over, using tongs. Which I didn't do, because I'm a dumbass. You should, they're hot. Put them back in the oven for 10 more minutes.
Pull them out and drop them in paper bags. Seal the bags and let the chiles rest for 15 minutes. They're cooking a little more in their own steam at this point, which loosens up the skin.
Peel the chiles now. Once they're all peeled you can start stringing them up. You want a place with good air circulation, which is why I left them in the kitchen, under a ceiling fan. It worked great.
The stringing process isn't too tough. You don't have to tie knots around the stems, just wrap them. Their weight is enough to pull the string tight and keep them up. I found it was easiest to connect one side of the string first, then hang the chiles one at a time before tying off the other end. Any chiles that don't have good stems can be laid out on a mesh screen of some kind, just be sure to flip them once a day so they dry evenly.
A week or two later all but the thickest chiles will be dry. Now you can break them apart and get out the seeds and veins. Thorne gives the best explanation of why that I've seen, on page 468:
If you're using a few tiny pequíns for that extra heat, these can be simply crushed into small bits in the fist. But if you intend to use larger-sized, fiery-type dried chiles to augment or replace powdered chile entirely, their capsaicin-containing pithy centers, cross walls (veins), and seeds must be removed, or else the chile pulp will be too hot to use in the quantity needed to provide that rich chile flavor.
When you've removed the seeds and veins, place the meat of the dried chiles into either a coffee grinder or a blender and powder them. I went in order of heat, starting with packaged ancho chiles and working my way to the habañeros and scotch bonnets I dried myself. That way you can be certain you don't have any residue from the HOT chiles tampering with your sweet and mild powders. A little left over cubanella won't be noticed in the hotter powders, but it doesn't work the other way around. Once you have your chiles powdered, you can start mixing them to taste.
Before moving onto the mix, I should say a couple of things about chile safety.
1. Always, always, always scrub your hands after handling any kind of chile. You can get little bits under the fingernail or oil on your skin that is hard to get off. If you work with chiles and then absent-mindedly touch any sensitive part of your body (eye, nose, ear, god-forbid anything below the belt) you will never forget the experience. When you're done, wash twice with soap and hot water, because a little habañero oil can go a looooong way. Or you can use plastic gloves but be sure they go straight in the trash and then wash your hands once anyway, just in case.
2. When powdering chiles make sure you don't inhale any of it. You'll get little bits in your eyes and nose but they shouldn't irritate very bad. Just don't take a deep breath as you're taking the lid off of your grinder, because there is no convenient way to wash your lungs.
The Mix
Thorne's recommendations are easy. Start with a mild chile, he likes chimayo, I used pulla and costeño. Add ancho and pasilla to expand the flavor base but keep it mild. He doesn't give proportions, so I went with 2 parts mild powder, 1 part ancho or pasilla and hot to taste. I'll let Thorne take over.
The proportion of mild to hot powder in your own blend will depend on your tolerance of and liking for heat: start cautiously, expecting to use about one tablespoon of powdered chile for every pound of meat. Choices run from the two-alarm guajillo and de arbol to the three-alarm pequín and cayenne to the mouth-torturing habañero and African birdseye. These are the ones to use to take your chili to the limit.
I started with chiles that were just below the de arbols on the heat scale and worked my way to habañeros and scotch bonnets, which are damn hot but by no means intolerable if used right. To me. And making chile powder is all about your personal limits, so shop and mix accordingly.
I also made a few other variations that worked out well. I made a sweeter powder using cubanellas as a base and heated with long peppers that I dried when they were green, well before they ripened. The flavor was great, it still had the sour bite that all chiles have before they mature.
I made two ancho based powders as well, one Thorne style using purely ancho as a base and one from a recipe I found on the Food Network site from Tyler Florence. The Thorne style ancho powder was very rich and delicious. I have an affinity for smoke-flavored anything, so the ancho powder was a safe bet.
The Tyler Florence mix I picked for two reasons. Because I have one of his cookbooks that I've been happy with, and because it seemed like a good retelling of the standard chili powder that every cooking website and every grocery store offers.
Ingredients:
3 ancho chiles, seeded and hand torn into pieces
2 tbl chili powder
(?? I used left-over costeño, but with a weird, 'I thought that was what we were making' look on my face ??)
2 tbl ground coriander
1 tbl ground cumin
1 tbl sweet paprika
1 tbl dried oregano
1 tbl garlic powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
Florence recommends heating the ancho pieces in an ungreased skillet and putting them through a food processor until they're powdered. I found I didn't need to pre-heat my dried chiles, they were plenty crispy when I bought them.
This mix has more ingredients than most of the ones I found. In the end I couldn't taste anything as much as the cumin and it ruined it. There are five spices in equal or greater measure to the cumin, but it's flavor is so much stronger that it overpowers everything else. If I was going to make this mix again I'd double the paprika and oregano, use 1 tsp of cumin and go crazy with the cinnamon.
Now that I have the powder, the chili's next. After tasting these powders I don't see how it could keep from turning out good.
