Bert Greene's Peppered Chili
Submitted by tooner1
Bert Greene’s peppered chili layers ground beef and beef shoulder strips with three different chiles (mild ground, caribe, fresh serrano). Slow-baked three hours with red wine, fresh tomatoes, and herbs. Kidney beans go in last. A serious cook’s chili.
YIELD
6 servingsPREP
15 minCOOK
3¾ hrsREADY
4 hrsBert Greene’s Layered, Three-Hour Chili With Three Chiles
The legendary Bert Greene wrote one of the great American cooking books of the 1980s, and this peppered chili is exactly the kind of recipe that earned his reputation. It’s not the dump-everything-in approach of weeknight chili. This is layered cooking, with each component handled separately before being combined and slow-baked at 300°F (150°C) for three hours.
The meat strategy is the smart move. Half the meat is ground beef cooked into the aromatics for that crumbly texture; the other half is beef shoulder cut into strips and seared hard before joining the pot. You get two textures in every bite: chewy strips and rich crumbles.
Three different chiles drive the heat profile. Mild ground chile blooms in butter for foundational warmth, caribe chile flakes add medium heat, and fresh serrano peppers bring the bright top-end punch. Red wine and beef stock build a deeply savory braising liquid, and a dash of soy sauce is the umami secret ingredient that pulls everything together.
Pro Tips
- Sear the beef strips in batches over high heat. Crowding the pan steams the meat and you lose the brown crust that gives the chili its depth.
- Wipe the skillet between rounds. Burnt residue from one batch turns bitter in the next.
- Bloom the ground chile in butter for the full 3 minutes. Toasted chile has triple the flavor of raw, and skipping this step is what separates good chili from great chili.
- Add the kidney beans at the very end, only 30 minutes before serving. Earlier and they break down into mush.
- Like most chili, this tastes even better reheated the next day.
Variations
- Substitute lamb shoulder for the beef strips for a deeper, gamier flavor.
- Skip the beans entirely for a Texas-style bowl of red.
- Top with sour cream, fresh cilantro, sliced green onions, and a wedge of lime.
Ingredients
Directions
- Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large heavy skillet over medium heat.
Add half the garlic, half the onions, and all the green pepper and cook for 5 minutes.
- Make a large well in the center of the vegetables and place the ground beef in the center.
Raise the heat and cook, stirring and scraping the skillet with a metal spatula.
Gradually stir in the surrounding vegetables and cook until the meat is evenly browned.
Transfer this mixture to a Dutch oven.
- Heat the vegetable oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in the skillet.
Sauté the beef shoulder, a few strips at a time, over high heat until it is well browned.
Transfer the strips to a plate as they are done.
Lower the heat, then wipe out the skillet with paper toweling.
Return beef strips to the skillet. Stir in the ground chile and cook 3 minutes over low heat.
Transfer to the Dutch oven.
- Melt the remaining butter in the skillet over medium heat. Add the remaining onions and garlic and cook for 3 minutes.
Stir in the tomatoes, sugar, and bay leaf and cook for 10 minutes.
Transfer the mixture to the Dutch oven.
- Stir all the remaining ingredients except the beans into the Dutch oven.
Bake, covered, in a 300’ oven for 3 hours.
- Stir in the beans; bake ½ hour longer.
Comments
