ATP! Presents: Brittany Has An Appetite (October 17th, 2012)
Anyone who follows drummer Brittany Harrell (@brittanyharrell) of Georgia's pop-punk outfit, Veara on Twitter would know that her account is comprised of talk about WWE, music and things 99% food related. With that said, we invited Brittany to be a part of the Alter The Press team where each week, she will be writing a weekly blog talking about the best meals she has consumed and letting the world know about her love of food!
My stepdad makes one of THE BEST CHILI'S I've ever had! And with the weather starting to "chill out", I've had his chili on my mind lately. I randomly mentioned something to him about making it one afternoon and he agreed to make it the very next day!
My stepdad learned this recipe from back when he was a fire fighter years ago. Let me tell you what, this chili rules!
He starts off by browning lean beef. He puts that beef into a big stock pot. One of the things that makes his chili different from other chilis Ive had, is that along with the beef he also browns up sausage as well. He adds the browned sausage into the stock pot with the beef. He uses Bush's Best pinto chili beans and pours those into the pot. He also adds diced tomatoes to the mix. Now as for all the spices, I can't give all those away ;) After he adds in all his spices, he adds a tomato paste in there as well. After it has cooked and reached a good temperature for an hour or so he starts to taste test to see what he needs to add more of, etc. He let me in on a couple of these "taste tests" and boy was I pumped! The taste test tasted perfect to me and boy was I stoked for lunch time to come!
The longer the chili cooks the better it gets. So we put our pot of chili on at 8am and let it simmer and soak up all the flavors for about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.
The anticipation of getting to eat this chili had me flipping out! I absolutely could not wait till lunch time to come. I was ecstatic!
When we do chili at my house we always have some tight additions to put onto/in the chili. We buy Fritos Scoops, Sour Cream, Sharp Cheddar and Monterrey Jack Cheeses, and dice up some onion. I also like to add Texas Pete Hot Sauce to my chili because I like more heat than most of the people in my family.
For a "side dish" or just something else to add into your chili, my mom made some sweet cornbread to go along with the chili.
So now let's get down to the construction of my chili bowl!!
First, I grab a handful of Fritos Scoops and crush them up to layer the bottom of my bowl:
Then on top of the Fritos, I add the shredded sharp cheddar and monterrey jack cheeses:
Next, I layer on the delicious meaty, beanie, AMAZING chili and top it with diced onions.
After that, I put even MORE shredded cheddar and monterrey jack cheeses, then top all that off with a good sized scoop of sour cream:
Finally, once my the construction part of my chili was complete, I put dashes of Texas Pete Hot Sauce on top. Then I grabbed my piece of sweet cornbread and buttered that puppy up and ta-da!! You have one of the best chili's ever!!
I grabbed my bowl and dug in! I stirred it all up so that the cheeses and all the other amazing toppings could intertwine with one another. The crunch of the fritos and bite of the onions were great, and The coolness of the sour cream with the heat of the texas pete was rad. The melty-ness of the cheeses was also an excellent addition. But all of this combined with the meaty-beany chili was UN-BELIEVABLE!!! It was a flavor explosion in your mouth. In between bites I would work in the cornbread and this was really awesome as well.
This chili was so friggin' awesome that I had two huge bowls made exactly the same way, haha. We ate this chili at lunch time and I ate so much of it that I wasn't even hungry until the next day. After the first bite I lost it. I just kept eating till I was STUFFED. And man was I overly stuffed but dang happy at the same time. The flavor in my mouth was so good that it was very worth it to just pig out!
