Super Bowl Chili

So for the past three years my brother's annual Super Bowl party has also been a chili cook-off. I've made a different chili each year, and not done too well the last couple of years. Which doesn't make me too happy. I wanted things to be different this year. I really did.

This year we picked a recipe that is maybe a bit too fancy-pants. Homemade chile powder with five different kind of chiles, ground and cubed beef, some corn masa to thicken things up, nicely balanced flavors. I added an extra habanero to spice things up, upped the chile powder, and really thought I was on to something.

So to start - brown a bunch of beef. Then cook a bunch of bacon.


Then add in onions and garlic and spices and peppers and aromatics, etc. This is when a lot of the chili's flavor is going to develop.


Then the chili powder, and then pretty much everything else.


Here it is before going into the oven to braise for a couple hours:



And, in the end, well, our chili pulled up the rear. Booooo. I'm not happy, and I don't agree, but I'll do better next year, I'm sure. I hope. I would have preferred this were a bit spicier, and I think it just didn't really stand out in any particular way. But the flavor was very nice, I think.

Anyways, at least we got some tasty chili dogs out of it in the end.