Those recipes I promised (Part II)

As promised, here's the second of three chili & stew recipes mentioned in last week's column. (The first is here.) Star Features Editor Tosha Jupiter has made this for just about all of our semi-regular chili days in the newsroom for a few years now. It's one of my favorites.

She typically uses an amber lager such as Michelob Amber Bock or Sam Adams Boston Lager, which sets this recipe apart from the porter- and stout-based stuff mentioned in the column. I think the bittersweet chocolate here must take the place of the darker malts in porter and stout.

I pulled the text of this recipe from The Star's Starbite food blog, maintained by Laura Tutor. It was in a post from our most recent chili day, where you can also find my chili con carne (which doesn't call for beer, but goes well with a few).

Chocolate Chili Con Carne
3 pounds beef chuck
Freshly ground black pepper
Gray salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus 1 teaspoon
1 teaspoon ground cumin, plus 2 teaspoons
2 tablespoons chili powder, plus 2 tablespoons
Masa harina (Mexican corn flour)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup lard
4 red onions, peeled and minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
4 jalapeno peppers, sliced thin with seeds, stems removed
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 to 3 bottles (12 ounce) beer
1 can (12 ounce) diced tomato in juices
1 quart chicken stock
3 cans (12 ounce) black beans
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into large chunks

Cut the chuck into 3/4-inch pieces, or, to save time, have your butcher do this for you. Place the chuck in a large bowl. Season liberally with pepper (about 20 turns of the pepper grinder) and grey salt to taste- remember half of this will come off in the pan. Season with 1/2 teaspoon of the cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of the cumin and 2 tablespoons of the chili powder. Mix this well and coat the meat with the masa harina (this is a ground hominy flour common to Mexican cuisine and easily found in the Mexican food sections of many grocery stores). The flour will thicken the sauce and give it a specific, Mexican taste.

Preheat a cast iron Dutch oven on the stove over medium high heat. Add the olive oil and then the coated meat, spreading it evenly so it covers the bottom of the Dutch oven in 1 layer. Leave it alone, without turning it, so the meat will brown and caramelize. Meanwhile, add the lard. The meat has a lot of moisture in it, so a good amount of steam will come from the pan before it is caramelized. As it browns, slowly turn each piece with tongs.

Once all sides are caramelized, remove the meat from the pan with a slotted spoon and place on a cookie sheet to cool, leaving juices in the Dutch oven to saute vegetables. Add the onions and garlic and saute for 5 minutes over medium heat until they start to caramelize and get soft. Add the jalapenos and allow to cook for 2 more minutes until soft. Add the tomato paste. Some of the same spices as were used on the meat will be used in the sauce. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons of the cumin, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon, the oregano, and 2 heaping tablespoons of the chili powder. Add beer. Stir to incorporate everything. Add diced tomatoes, and stir. Then add the reserved meat. Add chicken stock.

Simmer for 1 1/2 hours until meat is wonderfully tender. Strain juice from the black beans, add the beans to the chili pot and bring up to simmer. Then add chunks of bittersweet chocolate. Stir until it melts. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days.

Those recipes I promised (Part I)

So, it took a day or two, but I've managed to round up the recipes I promised you in Wednesday's column. They get a little long, so I'll divide them up among three posts spread over a few days. The first one is Star multimedia director Justin Thurman's Porter Chili. I haven't tasted it yet, but he's threatening to make another batch soon to share with the newsroom. Above the recipe is a note from Justin.

I feel that the porter brings heartiness to the chili that I don't get from other liquids. I use the porter much like someone would use a beef or chicken stock in a recipe. I drain all ingredients so that the beer is the main liquid in the chili. I love porters, I have used many different ones but Abita Turbo Dog is my favorite. This really worked out well with a chili that I made with venison as the meat.

I remembered a few years ago a man in my home town winning a chili cook-off and he said his secret was beer. Being a beer lover, I thought I would try this but I wanted to use the kind of beers that I drank. Turbo Dog was the first beer that I tried this with and it is still my favorite today. 

• 1 large red onion diced
• 1 red pepper diced
• 1 yellow pepper diced
• 2 pablano peppers diced
• 2 jalapeno peppers diced
• 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce diced
• 1 pound of ground venison (beef and bison work as well)
• 1 pound of bacon
• The remaining adobo sauce from the chipotle peppers
• 2 cans red kidney beans drained
• 2 can black beans drained
• 1 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes drained
• 2 garlic cloves minced
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 tablespoon of crushed red pepper
• 2 bottles of your favorite porter.
• Salt and pepper to taste

Sauté onions and peppers in olive oil until translucent and add to crock pot. Cook bacon in pan until done, leaving bacon grease in pan. Cook the venison in the bacon grease. Chop bacon and add it and venison to crock pot. Add remaining ingredients and cook on low overnight.

Today's column: Keeping warm with bubbling beer

(Recipes coming soon, btw. -Ben)

With the mercury plunging, a good beer or two may warm you up, once the capillaries in your face relax and turn your cheeks rosy. But that serving temperature — cool to ice cold — might just give you the shivers this time of year.

It's never too cold for a beer, really, but if you're looking for another way to warm up with a cold one, why not heat it in a pot? Of course, it's important to add more ingredients than just the beer.

Winter's chill winds make it the right time for savory, slow-cooked stew or a nice, hot chili. And a bowl of either can benefit from cooking with the right beer.

The dark, roasted flavors of porters and stouts are a big part of many stew and chili recipes.

Porters are ales made with barley that's dried at higher temperatures before the brewing begins, yielding a darker malt. Stouts follow the same model, with some of the barley actually roasted and unmalted for a dry, crisp effect.

Those methods tend to result in full-bodied beers with intense flavors. Adding a bit to a stew can lend a bitter complexity, and some recipes even replace the broth outright with a bottle or two.

Countless beef stew recipes classify themselves as Irish with addition of some the Emerald Isle's most famous export, Guinness Stout. A version from Margaret M. Johnson's Irish Pub Cookbook that credits the Guinness brewery's bar calls for a half pint of the thick, black beer. It swirls with the savory flavor of sirloin cubes browned in oil and butter, and the stout mixes well with the slight tang of carrots, parsnips and turnips.

In chili, stouts' and porters' roasted malts, plus the more intense bitterness from hops, can help to balance the spice from hot peppers. One colleague at The Star uses the Turbodog porter from Louisiana's Abita Brewing Co. in place of beef stock, then adds venison or bison meat for a truly unique flavor, though he says beef works just fine, too.

Another Star staffer (we eat a lot of chili here) uses dark lagers such as Samuel Adams Boston Lager or Michelob Amber Bock in place of inky porters or stouts in a lightly spiced chili recipe. Standing in for the dark complexity of roasted malt: bittersweet chocolate, which helps balance that spice even more.

Slow cooking is a favorite method for many of these dishes, in part because of the way it tenderizes chunked meat and allows seasonings to penetrate the other ingredients. Adding a bit of alcohol only intensifies the tenderizing effect, and the malt and hops can really work their magic given a few extra hours.

Using a slow cooker, though, takes time. Perhaps there's no better way to spend that time than sipping whatever beer didn't make it into the pot. At least the kitchen should be warm.