♪ jazzy jazz bit ♪
♪ Hey baby, I hear the blues are calling ♪
♪ Toss Salads and Scramm-bled eggs ♪
Hey, what's up guys?
Welcome back to Binging with Babish,
where this week we are making:
Kevin's Famous Chili from The Office
I'm sorry I couldn't play the clip at the beginning like usual,
but NBC was blocking my video as soon as posted it
so...
If you wanna see the clip,
just go ahead and click on
these chilis.
Three ounces (3 oz.) of dried ancho chilies
and one ounce (1 oz.) of dried cascabel chilis.
We're gonna start by ripping these guys open,
and getting all of the seeds out.
Now I know Kevin just said he only uses ancho chilis
but its pretty common to use more than one type of dried chili in a recipe like this
and cascabels add a lot of
~smokiness,
and ~earthiness,
and ~chocolatey undertones
We want to tear these guys up into about 1 inch pieces
and put them into a saute pan over medium heat and toast until just
barely smoking and fragrant
We're gonna take our toasted chilis
and place them into the bowl of a food processor
and blitz until they're a really, really fine powder
and this is gonna take awhile
about two or three minutes
so...
pour yourself a drink, make sure your camera's in focus
Add 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
3 tablespoons cornflower
1 tablespoon freshly ground cumin
and 1 tablespoon dried oregano
pulse a few times to combine
and then make sure your camera's running when you add
¾ cup of chicken stock
to make a spice paste
otherwise your audience might get confused
Moving on..
Kevin says he dices whole tomatoes
so we're going to core and dice about 6 roma tomatoes
and then it's time to address the matter of spiciness
We're going to finely mince 2 jalapenos
and one half of a habanero pepper
I was gonna do a whole habanero
until I tried a little tiny piece of it..
innocent little tiny bite*
'oh wow' breath in
'bracing' breathe out
'what have I done?' tuberculosis cough*
intense wheeze*
ahh
stepping of cam to cope*
piercing 'Aghh'
desperately* get rid of half of that.
so yeah, your call.
and make sure you use gloves when your chopping the habaneros
you'll thank me later when you forget to wash your hands before going to the bathroom.
Kevin mentioned crushing whole cloves of garlic
and I assumed he meant a garlic crusher or
something that I forgot that I don't own
so we're gonna practice making it with a knife
just mince it up as fine as you can
and then squish it back and forth against the board
like this
until you have garlic paste
..yes, I know, I'm still wearing gloves
garlic's really sticky!
Now we come to the meat that we're gonna use in our chili
and I don't like using ground beef.
I like having little.. steaky-beefy bits
every time I take a bite
so we're gonna trim the gristle and fat off of 3 lbs. of chuck steak
that we're then going to cut into strips, and dice into little cubes.
Now I'm just gonna do a rough chop through to get little closer to ground beef
but still giving a better texture and body to our chili.
In a nice wide pot we're gonna start with browning our beef
Do this in batches so you don't overcrowd the beef
so it doesn't steam
You want to get good browning and crust on there
so we can build up some fond in the bottom of the pot
See how it sort of builds up as we go along?
That is exactly what you wanna see
That stuff is..
magic
Set the beef aside, oil your pan
place over high heat before adding our vegetables
and Kevin said to undercook the onions
so we're just gonna sweat them a little bit
before deglazing with a bottle of light lager
scrape all that good stuff off of the bottom of the pot
add our chopped tomatoes
the rest of our beer
our spice paste
give that a mix before
adding our brown beef back to the party
then we're gonna add the remainder of the chicken stock
from which we used to make the spice paste
we're also gonna add about 2 tablespoons of brown sugar,
the garlic that I forgot to add earlier,
some soaked red kidney beans,
and then we're gonna put it in a 300°F oven
with the lid ajar
for 2 to 3 hours or until the beef is completely tender
Take a minute to appreciate the smells
that have been brewing in your apartment
Season with salt and pepper as you see fit
Now here at Binging with Babish
we're all about accuracy and faithfulness to source materials.
so..
if you really want to enjoy Kevin's famous chili
in the traditional fashion
get yourself a 6 foot length of low quality,
poly fiber carpet
and go ahead an plate it up on there
Tell me that is not the most delicous thing you've ever seen
Top it with some aged white cheddar
and dig in.
Now this was actually..
really, really, really
good chili.
I've never made chili from whole dried peppers before
really adds a lot of depth to the flavor
it was so good
that I had another bite before
remembering that I could just put some in a bowl.
innocent sniff*
startle*
deep wheeze of regret*
viscous cough as insides begin to burn*
wheezing 'oh man'
death cough*
'phew' sigh of hindsight*
struggle to close lid to death spices*
bye