Papaw’s Stove Top Chili

When I was young, my Dad would make chili on a cold fall weekend. I wasn’t real fond of his chili, because he liked beans. He would add as many variety of beans in his mix that we had on-hand in the pantry. Then he let it cook all day on top of the stove.

It smelled great, as it wafted through the house. But I don’t like beans. My recipe is much like his, with a few tweaks. Like, I don’t add beans. You certainly can add your favorites to this mix. But no thanks. 😉

The trick to good chili is the meat. You can use chicken or beef with this recipe. But if you use beef, make it a good quality ground beef. Back in the early 2000s, we tried Bison with this recipe and it was extraordinarily fabulous. I highly suggest using it for any of your home cooked beef ground meals!

Also: You might like to try the Slow Cooked Chili recipe as well. It’s different from this one.

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 4 Hours
Serves: 9 to 12

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs ground Bison Beef (buffalo meat)
• 1 12 to 14oz Hunts Tomato Sauce
• 1 12 to 14oz can Hunts Stewed Tomatoes
• 1 12oz can Hunts Tomato Paste
• ½ cup Welch’s Concord Grape Jelly
• 1 shot Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey
• 1 cup water
• 1 Package McCormick Chili Seasoning mix (*pick your favor)
• 1 Beef Bullion Cube
• 1 sm Onion (chopped it should make about 1 cup)
• 1 pkg Heinz Bacon Bits
• 1 tspn  salt
• 1 tspn pepper
• Large Stove Top Stew pot
  Optional Beans
• 1 can pinto beans
• 1 can black beans
• 1 can kidney beans

Directions:

• Lightly brown the bison beef in a skillet over medium heat.
  Keep the beef crumbled as you cook it. I use 2 forks to separate any clumps that cook together.
• While the beef is cooking, add all the wet ingredients to the pot (see the Note) on medium heat and mix it together well.
  Note: Pour the liquid from the stewed tomatoes into the pot, but hold back the tomatoes themselves. You’ll need to cut these down into smaller cubed pieces. Then stir them into the pot.
• If you’re going to add beans to your chili, add those to the pot now too.
• Dice the onion and crumble it into the beef to saute in the grease.
• When the beef has browned slightly, add the beef/onion mix to the pot and stir thoroughly into the liquid.
• Do not cover the pot! Cook on medium heat for 4 hours, stirring every hour.
  If the chili looks like it’s drying out too much, add ½ cup of water.
  If the chili looks too watery, add 30 minutes at a time to boil off more liquid.

Alternatives:

• * McCormick makes a variety of Chili powders. From the plain Chili Seasoning that we use, to a mild, hot, gluten free, and they even have a white sauce chili powder. Pick your favorite.
• Try adding 3 or 4 chopped celery sticks.
• You can add elbow noodles, but also add ½ cup water.
• You can pick your flavor of Chili sauce, we like Mild. You can certainly add hot to yours.
• For a hotter chili, add 2 unchopped red chili peppers to soak in the mix.

Serve:

• Serve hot and top with cheddar cheese
• Add a dab of sour cream on top of the chili for those who like it
• Serve with corn bread or Tostitos chips for dipping. We also like having Hawaiian Sweet Rolls with our chili.

© 1997-2019 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D., Springwolf’s Creations. All Rights Reserved.