Here’s our recipe to support our video on making our home made chili!  We thought about doing videos for some time, so here we go…  I was being modest in the video, but this is a two time award winning chili  recipe.  More about that later.

Watch our short 5 minute video to see the details how to assemble. It takes about 5-6 hours for the beans to get to proper tenderness, so start this earlier in the day. There is a way to speed up the cooking time, see notes below.

Here are the details on how to assemble:

1. Brown the ground beef & sausage (2 lbs total) on low-medium heat. While it’s browning, chop the onion, garlic & green pepper and add.  Keep on low-medium heat
   

   Start the meat browning in a pot, meanwhile chop onion, bell pepper, and garlic

   

   Brown the meat – be sure to break out chunks into small pieces – add veggies and simmer on low-medium heat

2. Meanwhile, get things going in the crock pot (high heat): (stop 2 times while doing all this to stir up the meat / veggie mixture) First, spray the crock pot with Pam/cooking oil which makes cleanup much easier. Pour in 4 cups beef broth, 1 cup each of dried kidney, pinto and black beans, 2 cans Rotel or any diced tomatoes .  Add all spices: 3 Tbs chili powder, 1 tsp each of onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, smoked paprika, Italian seasoning, pepper, salt .  Add or subtract other spices based on your preferences  Also – hot sauce!  1 Tbs+  …Optional – 1-2 cups pumpkin puree
   

   Gather all the spices, beans and tomatoes

   

   Add as much or little hot sauce to your taste

   

   Add all the spices. You dont have to be shy on amounts!

   

   Pour in pumpkin puree

3. By now, the meat/onion/pepper mix should be ready – pour it all in, don’t drain any juices.  And now for the topper!  2 cinnamon sticks!
   

   When onions are transparent, peppers tender and meat browned, pour into crock pot

4. It’s now time to set it and forget it!  Close the crock pot lid tightly, keep on high heat.  Once every hour, stir up the chili.  After about 4 hours, you will probably need to add a cup of beef broth.  At the 4 or 5 hour mark you can sample a few beans to test – if beans are crunchy, they are not done yet, you want them firm but not mushy (al dente) – typically this will be 6 hours –
   

   Flag House Inn Chili

5. Once the get beans are done, turn heat down to warm until ready to serve
6. Time to serve!  Garnishing & plating – use any combination of sour cream/plain Greek yogurt, grated cheddar, scallions, hot sauce
   

   Flag House Inn chili

Notes

1. You can substitute ground beef, sausage, meatloaf mix, bison etc freely. It just needs to add up to 2 lbs. of  meat.
2. You don’t have to use a crock pot, you can also use a large Dutch oven, Instant Pot etc… Just watch the heat control, we prefer to keep everything on a very low simmer.  More heat cooks the beans faster but you need to stir more frequently.
3. You can use canned beans but we don’t recommend; the beans have less taste and are mushy.  If you don’t have the 4-6 hours to cook the beans, you can speed up the process by cooking beans by themselves in a large saucepan at medium heat – boil the beans 30-60 minutes until cooked but firm.  If you have other dry or canned beans, ok to substitute – this is a very forgiving recipe!

Shopping List

1 lb. ground beef

1 lb. ground sausage

1 large sweet onion

1 large bell pepper

1 Tbs fresh/minced garlic

1 Tbs minced garlic

5 cups beef broth – (any kind ok – canned/bouillon cubes)

3 cups dry beans – 1 cup each dry beans – Pinto, Black bean, kidney

2 cans Rotel diced tomatoes (other brands/types ok)

i small can tomato paste

(optional) – 1-2 cups pumpkin puree (easiest to use one 15 oz. can pumpkin)

Spices – 1 Tbs hot sauce, 3 Tbs chili powder, 1 tsp each cumin, cinnamon sticks, Italian seasoning, garlic, salt, pepper, chili powder – whatever you want

Oh, those awards – we have participated in several chili cookoffs through the years, and we have taken a second and first in a car club chili cookoff …