secret ingredients in chili

None.

Prohibitionist are you Joe?

guiness is good with everything,,

me either.. I've no interest in sweet beans, though my mother was from Boston in the early nineteen hundreds. I don't understand all the sweet baked bean cans on the shelves. Nada. A lot of cultures, including in the US, do mix chili and sweet - nuoc cham, for example, a vietnamese dip...

But, wait, you were asking - not what I think, but how to do it....

look up boston baked beans on google, and add guiness to the query line.


In the meantime, someone less biased than myself will be along here shortly.

Whereabout's Joe and I may reside, Brown sugar is not a part of chili, no matter how much guiness is in the pot, or the cook...

(less biased prolly ain't me)

I understand it's not for everyone but I was asking the ? to someone previously who had suggested these ingredients.. I'm entering a chili cookoff and want to add something interesting I realize I'm opening this up for some wild suggestions.. maybe I'll just stick to my trusted recipe..:~

Since I rarely work from a recipe, my rule of thumb is to add stuff until it tastes like I want it to taste. If you have to produce a recipe though you'll want to keep track of how much of whatever you're adding. However, I've never put Guinness or brown sugar in chili. Bar-b-que yes, but not chili.

I play with chili a lot, so have fun.

(still vehemently against the brown sugar, though)



And welcome to A2K...

thanks for the reply.. I also add ingredients until it looks and tastes great.. this is not a formal thing.. my friends are having a Cowboy party this weekend which involves a chili cook off..I want to have the best chili!!

aaaaand, there have been a bunch of chili threads in the past on a2k, with much enthusiastic commentary - which might give you some ideas and a headache from the razzing by posters.

I suggest you search first on 'search tags', but the tags system hasn't amassed all that much data in a few weeks - better to check at the google link right at the top of the page and add the keywords (key words?) chile, chili, brown sugar, beans, and see what shows up.

Our search system will improve shortly, but is in transition.

I do remember some great threads.. involving Farmerman, Setanta, both right in there as cooks, and others.

all in good fun.. i appreciate your suggestions.. I found this site by Googling secret chili ingredients.. so I guess the guiness and the brown sugar are out! ha

I've saved some guinness stew recipes myself, but, then of course, they're not about beans. Will post back here if I find anything useful for you.

We've just transitioned to the tagging system here, and there are scads of food threads untagged. I'm working my way through them for some kind of elementary tagging, at 50 per page, but not very far along yet.

Meantime, welcome to a2k, N'girl.

I just stumbled onto this site so thank you and have fun tagging..

What can I say, stick around...

What kind of chili are you attempting to make, the authentic beanless chili con carne or the fake chili with mostly beans?

You need sugar, but not brown. Any recipe involving hot spice requires sweetness to offset the heat. Cane sugar will do - add salt and lime/lemon juice to let that hot/sweet flavour develop. If you want to have tomato in the mix - that also requires sweetness to counter the acidity.

Also, cumin. A garlic clove too won't hurt.

Don't need to add fish or shrimp paste. And it does make an excellent non-meat dish.

I add curry powder (Madras, yellow color) to my chili and green peas and mango skins.