Super Bowl®, Super Chili

By:   Pam Anderson

As turkey is to Thanksgiving, so chili has become to the Super Bowl.

The hearty stew is a classic casual party dish for good reason. For the cook, it's easy, do-ahead and cheap. For guests, it's appealing, fun and friendly.

There are lots of chili recipes. So why try mine? For one thing, it calls for common grocery store ingredients (no visits to ethnic markets and mail-order companies). Plus, this eyebrow-raising chili will prompt guests to ask for the recipe.

Here are five key steps to success:

• Use the right meat. Start with chuck roast (for rich, beefy heft) and country-style pork ribs (for mild, sweet contrast), and sear the meats well. Nicely browned meat is crucial to flavor. Forget ground beef; it stews to gray hues. Searing individual beef cubes is messy and tedious, especially for a Super Bowl-size batch. So I sear whole roasts--it's easy but still imparts plenty of flavor--and pull the meat into bite-size shreds. Compared with meat cubes, shreds are soft and tender; compared with ground meat, shreds have better "chew" and flavor. 
• Cook meat quickly with high heat. Instead of slow-cooking, I "pressure-cook" the seared beef and pork in a foil-sealed, lidded pot in a 450-degree oven. This high-heat method cuts cooking time nearly in half. 
• Slow-toast spices. Many serious chili recipes call for toasting and then grinding whole spices, a step many cooks aren't willing or able to perform. I easily punch up flavors by slowly toasting powdered spices in a dry skillet over low heat before adding them to the chili. 
• Use a roaster on the stovetop. I set a heavy-duty roasting pan over two burners, using the large cooking surface to sear the meat in two batches rather than four. Later, the roaster helps the onions saute and the chili stew up more quickly. 
• Flavor at the end. Finish the chili with minced garlic and bittersweet chocolate. I've found that if you saute garlic with the onions at the beginning, the garlic's flavor is barely detectable. Added at the end, however, the garlic is pleasantly potent. Ditto the chocolate. Added early, chocolate takes the chili in a mole direction. Added at the end, it miraculously pulls the chili together.

  Copyright 2004 USA Weekend and columnist Pam Anderson. All rights reserved.