I love chili, I really really love chili. But I’m an impatient guy, so waiting for a batch to cook up in the crock pot or slow cooker jsut doesn’t work for me. Thankfully i watch alot of food network, and the great Alton Brown of “Good Eats” provided me with a way to get my chili fast and delicious via pressure cooker. My recipe with the technique he showed on the episode has created what I am proud to say is the best chili I’ve ever tasted, and apparently alot of my friends and coworkers agree as I’ve been getting harassed for the recipe. So here we go.
1 pound ground buffalo (ground beef or turkey would also work)
2 pounds sirloin steak cubed (or your meat of choice)
1 and 1/2 bottles of beer (18 ounces total) I prefer Corona but any medium to light beer you prefer
1 bottle (16 ounces) of your favorite salsa (medium)
6 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce diced (you’ll need about 2 tablespoons of the sauce)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon of your favorite Chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
24 tortilla chips (I like the hint of lime ones personally)
To start you’ll need a pressure cooker (6 to 8 quarts should do you), you can find them at most stores that sell pots and pans and the like. First heat the pressure cooker up to medium high and throw in the ground meat of your choosing and cook till browned. Then pour it out into a separate bowl and toss in the first pound cubed meat. Let it brown and repeat for the last pound of meat.
Once it all browned and removed from the pot your going to pour the beer into the pot and start using it to deglaze the pot by scraping all the little black and brown bits of meat sticking to the pot off. This will be the beginnings of your sauce. Once you’ve finished deglazing go ahead and thrown the meat back into the pot. Then all the diced chipotles, adobo sauce, tomato paste, chili powder, salsa, and ground cumin. Stir well.
Finally your going to take all those tortilla chips and crush them up into a rough powder, this will be the thickening agent for your chili. If you prefer a thinner sauce you can leave these out, but if you do make sure to add about 2 teaspoons of salt to make up for it. Once the chips are crushed and mixed into go ahead and put the lid on your pressure cooker.
Now make sure you’ve read the directions on your cooker before you do this, there are alot of safety features built into these things, but you still have to be careful. Once the lid is on turn the heat up to high and wait till the steam begins to hiss. Trust me your know, it makes a nice loud whistle. At that time drop the temperature to low and let cook for 25 minutes. You should still have a faint whistle during this time, if you don’t turn the heat up jsut a notch till you do.
When your 25 minutes are up remove from heat, release the pressure and steam via your cookers directions, and serve. Its even better the second day around, though leftovers are rather rare.
A note, this chili is a bit spicy, you can mellow it out some by cutting the number of chipotles and going with a mild salsa. On the other hand if you hot to really bring the heat add more peppers and go with a hot salsa. Thats the great thing about chili, you can make it your own jsut by switching up a few things.