This is chili posting bitches!

Grab a drink grab a glass/after that I grab yo' ass - Kanye West

My original chili recipe is the one I made four or five times (I think) two or three summers ago.

That's quite the endeavor, since it takes a day and change...especially because I couldn't prep like a chef back then.

The original recipe is on my personal blog. This one is a freestyle, based on what I remember. Seriously though - fuck recipes. I write them because I don't have the words to tell you what my food tastes like...not yet, anyway.

Skillet Chili
Cook all ingredients in the cast-iron skillet before cooking them in the Dutch oven or slow-cooker. Except for the ones specified, of course.

You'll need
1 yellow pepper
1 red pepper
1 orange pepper
(green peppers suck - i taste bitter more than most people, so green peppers ruin everything. Triple this amount and double the rest of the veggies if you want to make the vegetarian version of this. I think it might even be vegan)
1 can Ro-Tel tomatoes and jalapenos (and seriously. if you email me asking if you can use real tomatoes and jalepenos, the answer is yes. use three large tomatoes and dice them, and chop six jalepenos fine. Leave the seeds if you want heat. Scrape them out along with the ribs if you don't.
1 large onion (whatever's best looking - red and white are my main ones, though a bunch of yellow onions worked too)
1 head (yes, head) of garlic. (Chop it yourself, dammit. You can avoid peeling it by buying peeled cloves, and you'll need 15 to 20. Chop them with some salt and mash under a knife)
2 pounds 80/20 ground (name your meat here. I use ground chuck or if it's on sale, ground sirloin, but you can do turkey, pork, chicken...)
1 Hillshire Farms kielbasa. (Your call on whether it's turkey, lite, beef, lite beef, etc. You could use their smoked sausage. You could use someone else's smoked sausage. The whole point is making it taste the way you want. I've used andouille - that was fantastic)
1 large can kidney beans
1 small can great white northern beans (large can is about 2.5x the sixe of the small can - it's the brand in the supermarket...I can't recall)

Instructions

Put the peppers on your gas burner. Turn it on. Leave the peppers there until they turn black.

Put the peppers into a paper bag and close it up. Let 'em sit, you'll come back.

Saute the kielbasa (sliced lengthwise twice and then chopped, resulting in small quarter-chunks) and ground beef in the cast-iron. Brown it nicely. Transfer to a paper towel to drain.

Saute the ground beef in the skillet until it browns nicely. While it's on medium heat, shake the paper bag with the peppers a few times, then unfold it, and tear it open. You need to peel the burnt skin off (don't have to get ALL of it, but you have to get most) and it's quicker to clean up if you do it on the paper bag.

Transfer browned ground beef to paper towel.

Open cans. Put in large pot set on medium. Stir to combine, then add the peppers after chopping them to the consistency you desire. (want thin chili? puree all the veggies. want thick, chunky? you know the drill.)

After patting the meat down with more paper towels, transfer the now-degreased protein into the big pot. Again, stir to combine.

Your pan should still have some grease in it from the sausage, so use that to cook your garlic and onion, chopped fine.

Once the onions are translucent and your kitchen reeks even more of onions and garlic than it already did, add them to the chili pot. Stir, motherfucker...stir. Then cover the pot and leave it alone. Leave it on medium. Ideally, have a glass lid and stare through it.

Your goal here is to get it to bubble, stir it, then turn the heat down to just under what'll make it bubble, and leave it alone and let it cook. You don't need tons of heat - everything here is already cooked. This will work in a crock-pot, too, though you might need to add some water.

Taste frequently. Sometimes I add hot sauce early and let it stew, or add it late and heat things up.

I write recipes like this because they're supposed to be a starting point. Really - don't make this like I said. Don't trust me. You know what tastes good. Try things. Experiment. Add peas.

Actually, don't add peas. Not to chili. It's just wrong. But that's me. You should eat what you want.

I like chili because you can use lean beef and lite sausage and cook it well and drain all the grease and put in more vegetables and it's even more filling and better for you.

If I had a bottle of red wine, I'd pat the grease out of the skillet with a paper towel and then deglaze the skillet with wine, then add that to the chili pot with a little stir.

If the flavor is too heavy/dense/salty, I use orange soda or not-from-concentrate orange juice to counterbalance. Guess that's why brown sugar gets added to curry - I thought mine tasted a little strong.