Fall’s my favorite season for a variety of reasons, but among the top are that it means football and football in our home means chili. For the past two years I’ve dedicated every Bears game to trying new chili recipes. I’m pretty lax in what I allow here. I am not from Texas, so beans are fine. It does always involve meat. While I lean to a vegetarian diet when left to my own devices, my husband…let’s just say he’d not be a big fan of a bean stew masquerading as a chili. Though I do have several favorite vegetarian chili recipes, more on that some other day.
I’d love to be one of those people with a signature chili, and maybe one day I will be. Though I feel like you’d need a signature in each category: ground meat, ground meat with beans, cubed meat, chicken/turkey, and vegetarian. I guess that makes it clear why I’ve not found my signature(s) yet… too many things variables. Why perfect, when I can experiment?
This year we’ve tried all those types, including even a buffalo chicken chili, but today is the first day I’ve made anything resembling a white chili for my husband. I guess that’s not true, I’ve made a corn and potato chicken chili for him, but admitted it was basically a glorified stew. His main beef (pun on a chicken post entirely intended) with white chili is that it isn’t spicy, which is true enough, that’s the whole point. So what can I do? Find ways to make it more acceptable, because football season is long and sometimes a nice plain white chili is what you most want.
My mom has previously made Giada’s White Bean and Chicken Chili and it was delicious. Something about the ground meat made it feel more chili like than those white chili recipes with shredded turkey or chicken (which I also love, let’s be honest). You can find the recipe here http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/white-bean-and-chicken-chili-recipe.html. I did not alter this in anyway other than the tragic fact that I was a teaspoon short on cumin and had kale from our CSA and used that instead of the swiss chard. It also has chili powder which I think helps and has a stir in and infusion of red pepper flakes for the last ten minutes. The garnishes work in its favor, a little parsley and a little Parmesan with the option of extra red pepper flakes just adds to it all.
So how was it? I think if your husband eats all the chili left overs for days on end…maybe you should not force him to have white chicken chili. Even if it was delicious.