I Finally Made Competition-Winning Chili
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not great at making my food look Instagramable gorgeous… that picture above just screams “I’m here to be eaten, not looked at.” However, after many long years and a veritable fistful of failures, I finally did it: I made the chili that won first place.
First place in what, you ask?
First place in my heart.
There weren’t any chili competitions around at the time, but I’ll be sure to enter this when there is one. I want you to try my chili, then tell me yours is better and explain exactly why. Let’s make better chili together!
A Chronicle of My Failures
I’ve tried my hand at good chili many times, and I just could never beat what my mom makes. It’s always too sweet, too spicy, too one dimensional. However, nothing gets as bad as my two failures below:
Red Wine and Smoked Sausage: The first time I tried to make some really neat chili, I was on a bit of a boozy food craze. I love the complexity and funk that some wine or beer add to a food, and I thought it would be perfect for chili. But I hadn’t learned balance. So while my imagination told me I was making some complex chili full of boozy, smokey flavor, I ended up with way too sweet of a chili that looked like it had Spam in it (that smoked sausage didn’t go over too well). No one else wanted it, and I had a lot of leftovers that I didn’t even finish.
Lesson learned: balancing flavors and aromas is vital (now, how to balance flavors and aromas is a whole bunch of lessons indeed).
Canned Chili: Fueled by my failure of experimenting too much with no reward, the next time I went to the church cookoff, I did something bad. I bought a bunch of canned chili from the grocery store and poured it all in a big crockpot.
I won the church cookoff.
I then quickly confessed what I had done and let them pick a new winner.
In any case, a big lesson I learned here was that people crave familiarity, and novelty should generally be a bow on top, not the entire package.
Lessons Learned
People Eat with Their Eyes
Food presentation and color make a big difference in first impressions. You don’t need to make something that looks amazing in an instagram post, but you do need to keep in mind what people might think of when they first see your food. Smoked sausage? Great idea. Sliced up so that it looks like spam in a bowl? Terrible idea. Bright colors, contrasting textures, and fresh herbs or garnishes give the dish a “finished” look. It’s not just taste; it’s the whole experience that matters.
Mirepoix is a Miracle
Mirepoix refers to the classic combination of onion, celery, and carrot that’s used as a flavor base. When sautéed together, these three vegetables release natural sugars, which create a balanced, aromatic foundation. The onions bring sweetness, carrots add a subtle earthiness, and celery provides an herbaceous flavor. However, that’s just classical French mirepoix; there’s also white mirepoix, soffrito, and dozens of other aromatic blends you can add as the base to any stew. In chili, using mirepoix as a base rounds out the flavor and adds complexity, rather than just throwing all your spices into browned meat. It’s a simple but essential building block for depth.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
This quartet is all about balance, and you’ve seen me write about it quite a few times by now. But let’s break it down as it relates to chili:
Salt: Enhances the overall flavors. It’s not about making the chili salty; it’s about allowing other flavors to pop. Salt makes meat taste more savory, and it balances out the sweetness of vegetables. Be sure to salt at every stage of cooking, not just all at the end.
Fat: Adds richness and body. A good chili typically has fat from the meat or a bit of oil. It helps to carry flavors and gives a satisfying mouthfeel, making the dish feel full and hearty.
Acid: Keeps the flavors from feeling too heavy or one-dimensional. Tomato products often add acidity in chili, and you could even finish it off with a splash of vinegar or lime juice to lift the flavors and make it taste fresher. It’s what makes the second bite as good as the first bite.
Heat: Food changes when you apply heat, and in chili you can apply it in a lot of way—super hot to brown the meat, medium to sweat your mirepoix, and finally low and slow to simmer the stew and get it nice and viscous. It’s not as simple as throwing everything in a pot and boiling it.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Chili competitions favor great execution over risky innovation. This means sticking to a proven foundation—well-cooked meat, balanced spices, a thick texture—and avoiding too many experimental flavors. People tend to appreciate a delicious chili that honors traditional flavors and techniques, rather than something overly complex or gimmicky. Make it taste incredible using classic methods, and let quality and balance do the talking. And I love innovation as much as the next guy, but that should just be the bow, not the whole package.
Matthew’s Jerky Chili
With all this being said, try my chili! Tell me how I can improve it! Better yet, tell me why it will never be as good as yours!
Matthew's Red Jerky Chili
Red chili is the most classic version of chili, and I make mine special with beef jerky, which adds a wonderful, toothsome texture and some incredible salt and spiciness. Other than that, I lean toward Cajun cuisine with my seasonings and aromatics and simply let the chili speak for itself.
Prep time:
Cook time:
Yield: Quite a bit of chili
Serving size: 8
Calories per serving: 196
Ingredients:
Cook time:
Yield: Quite a bit of chili
Serving size: 8
Calories per serving: 196
For the Seasonings:
1/3 cup chili powder
1/4 cup granulated garlic
1/4 cup smoked paprika
2 tablespoons fresh ground black pepper
1 tablespoon celery seed
1-2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
For the Aromatics:
1 tablespoon lard or bacon grease (or vegetable oil)
1 large white onion, chopped coarse
3 medium green bell peppers, chopped coarse
For the Stew:
1 pound lean ground beef
2 (28-ounce) cans San Marzano tomatoes
1 (8-ounce) can black beans
1 (1.4-ounce) package beef jerky *
1/2 cup beer (optional)
1/2 cup water (add more as needed) (also, you might skip this if you added beer)
1 cube (or 1 tablespoon) chicken bouillon
Directions:
Equipment needed:
° A large stock pot or slow cooker
° A large frying pan or skillet
° A wooden spatula
1. Get your mise en place---put all your spices together in a small bowl, chop up your vegetables, open your cans of San Marzano tomatoes and your black beans, get all of your ingredients and keep them nearby on the countertop.
2. Put your stock pot on the oven over medium heat (if you're using an Instant Pot, use the "saute" function). Once it's hot, throw in your lard/cooking oil. As soon as the oil is nice and hot, throw in your onions and green bell peppers. Salt them immediately.
3. While your aromatics saute, put your frying pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Once it's hot, throw in your hamburger. That's right---don't use any grease. The idea is for part of the meat to sear to the pan so it has to be scraped off. Let it sit for a minute, then once it is nice and stuck, and the fat from the meat has begun to melt, scrape it all up with your wood spatula and grind it up carefully. Salt immediately.
4. Once the meat has gained some color, pour your spice mix over it and mix thoroughly. Set aside (we are not worried about fully cooking this meat, as it will finish cooking in the stew. However, we wanted to cook it separately so we could give it some color and intense flavor).
5. Once the aromatics are soft, pour in your San Marzano tomatoes. Optionally, pulp or blend them first so they are mostly liquid and incorporate easily. Personally, I dump them in whole and just break them up against the side of the pot with my spatula. This leaves a lot of tomato chunks, which are just delicious when you use high-quality tomatoes like these.
6. Add the beer, water, and chicken bouillon.
7. Add the black beans, the hamburger meat from the frying pan and the jerky.
8. Turn the heat to medium-low. The goal is for it to sit at a bare simmer with no major bubbling (this is where an Instant Pot tends to fall short, as it will either be too cold to get exactly the reaction you want, or too hot and start bubbling everywhere. In any case, I use the "slow cook" setting here. While not perfect, it gets the job done just a little more slowly).
9. Let the stew simmer for two hours.
10. Remove the stew from the heat. While you can serve it immediately, I prefer to prepare this chili the day before serving, then let it sit in the fridge for the night while the flavors meld.
Suggested garnishes: cilantro, pickled red onions, sour cream, cotija cheese, sliced cucumber
° A large stock pot or slow cooker
° A large frying pan or skillet
° A wooden spatula
1. Get your mise en place---put all your spices together in a small bowl, chop up your vegetables, open your cans of San Marzano tomatoes and your black beans, get all of your ingredients and keep them nearby on the countertop.
2. Put your stock pot on the oven over medium heat (if you're using an Instant Pot, use the "saute" function). Once it's hot, throw in your lard/cooking oil. As soon as the oil is nice and hot, throw in your onions and green bell peppers. Salt them immediately.
3. While your aromatics saute, put your frying pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Once it's hot, throw in your hamburger. That's right---don't use any grease. The idea is for part of the meat to sear to the pan so it has to be scraped off. Let it sit for a minute, then once it is nice and stuck, and the fat from the meat has begun to melt, scrape it all up with your wood spatula and grind it up carefully. Salt immediately.
4. Once the meat has gained some color, pour your spice mix over it and mix thoroughly. Set aside (we are not worried about fully cooking this meat, as it will finish cooking in the stew. However, we wanted to cook it separately so we could give it some color and intense flavor).
5. Once the aromatics are soft, pour in your San Marzano tomatoes. Optionally, pulp or blend them first so they are mostly liquid and incorporate easily. Personally, I dump them in whole and just break them up against the side of the pot with my spatula. This leaves a lot of tomato chunks, which are just delicious when you use high-quality tomatoes like these.
6. Add the beer, water, and chicken bouillon.
7. Add the black beans, the hamburger meat from the frying pan and the jerky.
8. Turn the heat to medium-low. The goal is for it to sit at a bare simmer with no major bubbling (this is where an Instant Pot tends to fall short, as it will either be too cold to get exactly the reaction you want, or too hot and start bubbling everywhere. In any case, I use the "slow cook" setting here. While not perfect, it gets the job done just a little more slowly).
9. Let the stew simmer for two hours.
10. Remove the stew from the heat. While you can serve it immediately, I prefer to prepare this chili the day before serving, then let it sit in the fridge for the night while the flavors meld.
Suggested garnishes: cilantro, pickled red onions, sour cream, cotija cheese, sliced cucumber
Recipe formatted with the Cook'n Recipe Software from DVO Enterprises.
Matthew Christensen
Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2023
Email the author! matthew@dvo.com
