Day 4: BaconCamp qua Chili, the rundown and the recipe

[The whole journey] Nights: 28 Hours Inward

• Night 1: BaconCamp by Moonlight and the Holy Hog's Hell Chili
• Night 2: BaconCamp by Smoke and Lightning
• Night 3: the Dark Night, Early Dawn of BaconCamp
• Night 3.1: the afternoon, and Dark Night
• Night 3.2: Early Dawn and the afternoon  

In the midst of this Freddie Mercury weekend, another chili cookoff, and some amazing stuffed peppers / chiles rellenos I got to getting to the point where I had to wrap up the HHHC whether or not I had final pics or not; so continuing from Night 3.2: Early Dawn and the afternoon...

So particles, waves, whatever; after cooking for 18 straight hours (and only a few incremental doses of sleep), your nerves eventually take over. The morning sun was gentle a calm a few hours before it was time to leave. But once eleven rolled around and the final touches had gotten their executions, it became a race to the finish.

I got all packed up, my cousin and roommate got to try the chili and gave big approving thumbs up. We raced to the Dispatch Kitchen at the North Market where the comp was being held. Unfortunately, I was a bit more than all nerves by the time I got there and didn't have enough mental bandwidth to really get to talk to everyone, or share in our bacon delights. The three that stuck out were the banana-nut muffins with avacado-bacon frosting (there were these mini-dynamos of the subtlest kind of rad), bacon pop tarts (the most amazing shortbread with good bacon and fantastic frosting), and cayenne bacon ice cream (so smooth and then a little burning zing and oh crap I'm chewing a little bit o' bacon!).

I didn't get to try any of the winners, though I saw the one and wasn't compelled by the winning bacon sandwich, mostly because I was vying for an alt. The bacon sandwich that should have won (if a sandwich instead of chili were to have won) had bacon integrated into every facet of its composition, even the bread's fat and the fat the bread was fried in. Granted, I didn't eat either, and the plating by the latter wasn't very good. Oh well.

The winning people were great though. I wanted to win, but was so happy to share in this kind of a competition where it was really just a bacon celebration. Having the judges giving the goody bags to winners was cool, and the lady who won the sweets category was so amazed, but above and beyond the competition aspect, the camp aspect really shone through. I've never seen such satisfied grazing before. There were 200+ people there, in this tiny room, and bacon everywhere. There was a kind of gluttonous, deadly peace that settled on the packed venue.

Sure, we were reveling in clogging our arteries. Yes, the exploitation of animals was clinging to our lips. But you only live once. And if you're going to bother killing yourself, bacon is a great way to go. In terms of myself, I said it before, "no win, but all win." The process and project was epic. I was able to come up with a vision and see it through to completion. There is no trophy or prize that quite competes with that.

If you wish to pursue this vision journey, here is a rough of the steps. You might refer back to the linked posts to find all of the details:

For Meat:

• Make spice base. Begin by toasting anchos, guajillos, and pusillas then processing down (blender, processor, mortar & pestle; whatever works); then combining with your favorite mix of spices. Take half and that's your chili powder. The other half (may need more) you will add some brown sugar to, that will be the rub
• Injection marinade pig butts using orange juice, vinegar, sugar, chili powder, and rub
• Apply glue (honey+mustard), then cover with a thick layer of rub
• Let rest overnight
• Apply a second layer of glue lightly if necessary, then really cover with rub
• Smoke meat for 7 hours (I used a mix of mostly apple, with a bit of hickory)
• Wrap in foil and stick in refrigerator, let rest two days unless you're using quickly

For Chili:

• Do a pseudo-braise in roasting pan in oven (skip this if done and ready to pull to integrate in chili immediately); open top of foil pouch and pour in orange juice, coffee, and beer (I used a white ale), re-seal pouch
• Prepare stock by frying up bacon, pull bacon keep grease
• In the bacon grease, carmelize onions, then add garlic and peppers (the fresh ones I used were jalapenos, anaheims, and habaneros), wait until really good and gooey
• Reduce with a nice quantity of coffee (3-4 cups)
• Once it get low and looks a bit like a yellow-y tar,  add dry spices starting with a quarter of the chili powder you set aside. Now start trying to figure out what you will be missing. Make a note of it but don't act on it.
• Add tomatoes; simmer low for a while with a nice quantity of orange juice (~12oz)
• I like to add the clove and fennel (aids with digestion, cuts down on the impact of chili's acidity and matches any tomato sauce well) sooner than later. Once you have a nice amount of liquid, and a tomato-y vibe it would be a decent time to start adding the spices that need time to distribute themselves and mellow and marry.
• Now is also the time to start gauging the sugar you will be using. I had a few; unrefined cane sugar, brown sugar, and honey (along with orange juice). Don't be shy in the beginning. I learned over the weekend the reality of trying to get on top of it too late in the pot. The point of the sugar is to compensate for bitterness and to buffer capsaicin; so use it. Although chocolate isn't there to work toward the same end as sugar exactly, it also can make its entry now so you can judge the play between sugar and chocolate.
• Now get ready to really just leave your pot alone. Stir it now and then, but your main job will be tasting it from here on out; you're basically committed to the rest.
• Once the meat has braised a bit, you can open the pouches and dispense with the liquid by poking holes in the aluminum foil and fanning it out. The point now is to toughen back up the bark (smoked rub) on the outside, and make sure you have juiced the connective tissues above the 140'F mark for all you can without breaking too far into the mid-160s.
• Pull the pork. Dump it gradually into the chili. Pour in the drippings from the pan with the first pig butt if you have two; then add more beer and orange juice and coffee with the second butt's worth. Add bacon
• Bring pot to a simmer to get rid of some liquid, stirring regularly. By this point you should have a very rich looking and tasting pot. Reduce heat after the color of the chili returns
• You still want to have been tasting the stock itself regularly. Now is a good time to add some more peppers if necessary; these peppers' heat will be dissipated like the ones from early on.
• Sugars are also still able to get some good play. If you added fennel and clove you might want to touch them up a bit more (if you overdose the clove, cinnamon and cardamom will help you take the edge off it).
• Once you can taste that the meat has gotten a good uptake of the flavor of the stock (maybe 30-45 minutes), you can move to crock pot.  This is a nice low maintenance way to get some of the side work (i.e. candying bacon, cooling garnish). So in other words; migrate chili to crocks, make candied bacon, and cooling garnish if you haven't had a chance to yet.
• When you decide the chili is distributed and tasting good, it's time to take the chili to the next level: gravy. Whip up about (what amounted to) 4+ cups of roux.
• Drain off all of the chili liquid from the crock pots into the large pot, tilt to one side and start flopping the roux in there, and incorporate it by stirring it in gradually. Do this too all the liquid of the chili to ensure a smooth, cohesive texture. If you have some bacon grease from candying the bacon use this instead of butter or some other fat.
• Taste the gravy. This is the home stretch and your priorities and options are as follows; pungent spices, peppers' heat, and bite. Depending on how much more time you will be cooking you can also add fresh herbs at this point. I like adding them throughout, but in reality its just to gauge what I want it to taste like later, they don't really persist after hours of cooking. Most of the spices will have a wider distribution and benefit from longer cooking and having time to marry.
• You should not have any bitterness by now. That's what all those sugars were for. If you do have a bitterness, you will need to mask it at this point. I recommend very finely ground coffee, orange rind, lemon/lime zest/juice, and chocolate. I have also used pureed mandarin oranges to compensate for too much heat.
• Add the meat from the crocks and you're done.

That's a lot of steps, and no measurements and no list of ingredients. Mostly it's pork shoulder, peppers, tomatoes, onions, bacon, beer, orange juice, coffee, spices, herbs, bittersweet chocolate, honey, brown sugar, cane sugar, more spices, some herbs.

Some Notes:

• Cooling garnish - made with sour cream and cream cheese (with powdered candied bacon, ground orange rind, and chocolate). Incorporate bacon fat as a thickening agent. P
• Candied Bacon - go with the brown sugar on cookie rack over cookie sheet method with foil underneath. Use foil to create a spigot for pouring off and reserving grease. Try to engineer a way of creating bacon brittle.
• Chili - try adding 4 pounds of bacon to the 15 pounds pork shoulder; try with a thicker cut of the bacon and chop into bigger chunks
• Magic Dust - grind some orange peel, mix with into a bunch of nutritional yeast and a little coffee grinds; sprinkle on top instead of cheese

Side-Note:

The music was essential. Woods, some Bon Iver, but really the majority of the work was done by good 'ol Basia Bulat and Gillian Welch. It's an emotional experience. It's a low, low burning and you need whatever goes deep, deep for you. The twists in the emotional narratives kept my brain limber. I was looking for cracking open and I needed repetition and repetition. Make sure you've got headphones too. The idea of me bip-bopping around the kitchen at four am listening to depressing girl music makes me assume my roommate would have killed me. Headphones help you go deeper anyway.

went through four of those chafing dishes, plus the judges' samplesSo there were a lot of gratifying comments and shocked faces (when shock turns to smile is most gratifying of all) at my sampling table. I overheard one say he'd pay fifty bucks for the recipe. I know that is a paltry sum relative to my own idea of its worth, but it was something kind of tangible in terms of one person's appreciation. Granted, he could basically have as good a recipe as I could write up for free reading it here, but it's the thought that counts.

I was super pleased with the outcome. I wish I'd had more time where I was decompressed. Helping out in the back washing dishes with people was a ton of fun somehow, mostly the camaraderie was high and the stress was done.

The first layer of winning that came out of this really was having a vision and implementing it with precision.

The real winning that came out of this was the journey. It wasn't work, it wasn't 'the doing'; there were 28 hours spent cooking a single dish and its components. 34 hours invested counting other preparations, but 28 hours inward (18 of which were synchronous and basically alone). 'The doing' ends after the four or five hour mark. It's a journey when you are on a stretch of road, and you know intuitively n the right direction, but it is comepletely alien and seems to have no apparent bearing on where you're headed.

I like the adjective epic. Consequently I don't want to throw it around or abuse it. So with all due respect and knowing full well just how much I sound like I have my head up my own ass; this chili recipe is epic. The results are epic. The journey an epic.

There are things we toss around as, 'do this, it will change your life.' We might start accessibly with a dish at a restaurant, a movie, or an album or something consumerist like that. I don't mean consumerist in a negative slant, but these are passive experiences; they appeal to our self that doesn't like to put itself on the line but enjoys consuming what other people put on the line. You move on to the next level which are experiential things; climb a mountain, jump out of a plane, bike a century. These experiences put us in touch with a part of ourselves that is getting put on the line - the emotions in exertion, life and limb, and our idea of physical boundaries.

I can't fit this experience into the latter category as I would have assumed. There was too much of me in it. It was more than overcoming a fear or an obstacle. Beyond barriers, there was a ferocity to pursuing this road. Mostly, what I would say is, if you feel burdened; in your heart, if you are feeling knotted and crippled, but filled and ready to scream; come to this chili recipe and make your peace. I am sure the timing could be condensed by at least 8 hours, but for every minute, hour, that your pour into it, the deeper you go. At first you can let yourself get trapped /in it/. So wrapped up in your own head and bullshit and rationalizations and judgments and fears and egotisms and the ligatures you use to suspend your sense of self. For every minute, hour that you plod the road your head will begin to loosen and eventually it can crack open if you let it.  

Anyway, for an epic chili recipe that will render bacon fat and connective tissues and souls alike, go down the Rabbit Hole with the Holy Hog's Hell Chili.

 Nights: 28 hours inward

• Night 1: BaconCamp by Moonlight and the Holy Hog's Hell Chili
• Night 2: BaconCamp by Smoke and Lightning
• Night 3: the Dark Night, Early Dawn of BaconCamp
• Night 3.1: the afternoon, and Dark Night
• Night 3.2: Early Dawn and the afternoon

p.s. It's not the Droid Bionic, buuuut I did get an HTC Evo 3D recently, and the picture quality surpasses the Droid 1 from Motorola by far. You can look forward to newer food porn being ever so slightly prettier. YAY APPETITE PORN!

Night 3.1: the afternoon, and Dark Night

So I left work 1.9 hours early (says so in Outlook and on my time card); snuck in some vacation leave to get the shopping over with and the ball rolling. i had put together quite a list of items. As far as the farmer's market went, they yielded my jalapenos and tomatoes. Aside from that it was a bit of a wash. But beyond ingredients, I needed kitchen hardware and serving hardware.

So first we went to Wasserstroms so i could get a roasting pan big enough to braise both butts at once. I also picked up a probe thermometer to monitor the butss without opening the oven (didnt use), serving bowls and spoons. From there we went to the communist market a.k.a. clintonville community market; our local coop. I got a half dozen or so spices, a 750ml Unibroue Chambly, nutritional yeast. My cousin and I argued about which cashier was cuter. I liked dark hair. He said both, and he wasnt wrong, but he wasnt right.

Next up, world market; odd-ass upscale big lots pier 1 bastard child. Anyway, I got 7 miso soup bowls and 7 spoons. Originally I was going to go big with my plating, then decided something more refined with a more manageable serving size might work a bit better. From World Market we tied it up at Giant Eagle Market District in UA with a few odds and ends of groceries.

Got home at 6:00, did a quick clean over the kitchen. I started laying everything out around 6:30. Here was my quick game plan, in terms of what needed made:

• Braise pork butts
• Fry bacon
• Build chili stock
• Pull pork
• Make cooling garnish
• Candy bacon 

Obviously each of these had many steps to it, so these posts will lay them out from start to stop.

Braise pork butts:

Take the two pork butts, previously smoked and wrapped in one sheet of foil fatty side down, into a large roasting pan (disposable). Open up foil pouches at top. Pour in a splash of apple cider vinger, then an even mixture of orange juice (juice used in injection marinade), coffee (Brioso, Brazilian), and Unibroue Blanche de Chambly until the butts are about 1/3 - 1/2 surrounded. Place in oven at 325'F. Forget about them for a few hours.

When they come out they will be ready to pull. However, you want to monitor their cooking temperature to control their texture. You need to be above 140'F (internal) for the connective tissues to start melting all over again (like they did when you smoked it). You want to juice them as much as possible to get them where they need to be by cooking as low as possible. They will be done when they hit 165'F; so you want to get them to 120'F within 20 minutes, then 140'F  shortly thereafter, but the longer it takes to get to 165'F the better.

Fry bacon:

Frying two pounds of bacon isn't as unwieldy as it seems. That said, you do want to be peppering and spicing the bacon  as you see fit. I go for a black pepper, red pepper, ancho pepper, paprika, garlic powder mix. At any rate, once it is all fried up you want to shake off all the grease you can into the pot you will be using for the stock. Then refrigerate the bacon.

Bear in mind, we will not be discarding or recycling any of the bacon grease. We will be upcycling every drop of it that we can. Now my setup was three pots wide (two active duty, one reserve for finished bacon). So I had three pots to combine. Do whatever is comfortable for you, though deep-frying bacon in bacon grease is less avantageous unless you are just straight eating the bacon, which you should do a little, but you need it for the chili.

Anyway, fry up all the bacon, save up all the grease, it will get upcycled.

Build Stock:

So if you look at the chili operations pots above, you'll see one with a gurgling overflow of grease. That's where we will start building our stock. It currently contains the grease from two pounds of bacon, and the residual spices from flavoring all those tender strips. Next we will chop up three onions and carmelize the shit out of them. I mean it. I think it took a full 30 minutes to get them all ooey-gooey. I started with two due to size limitations, then added the third after the first two broke down a bit.

You should also have a cup or so of the rub left over from the pulled pork. You can dump this in at any time. After you've got a sugary goo going, add about a head of garlic chopped finely. (This recipe probably yields about 18 quarts of chili, so measurements will seem a bit wonky.)

Next we get to the fresh peppers. I used two habaneros, eight jalapenos, and eight anaheims; chopped and seeded. Mind you, this was for a bacon competition, not a chili cookoff; so yeah I toned it down. Do some deglazing as much as is possible with a few ounces of your beer. Scrape the edges, get it centered. At this point I did my first reduction using just coffee. Leave it alone for a while and let it gurgle on. You can take this time to skin and shred three full size carrots and to chop up six tomatoes. Once your reduction is well under way, add the tomatoes and five bay leaves. I would also take the time now to start adding in spices that you know will need to be there eventually but should get started marrying sooner than later; fresh ground allspice, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, clove, fennel (at least that's a combo I tend to like; complex yet familiar). You could mediate coriander and cinnamon with cardamom, but I haven't started down that path yet.

    Marrying flavors is what this step is about. Look above and remember what you are cooking for; that is the midway point. Clove is a great example of a spice that needs time. You're likelier to put too much in as opposed to too little. But if you give too-much-clove enough time to cook down, it will blend itself out. Similarly, with coriander or cumin, you need a solid base early on to figure out how much more you'll need before it becomes too-much-cumin/coriander (either can sink a ship).

You should spend about two hours getting the base where it needs to be just for it to be considered started; i.e. you have completed the base work, building the chili. After you've got a nice bit going, you'll start adding your sugars. Brown sugar, unrefined white sugar, chocolate, honey, shredded carrots. For this reduction we'll use orange juice. All of the other steps work to condense the flavor; this time we want to turn up the heat and bloom it out a little bit and get the marriage kicking in so we know what we're staring at before the meat comes in. Keep adding in liquids and reducing to get those flavors churning. Add more tomatoes, peppers, carrot; keep building it. It's going to be a while before the meat gets in there, so you might as well cook the stock low and slow too. Care for it. Keep it tender. Close your eyes every time you taste it. Once you've gotten it to big for it's britches, and the meat is ready to pull, switch the stock to a larger pot. I used a 32ish (?) quart stock pot (and it was about 2/3 full once all was said and done).

Pull Pork:

So your stock should be ready to leave on its own at this point to simmer down and need only occasional stirring. You have a few hours ahead of you, so also get some music on the headphones you won't get sick of.

Leading up to that point, I had been listening to Memory Tapes and Woods. Around the midnight mark (3.5 hours), the first butt was ready to pull; it was the smaller of the two, had smoked very well, and had braised very well. It was at a perfect temperature.

All the same, it still took 50 minutes to pull all that pork. 7.7 pound, shoulder in. It was amazingly well-cooked though. The scapula just twisted right out, no knife, no nothing.

Anyway, I do a three thing set up. I've got a nice casserole dish I keep the pork shoulder in, a small 1 quart part for the blubbery parts, and a big bowl for the good bits. I wear gloves so I can pull the meat apart while it's hotter. Let it rest 20-30 minutes after pulling from the oven, but it will still be hot. I like to rip into it roughly at first and break up the shoulder to see what the lay of the land it. You can end up discarding (well I freeze it for later) a lot less of the blubber if you rip up the meat strategically. Basically, if it looks funky, press into it with your thumb and question whether anyone would want that in their mouth. If the answer is no, save what you can and move on.

The hands are very busy, the mind is planning up until this segment. Take this time to hit your stroke. There will be two of these segments. With every tear, every pull, look at what you will be serving. Try to savor it with your fingertips; smile when you get an especially tender and moist piece. Grin and feel your tongue twitch with the especially crispy, bark encrusted parts. The best is the uber-browned fat section on the top. The fat should peel away easily from the meat, but you can salvage the remaining bark; it should peel away like crispy pliable strands of flavor. Someone is going to love getting that.

For the latter hours, from about midnight until 5 am, I was listening to Basia bulat's two albums. I found that while pouring myself into the meat and growing that energy, it was a good time to work through some inner turmoil I had been dealing with; or more accurately, not dealing with. I was having trouble putting myself back into a situation. In all honesty, my hands were busy and so was my mind. I had been working this stuff over and over since 6p Friday with an earnest focus. Up until then it had been a scattered, frivolous distraction. This was my opportunity to really work through some personal stuff.

So after six and a half hours of it being 1 of 3 things happening, working through this stuff suddenly came into focus while I was pulling the pork. It had a good current to ride, savoring each tangible piece of meat in hand. I found that the more I poured happiness into the meat, the more joy I experienced in vicariously chewing each bite, that the more energized I became to dig deeper in myself. The less afraid I was of what I would find and the less attached I was to what I was working through. The deeper I pulled the more exposed I became. The more exposed I became the more hope shone through to illuminate what I was really looking at.

After you've gotten through that beast (the first one took me fifty minutes), pushed it into the stock, take a breather; from the pork and the self. You'll need to relax, pace yourself. If you rolled like me, you've got an 8.3 pounder coming out soon.

Around 4 am I got the first batch of pulled pork into the pot. I pulled the second one. It pulled through that one even easier than the first. It was more tender and with tenderness comes understanding. The threads of muscle fiber becomes so pliable that you are no longer in need of forcing anything. You stop needing to do things, and you begin to do what is really there. Once the muscle has given up the last shred of survival, it yields. There is no special insight, it happens on its own once you truly see and are open to what is happening. It takes patience and the ability to see, which is an extension of being open.

Update on 1:35PM by mfg

 Nights: 28 hours inward

• Night 1: BaconCamp by Moonlight and the Holy Hog's Hell Chili
• Night 2: BaconCamp by Smoke and Lightning
• Night 3: the Dark Night, Early Dawn of BaconCamp
• Night 3.1: the afternoon, and Dark Night
• Night 3.2: Early Dawn and the afternoon
• Day 4: BaconCamp qua Chili, the rundown and the recipe

so much begins

two things dawned on me today in the ride to work.

• i want to ride in Pelotonia next year
• BaconCamp is on as of today, here comes the Holy Hog's Hell Chili

as for the first item, if you don't know what Pelotonia is, you probably don't know where Columbus OH is. granted, there is a not-to-be-scoffed at hurdle for riding (any rider needs to raise $1200-2200 depending on the ride). but i need a reason to push; last night i pulled down 35 miles riding (five stops; skateboard drop-off, water stop, cigarettes, tattoo scheduling, and more water). im thinking this might finally be my excuse to quit smoking.

my roommate says guys like me on the trail are all legs and lungs, the rest is dead weight. rather, extra weight that doesn't help them go faster; so if my lungs aren't really helping me go faster. anyway. thats not a pledge yet, but conditioning for a major ride next year (i.e. the 180 mile Cbus - Athens - Cbus; it's not actually the most ambitious ride, but its for a cause) is something i'd really like to shoot for. biking for me- its not the exercise or the transportation, its because it lets me get out of my head.

as for the second item, BaconCamp 2011, i placed my order for two 6-7 pound pig butts last night. i have no idea how im going to be getting them home tonight, but(t) tonight those pork shoulders are getting flavor injected and topically treated for smoking tomorrow.

it is muther-fucking on. im starting a fire to burn all this away, im done with living in fragments. i am reckless but i dont have time for bullshit that doesn't come together. the missed opportunity of that skateboard really drove it home; i am prone to over-extending, and it is distracting and dividing me.

Comfest Consumables

So before Comfest, I decided it was time to get some pics of the damn Holy Hog's Hell Chili, and it's about time. Every time I put up a post it kept nagging me, "pics or it didn't happen" and the onions and bacon didn't quite cut it. (This was the last bowl, I toasted some sourdough points and added some colby and sour cream with a dusting of paprika.)

And yes, this put a Comfest sized fire in my belly unrivaled by all the shirtless painted breasts in the world. Here's to appetite porn!

So here are some:

holy hog's hell chili, dressed

holy hog's hell chili, undressed

Recipe - Holy Hog's Hell Chili: Bring your soul for a searing

So how best to begin explaining the Epic that is Holy Hog's Hell Chili? I suppose it is less an epic than it is a massively constituted collection of pieces. Similar to the journeys of Hercules, of Odysseus and Jason and most anything by Homer or Virgil.

For the sake of organization there are two principal components to the preparation of this; (1) the butt and (2) the boil.

A note on (2): For all intents and purposes, i really need to give it up, as usual to Homesick Texan's 7-chile, 'more precise texas chili' recipe. it really has a few techniques that I reference in my method and I draw a lot of inspiration from it. In this case I did not observe the no-tomato or pre-roast/soak dried chiles or use beer rules; but i did observe the no-bean, use coffee and bacon rules.

So you can read up on the smoking of the pig shoulder at the link above, but here's a synopsis: pre-marinaded by injection (no overnight), applied a mustard-honey glue then a salted rub of a bunch of good spices, apple-wood-charcoal-smoked for 6 hours at around 140'F. Had to pull it, refrigerated (wrapped in foil) overnight. Placed butt in casserole dish, filled bottom of foil wrap with orange juice and some coffee, poked some holes in the top; heated up to 160'F (measured internally) for 25-30 minutes with the oven running around 325'F. Separated by hand; separating and simmerating fat and ligaments in pan drippings and other left over liquids plus some more coffee & oj. Added what was rendered to the shredded pork. (Made a pulled pork sandwich) Pork butt = done.

So on to the chili. Now, it was Sunday I was supposed to make it; but i didn't have any onions and only 6 or 7 jalapenos (only other peppers were all dried and i didn't feel like hassling with roasting soaking etc). That meant I needed to go to the store for some onions and I was itching for some fresh peppers for this batch.

der bacon; it was about 1/8" per sliceBegin: Fry 1-aught pound farm fresh bacon (Folck Farms); half to extra crispy, half to medium done, chop and set aside, reserve all bason grease in a four quart stock pot. Chop a bunch of onion 2-3 medium, baseball sized guys. Start sauteeing at low in the bacon grease. Add in your spices, part of my selection; coriander, cumin, clove, rubbed sage, penzey's chili 9000, cinnamon, ancho chili powder, paprika, ground red pepper. For extra points you can try to remember to do this in the bottom of the pot while it is dry, dry-roasting them, but I always forget. Once the onions are good and ooey-gooey (look at the pic, seriously) finely chop 1/4-1/3 a bulb of garlic and throw that in, along with 6-7 jalapenos, and two habaneros (peppers de-pithed and de-stemmed, but don't worry about the seeds so much on this one, the bitterness will balance against the sweetness). Add in your bacon, 2 measuring cups of coffee and a splash of oj (covering that beautiful mess).  Bring to a simmer, let reduce (go smoke a cig).

der onions as garlic was added; looks like peanut brittle, mmmNow I can't say if this was a mistake of impatience, or if it had any pro/con/meh effect, but i threw in the shredded pork and realized I was a bit low on the moisture tip. Decision time; tomatoes or no? I went with yes; quickly chopped four nice tomatoes and tossed them in the pot too. Added a bit more coffee, and wow, it's already under pot? Well basically- I added some brown sugar, bay leaves, basil, oregano, parsley, fennel, over the course of the next three hours (while still in the pot and once in the crock pot).

So at any rate, where did everything go supernatural? This isn't the longest cooking chili i've done (i clocked it at about 7:40 under pot, 11:30 sample bowl), I didn't run into any problem-problems. So far it is not an exceptional bit of cookery, just a standard recipe chili with pulled pork instead of chuck roast or whatever. So far...

That is, around 10:45, the chili had been in the crock pot, on high for about an hour and I noticed as I was transferring and the fact remained, there was too much liquid in the chili. I know, I know; "You're from Ohio, land of Wendy's chili, and it has liquid, it's called a broth." Now I won't disqualify a chili qua chili based on it having or not having meat, similarly, beans and tomatoes presence or lack thereof do nothing to sway my opinion. But soupy chili will not stand, just as an 18 year whiskey is not aged 12 years and a 12 year isn't aged 6. It needs to be reduced and if not chunky or have some mode of saying "I will stick to your ribs." I am not a 'texture person', but this is a matter of principle and it shows you cared for it enough to let it cook thoroughly.

gyar that's a bowl fit for a mate!So what was the liquid that wasn't cooking down? I don't know for sure. I could have just skimmed it off the top and had a fantastic chili regardless. But this chili wasn't just about being fantastic; it was going to break down barriers, shattering glass ceilings, and changing minds. So all told I think I pulled a total of 2 or 3 cups of liquid off the chili. There was sufficient oil in it to create a roux. So I started browning flour in some of the oilier, initial skim. By the time I was done adding flour and liquid I had a solid three cups of mass. I folded it back in and let it cook for another 30-45 minutes.

I will post a picture here once I have a chance to actually photograph it. I have been to busy annihilating the bowl before getting a chance to shoot it. Here's a place-holder:

Update on 3:48PM by mfg

updated added a pic and a separate follow-up!

Holy Hog's Hell Chili: it's almost done

I have about 8 jalapeno's at home. I just bought a pound of smoked, farm-fresh bacon. Weiland's has boston butt.  I think at 7 I will head to Weiland's for the butt and then Lowe's for some wood chips (it's a convenience thing). [6/10, mfg]

So there is an upcoming bacon fest at wild goose creative. In the wake of all that is sacred, I have forged a new path in violation of nature's laws. It combines bacon, bacon grease, smoked pulled pork, and roux.

Ok, so everything (bacon, bacon grease, smoked pulled pork, and roux) probably sounded perfectly normal in that list, over the top perhaps, but normal... until you get to the roux part. Some of you might be saying, "roux... isn't that for bechamel and cheese-y sauces? why would you...?"; and you would be absolutely correct to ask that and the answer in both cases would be yes.  It's also the basic component of gravy however. So yeah, "Holy Hog's Hell Chili", in line with Youngstown Brown, is straight off the train from East Saint Louis. It is bucking up the bucket list and saying, well holy hog's hell, if you're going to prepare the butt, might as well do something sacreligious with it.

The gist? Start a 7-hour chili (texas red style with tomatoes for juice) by frying a pound or so of bacon fresh from the farm (just look at the pics). Get it all going (onion, garlic, jalapeno, habanero), boil-downs with some coffee and orange juice, add your chopped poblanos and apple-smoked pulled pork from the weekend before. Once it's been under pot awhile, transfer it to the crock pot to simmer it out for a bit. Once the liquid hits its plateau, reserve some, and make a roux; fold roux back  in and you have a gravy based chili. hot damn!

now those are some carmel-ly, bacon-y troopers right there

Recipe to follow...