Huffman's Chili and the Upper Arlington Fall Fest

First, I recommend anyone interested participate next year; the organizers were not only organized and well-seasoned, but they were incredibly personable and relaxed and eased even my nerves.

So I didn't walk away with either the basket for People's Choice or Judge's Choice, but I got to see a good number of spoons (dba. votes; the crowd gets a spoon, tries all the chilis, then drops their spoon in the box in front of their fave chili) drop in my chilis' boxes, and I got a good chance to talk to the respective purveyors a good deal. A nice amount of shock and delight came out of both crock pots, so my personal takeaway was pretty good. (The only problem I had was with my crock pot for the vegan chili; it didn't wholly heat up and served tepid samples the first quarter of the way through.)

Let's get straight to the bones. Actually, I'm going to drop the carnivore rundown at the end; I don't want to scare of my vegan friends.

This represents the third attempt at refining and improving the Vegan Curried Pumpkin Chili, aka el Chilitoaxilitlo. So for a final refinement;

• add refried beans with 45 minutes to go
• add pinto beans with 25 minutes to go

Actually... that's it.

I will just refer you to the original post for the full recipe. As with any chili recipe, it's all about the time you can set aside for the chili. The longer the better. Also, remember to toast your curry / chili powder and use fresh ground everything that you can get your mitts on. As for toasting, I did it halfsies because (a) I like the smokiness of just-toasted spices in chili, and (b) I like the piquant sharpness of not toasted spices. You may prefer one over the other, or detest one. Either way, it's up to you.

Also, I had added too much bragg's/tamari it seemed, but once I added the refried beans it happened to be about right. Since you don't need to keep either bragg's or tamari in the chili to marry their flavors, I would recommend waiting until after adding (esp. the refried) beans to figure out what your measured dose of savory will be.

On to the omnivore's event (a.k.a. "here contains the meat of this post"), what I am calling the Youngstown Brown Brisket, Bitches;

• take seven pounds briskett
• 2 cups stock, pan drippings (4 - 6 cups, should fix to be something akin to french onion soup) from brisket
• standard base for chili, skewed toward jalapeno and roasty-toasty
• simmer down

You may recall the post about the Youngstown Brown Chili. Suffice it to say I didn't feel like making stock, so I hacked a shank and made a kind of bastard brown sauce/stock. I'm sure I'm slaughtering the nomenclature, feel free to mock me in the comments. Basically, I picked up where that chili left off; instead of fried up pork chops and ham shank stock, I roasted a brisket and made stock with cow femur.

Per usual, I turned to my shelf reference, that fantastic Homesick Texan for how to do brisket right, but without needing to hassle with smoking it (c'mon, I was doing two chilis).

Before I get into the specific resources I drew from, I must point out that a blog saved my life. Yes. Homesick Texan's speaking directly to the 'what' and 'why' of Texas Red as a distinct style of chili has changed how I make chili. Apparently, due to the extent of reduction to the finished product, I had one person say that it scarcely qualified as chili (under his breath, to lady with him). I politely (actually I'm sure I seemed like a smug fuck, but whatever; I did not miss him spooning me) explained the distinction between Texas Red and the Midwestern Red he was used to, principally the reliance on beans and broth, and that this was of a different style.

Now according to her Chopped brisket sandwiches are in some sense a Texas thing; cool, I'm sure they do it different. But when I saw the pic of that biddie I knew it was time for me to knock brisket off of my omnivore's bucket list. My beginning point was HT's explanation of how to do an oven-baked brisket; I then spun off and increased the amount of liquid and used a significantly larger than necessary roasting pan (it was one of those massive catering pans, and took up my whole oven). I also added carrots and two packs of mushrooms (note: you are going to have mushrooms simmer in beef juices and soy and whatnot, they don't need to be expensive, but don't use canned, that's just gross).

The end result was a catering pan with 7 pounds of amazing meat, baked over the course of 13 hours to that smooth succulent moist bubble. So what did I do with that half day? Well, I had already made lunch for my friends visiting from Akron. And I was in cooking overdrive mode. So first off I made and then got the pumpkin chili under pot. While doing that, I roasted the cow femurs (sliced to around 1" height) until the were nice and crispy ooey-gooey. I then made a stock with them. The mistake I made was over-stirring and under-skimming; so basically I did everything wrong but keep the heat on. Still, i got a cloudy broth, and this was going in chili so it wasn't some big deal.

So standard chili build, cayenne/jalapeno/thai hot pepper base. Incorporated what was basically a jalapeno / french onion soup stock into the chili for body, a few diced tomatoes, a had a minimal simmer. Good stuff.

 (pictures to follow)