Tag Archives: chili

Feb 04

Hits the spot

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When Dave Thomas founded Wendy’s, according to his terrific but out-of-print autobiography “Dave’s Way,” he wanted to avoid the practice, common to some other fast food places at the time, of making up sandwiches ahead of time and storing them under a heat lamp so that they could be served quickly. He felt this detracted from the quality of the sandwiches and from the ability to customize them to the customer’s liking.

But Thomas still wanted to be able to serve customers quickly, even during peak hours. The solution he came up with was to have hamburger patties almost always on the griddle, ready to be scooped up and turned into a sandwich on order.

Typical business patterns make it possible to predict about how many patties you need to have standing by at a given time of day, but it’s not an exact science. Sometimes, a patty will be ready but no customer will be at the counter to order it.

Dave’s solution to that problem was a stroke of genius: he added chili as a menu item. Any patties not needed for hamburgers would be crumbled up and set aside for the next batch of chili.

I was going to stop at Sonic on my way to work today, but as I saw Wendy’s sitting there on Madison Street it occurred to me that the perfect lunch for a cold and rainy Saturday would be a big Wendy’s chili and a baked potato. Of course, the Wendy’s chili is even better with a couple of gold packets of that mysterious hot sauce they offer with it. I have, for years, insisted that they ought to sell the stuff by the bottle. I would buy it and put it on a lot of different things.

Anyway, the chili and potato are a perfect antidote to the weather. Well done, Dave.

Dec 10

A perfect Saturday night bowl of red

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If you enjoy cooking, you really need to get on the mailing list for Penzey’s Spices, a wonderful Wisconsin-based company to which my sister-in-law turned me on years ago. They have wonderful spices, both individual spices and their own custom spice blends. You can order online, but the reason to be on their mailing list is that their catalog, which comes out several times a year, is packed with recipes.

They have terrific gift sets in a broad variety of price ranges.

Anyway, I had ordered something a couple of weeks ago – one particular thing I needed – and I didn’t want to send in the order and pay shipping for just one item, so I bought a jar of “Chili 9000,” a new product and one of six different chili powders they offer.chili9000

The package arrived yesterday, containing not only the two things I’d ordered but a sample of their apple pie seasoning as a “thank you” gift. I may try using that to make something for the Sunday School party tomorrow.

Tonight, though, seemed like an excellent time for a bowl of chili. I’m partial to long-cooking chili recipes — or, in this case, a pressure cooker recipe — that either need coarse ground beef or cubes of beef instead of regular hamburger meat. I went to Kroger and asked for chili grind beef. The boy stocking the meat case told me that I should ask them to grind me some, but the surly fellow who answered the meat department bell told me they haven’t been able to do that for several years. I’m told that H&H Piggly Wiggly in Unionville will do it, but I didn’t want to make that run today. (I will soon.) So I just bought a family pack of stew meat.

I used the basic method and parameters of Alton Brown’s pressure cooker chili recipe, but I used Ro-Tel tomatoes and Ro-Tel tomato sauce (another new product), with fresh onions and garlic instead of the jar of salsa. Instead of cumin plus chili powder I used a healthy dose of the Chili 9000, since it has cumin as one of its ingredients.

I must say, the finished product turned out to be delicious, if decidedly unexpected. The Chili 9000 is a complex mixture of spices, including (copied and pasted from the Penzey’s web site)

Ancho Chili Pepper, Cumin, Garlic, Cilantro, Onion, Paprika, Cayenne Pepper, Lemon Peel, Mexican Oregano, Black Pepper, Cocoa Powder, Citric Acid, Turmeric, Cinnamon, Coriander, Ginger, Natural Smoke Flavoring, Fenugreek, Cloves, Fennel, Nutmeg, White Pepper, Anise Seed, Jalapeño Pepper, Star Anise, Cardamom.

Some of those non-traditional flavors from the second half of the list give this a mysterious undertone, and yet it’s still recognizably chili.

Pressure cookers are great for chili – I like being able to turn out a slow-cooked-style chili in little more time than it would take to whip out some hamburger-based chili in a skillet.

Anyway, I would highly recommend a jar of this Chili 9000 if you like chili. And no, this is not a sponsored post or an affiliate program like my Amazon links. I just like the stuff.

Oct 22

Under pressure

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Two weeks from tomorrow, we’ll have a chili cookoff at work to raise money for a co-worker who is a cancer survivor.

I was trying to find just the right chili recipe, and I remembered a pressure cooker chili recipe that I’d heard about a year or two ago and wanted to try. I bought a $30 pressure cooker today at W*l-M*rt in Tullahoma (I had looked it up online and that particular model wasn’t in stock locally). I’ve wanted a pressure cooker for some time, and this seemed like a good excuse to buy an inexpensive one.

Well, it all worked out just fine. The pressure cooker works quite well, and I managed to get through the evening without any explosions. The only thing it lacks is the immediate pressure release valve that some of the fancier models now have. For this model, you either have to wait for it to cool down or else put the whole thing under running water to cool it down more quickly.

The chili recipe was fine as well — although I need to personalize it a little bit before making it two weeks from now, since the winning recipe will be published in the newspaper, and I’m in it to win it, as the saying goes.

Jan 17

Winter goodness

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Because I come in at 6 a.m., I tend to have lunch early. Here is what I am enjoying right now: original Krystals (cheese, in this context, it tantamount to heresy) and a bowl of Krystal chili.

I don’t think you can name me a better lunch for a cold, wet January day.