Ingredients
3 lbs grass-fed ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic (or 8 tsp minced)
2 x 15 oz cans diced tomatoes
6 oz can tomato paste
4 oz can green chili peppers
2 tbsps Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup chili powder
2 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp dried oregano
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf
Some cooking fat (butter, or olive/avocado oil)
Directions
1. In a large pot, sauté onions in your fat choice over medium-high heat
2. Add in the garlic and sauté for around 1 minute
3. Add in beef and cook until brown, usually around 10 minutes (you may want to drain and KEEP the fat if you have really fatty beef)
4. Add in everything else and mix
5. Add your bay leaf, cover, and simmer for 40 minutes on medium heat, uncover and simmer for 20 minutes
Useless Information and Photo
The “best chili” genome has been mapped out for a while. There’s no need to add unusual ingredients, or remove any usual ones, unless you’re in a chili cookoff or maintaining a certain diet. This recipe is for the later reason, since it removes the high carb beans…although I will say you could eat worse carbs than beans. Chili cookoffs are probably all politics and favor paybacks anyways, because no one with a sense of self-worth or decency wants chocolate or raisins in their chili.
Bay leaves are probably a scam but I included it here in case you bought a jar of 100 of them for one recipe and can’t bring yourself to throw 99 of them away.
Instead of diced tomatoes, you could use stewed tomatoes, but I would cut up the tomato pieces.
The two teaspoons of salt here are like the max amount you’d probably want to put in. I made a batch with just one teaspoon and it was ideal for me. Any more than two and it’s just going to taste like salty ground chuck.
The batch I recently made was turning out too dry because I accidentally drained one of the cans of diced tomatoes, so I added some beef broth to make it work.
If you used a high fat percentage of beef like I did, you may want to drain it after it’s browned, but I would save that fat for cooking later. I do that all the time and it adds a nice dimension of flavor to whatever it is you’re cooking, and it’ll save you butter or whatever oil you would use otherwise. This time I didn’t drain it and you can tell it’s very fatty:
