The Best Chili You'll Ever Make

... or eat for that matter!


Fall weather is approaching, so it's time to break out the bone-warming cuisine. I can't thing of a better place to start than with a bottle of beer and a bowl of chili!

Step One: Gather Your Ingredients


The great thing about chili is that the ingredients are so versatile. Follow the technique, but add any kind of veggies. If you're pressed for time and money, you could even sub the veggies and hot sauce for a jar of your favorite salsa.

A few notes about the ingredients:
- Most chili recipes call for ground beef or turkey. The stew meat (or any diced beef for that matter) makes all the difference here!
- I like beans. If you don't, you can omit the beans, but you may want to add more meat.
- I love the chili pepper sauce pictured above. So, I try and find reasons to put it in recipes. Trader Joe's sells it. But of course, you could use any hot sauce, chipotle in adobo, or your favorite heat source.
- The beer adds a richness to this recipe, so I highly recommend it! (if not, just add 1 cu of water instead) As you can see, I used Sam Adam's Old Fezziwig Ale - use what you've got, but if you're going to the store, pick up an ale! It not only works well in the chili, it's delicious on the side as well!


Enough chat, let's cook!


Step Two: Brown the Beef

Place a medium sauce pan (enough to hold the finished amount of chili) over medium-high heat. In a small mixing bowl, add your stew meat and 2 T of peanut oil. Toss to coat. Add to pan and brown all sides of meat (you may have to do this in stages). Return  meat to bowl.

Step Three: Veggies

Add your veggies to the now empty pot and sauté for 2 - 3 minutes. Season with S&P.

Step Four: Deglaze, simmer, enjoy!
After sautéing the veggies, deglaze the pan by pouring 2/3 of the bottle of beer into the pan. You'll have a little beer leftover, I'm sure you can figure out what to do with it!

Cheers!

Return beef to the pot. Add in tomato paste, tomatoes, beans, cumin, and hot sauce. Simmer for 20 - 30 minutes (if you can stand it!). Enjoy with your favorite chili toppings - cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips - what's your favorite?

Honey Wheat Bagels

Discouraged by a lack of whole wheat everything bagels in the market, I decided to venture out to make my own. Turns out they are not all that time consuming, expensive, or difficult. Give yourself an hour and you'll be wondering why you haven't been making these all along.

On a personal note: It's been awhile since I've posted. It's been a busy couple of weeks for me as we've renovated the kitchen.

I've also planted some fall veggies - red cabbage and white cauliflower. So, expect my favorite recipes for those two in about 55 days!

Now, let's get to the bagels!

Step One: Gather Your Ingredients

Oh and if you want to make everything bagels, like I did, you'll need:

You could also use onion and garlic powder, but I prefer the real thing. So, dice 1/2 an onion (Vidalias are still in season) and cook in 1 t of olive oil until they look like this:

 Drain on a paper towel. I tried to put this on my bagels after the seasonings but had trouble getting it to stick. So, next time, I am going to simply mix the sauteed onions into my cream cheese! Yum!

Now, to the bagels!



Step Two: Bagel Dough

Mix together 2 cu of the whole wheat flour, the salt, and the dry yeast. Slowly add in the warm water and 3 T of the honey and mix well. Gradually add in the remaining flour. Note: my dough only needed an additional 2 cu - it should have a sticky texture but form into a single ball of dough.

Flour your hands and the surface you plan to knead on. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Form it into a ball and return it to the bowl:

Cover with a towel and let it rest for 10 minutes.

When the 10 minute nap is up, divide your dough into 12 equal parts. Shape each part into a ball and stick your finger in the middle to create the bagel shape.

Assemble your formed bagels on 2 sheet pans doctored with your favorite method of nonstickery (butter, nonstick spray, parchment paper, silicon, etc). Let the bagels sit, uncovered for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, start a large pot of water to boil.



Step Three: Broil, Boil, & Bake

After the 20 minute rest is up, turn on your broiler. Broil your bagels for 2 minutes on each side. You will need to do this for each sheet, so that they sit on the uppermost rack. Keep an eye on these, the second round may not need a full 2 minutes as the oven is quite hot by then. If they start to turn in color, they are ready to come out!

Post Broiler

Stir the last 1 T of honey into your now boiling water.Add enough bagels to the pot to cover the surface. Turn the heat down and simmer for 3 minutes. Flip the bagels over and simmer for 4 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 375˚ F.

Once done, return your bagels to the sheet pan. When they are just cool enough to touch, but still a little sticky, dip the tops of the bagels into the seasoning mixture:

I made 6 of my bagels everything and 6 plain honey whole wheat.

Bake at 375˚ F for 20 - 25 minutes until the tops are golden brown. You can put both sheet pans in the oven at once this time, but you may want to rotate and flip the pans 1/2 through.

While they don't have quite the chewiness of a lye-cooked bagel, they are still darn good. And you know what's in them! And while the initial investment of the ingredients (especially the seasonings if you don't have them) might be a bit more than the average bagel, per recipe they work out to about 23 cents a bagel!

The Everything Bagels were made for onion cream cheese and the honey whole wheat ones go great with Trader Joe's Valencia Peanut Butter with Roasted Flaxseeds.

Make these but be warned - if you share, everyone will be asking you to make more!

Enjoy!