Good morning, my sous-chefs! At least, I hope it is good morning because this recipe I have today will take a long time to prepare. Now I know what you are thinking: “I’m an engineering student. I don’t have a lot of time to prepare a meal. I have labs and projects…” You’ll probably continue on like this for a good two or three minutes before you realize that I haven’t been listening since the “an”. But anyway, now that we are back on the same page, here is my recipe for a delicious slow-cooked chilli. It’s a party favourite, and a perfect meal after a long day of tobogganing or, more likely, shoveling snow. I think it’s the perfect dish to share with you on this beautiful July day.
As always, there are three golden rules to remember when you cook. The first is that you don’t ever need to buy new ingredients, since having to do so would undoubtedly destroy your perfect, meticulous, productive schedule. The second is that you don’t need to measure anything, as that too would be a massive waste of your precious time. And finally, I guarantee that you can make any dish work; to succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy, you don’t want a meal you’ve spent so much time on to go to waste.
So now onto the chilli. But first, what is “slow cooking”? Slow cooking is a method of cooking where food is placed under low heat for extended periods of time. It’s a method that produces very tender food—think toothpaste—and delicious if somewhat homogenous aromas and tastes. It is often done in a “slow cooker” or a “crock pot” which is a self-heating pot much like a pressure cooker, but not pressurized. In fact, the two work exactly the same way; the only differences is that a slow cooker is slow because it cooks food at water boiling point at atmospheric temperature—100°C—while the pressure cooker goes to about 200 kPa, and thus (according to my Thermodynamic Property Table) 120°C. Honestly, that doesn’t seem too much hotter than a slow cooker. It’s certainly nowhere near the 205°C I default to in my oven.
But whatever. The point is that slow cookers are awesome. Now you are probably thinking “but I don’t have a slow cooker.” Rule number one, subordinate, applies to more than just the foodstuff. For instance, I just checked my oven, and it goes down to 70°C. If yours does too, just set it to somewhere above 100°C and let it go. If your oven doesn’t go low enough, there are a number of things you can do. You could crack open the door a little bit to create a heat sink. If you are paying your own electricity bill, you could set up a heat engine instead to sell some power back to the grid. Honestly though, opening the door should be fine; this is really a winter-only dish so you’re already heating your house. If it’s not winter, you’re kind of an idiot for making chilli.
And finally, the ingredients. The most important thing to remember about chilli is that it is supposed to be flavourful, and ideally spicy. Now I won’t critique if you want to add a dash of paprika and call it a meal, but at least add as much as you can. I bring this up first because you can add all your spices at any time in the preparation, as often as you like.
Start by chopping up some onions—not too fine now, you’ll be boiling them away to almost nothing anyway—and some garlic. Don’t have either? Garlic salt will work, as would chives, or just about any other plant it is generally unacceptable to eat raw. If you want to be really fancy, you can brown them in a pan with your triglyceride of choice before putting them in the crock pot. Next, take some ground beef (or hare or kangaroo or snake) and add that. Follow it up with cans of diced tomatoes, chick peas, split peas, and all those other cans of stuff that have been sitting in the back of your pantry for a while. If you have tomato sauce, add that. Otherwise you will probably want to add some water. If you’re in a rush, put the pot on “high” and wait about 4 hours. If you are headed out for the day, put it on “low” and you can let it fester for as long as 8 hours. When the time is up, if you aren’t feeling too hungry, throw in some kidney beans and mushrooms, cooking for another half hour. Serve over bread, corn buns, or any bread-mimicking foodstuffs. Don’t forget to add diced, shredded, or sliced cheese on top.
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