Burger Night

As with hamburgers, the exact origin of chili is widely debated.  The most frequent and seemingly most reputable claims say San Antonio, TX is where it began.  In March of 1731, Spaniards held the settlement, then known as Bexar, with the French vying for control.  The Spaniards sent word to their king to send more settlers for support.  The king sent sixteen families, accustomed to spicy foods and garlic, from the Canary Islands.  Their adaptation to the culinary environment found the first recipes for chile con carne.  What exactly those recipes were… no one knows.  

Of course, cowboys greatly popularized chili- and this is where my favorite recipes come from- the chuckwagons.  The recipes of necessity and optimization.  The best method of preserving meats at that time was by salting and drying.  There are accounts of trail men carrying simply dried, salted beef pressed into bricks with chilipiquines(wild peppers).  Alone insufficient for a meal, and to keep their load light, along the frequented trails the travelers would plant onions, garlic and oregano near the rugged mesquite trees- to dissuade animals from stealing their harvest.

(man camped in the mesquite brush near Uvalde, TX)

Sounds good.  Some adjustments seemed prudent.  Here’s 1.7 lbs. of chuck- cut into pieces “the size of pecans”- a descriptive phrase used commonly in old chili recipes:  

To technically cure meats, one needs to add at least 20% of the weight in salt.  Being that I have the luxury of refrigeration and sanity, I opted to tone that down.  Three tablespoons of salt were tossed with the beef bits and set to dry for 3 days:

Commercially produced chilipiquines are spicy as hell(wild, old growth plants produce sweeter fruit), so to make a brew based on that would be suicide.  Subbed in were ancho and dundicut peppers.  First, the beef, onions and garlic were browned, then the rest was added- peppers, cumin, black pepper, Mexican oregano, bay leaves, 6 cups of water and a little corn flour:

After another hour and a half of simmering the meat was tender and the stew thick:

Still a little salty- just from the beef- and it would benefit from a touch of sweetness, but a very unique and intensely rich bowl all the same.  The beans can stay gone forever, but adding tomatoes might be a good idea.  The texture and flavor of the half cured beef was like moist, tender jerky- quite awesome.

Yes, Burger Night will have chili.

Onward and upward.

My new cutter:

I’m loving the 1/4” fries, four at a time.  

Prepared in tedious fashion:

Peeled, cut, rinsed, soaked in .05% enzyme solution for 1.5 hrs., blanched in straight boiling 2% salt water for 12:00 minutes, fried in peanut oil at 330º for 1:30 minutes, drained, shaken, let sit for 5 minutes while oil reheated to 375º, then dropped for an additional 1:30 minutes.  

Result:  Fry Porn

oh…

…my.

They were very good.  Next time I will reduce the salt in the blanch water.  They weren’t overly salty, but I like a little salt on the outside, and these didn’t call for it.  I also would like to try adding some vinegar to the blanch water to try and block the enzyme from letting the exteriors starch break down too much.  These were very fragile coming out of the blanch.  I’ll also try blanching for a shorter time, but I think it’s pretty much conclusive that you need to overcook them to get the right texture.  More experiments are in order.  There’s also a special ingredient I want to try in the blanch water, but I can’t tell you about it yet.

I will freeze the remainder of single fried fries to be cooked later.  Frozen fries are purported to have a fluffier texture than unfrozen due to the crystallization of moisture on the interior piercing the starch further.  I have not noticed much of a difference in past experiments.  However, this process could use another step or two.