Quick & Easy Chili!!

Looking for an awesome tailgate grub that is both cheap and tasty?! This super-easy, super-quick way of making chili it sure to please the whole crowd!

The other day at work, a colleague was asking me about how to make chili and, well, that really put my in the mood to whip up a big batch!!

Making chili is a lot easier than you would think! All you have to do is gather the right stuff and throw it all together!

Check out just how easy it is to whip this up!

P.S. Thank you very much for reading this Instructable!! As this is an entry into the Tailgating Contest, I would very greatly appreciate your vote for winning submission! Please be sure to click the "Vote!" button in the upper-right! Thanks! --Steve

For this big batch of chili, we're gonna need the following:

Two bigass cans of stewed tomatoes

5 cans of chili beans (red, black, & kidney in chili sauce)

2-3 packets of (low-sodium) chili seasonings

A green pepper

An onion

Dried hot peppers (if you're not a wuss!)

Sea salt & fresh ground black pepper

1 lb Italian pork sausage

1 pkg of smoked sausage

A rasher of bacon!

You can probably get all of this for around $20 and feed an army of hungry f-ball fans good grub on the cheap! Woot!

Could you get crazy and buy a bunch of stuff that isn't on this list that might go well in the batch?? Sure! Do whatever floats your chili-boat!

Get to whackin' up that green pepper! We're going for bite-size chunks here... So, not too small, & not too big!

Hack up the sausage on a bias and toss them in a frying pan until they get crispy edges! I like mine well-done so they retain some texture in the chili!

Word of the Day: Rasher!

rash·er noun \ˈra-shər\ : a thin slice of bacon or ham broiled or fried; also : a portion consisting of several such slices

When I buy bacon, I get the big package from Sam's Club, so I divide it up into smaller, more manageable portions for use in recipes that don't call for an entire pound of bacon! Grab a rasher (or two!) of bacon from the freezer, defrost them in the nuker, then fry 'em up! Once cooked, rough-chop the slices into large pieces and set them aside to add to the chili later!

When you're ready, tear apart approximately one pound of Italian-style ground pork as you toss it into a frying pan, then hit it with the heat! Get it sizzlin', then yank it off the stove and set it aside with the bacon when it's browned up nicely!

A fair amount of onion will add a ton of flavor to the chili, so hack up half a large white onion and a few green onions to throw in the pot! Keep in mind when chopping up all the stuff for your chili that you want the various ingredients all roughly the same size so that the mixture is somewhat homogeneous and nothing "gets lost in the mix". Capice?!

Once you've managed to get everything all hacked up and, in the case of the meat, fried up, it's time to chuck it all into the same pot before you add the cans of chili beans and stewed tomatoes! Doing so will allow you to add the right number of cans of each so that you get the consistency (viscosity) of the chili that you desire! Some people like it super chunky and sorta "dry", others like it a bit more on the "soupy" side! It's entirely up to you on how you make it come out!

Either way you say it, open your cans of stewed tomatoes and dump them into a big metal mixing bowl separate from the other ingredients, just for the moment. This will allow you to slice up the bigger chunks of tomatoes into more reasonable-sized pieces so that they don't dominate over other ingredients in the chili! Alternatively, you could chuck 'em in a blender and goose it a few times, but just be careful not to make tomato puree!

Oh, yeah... I don't actually say it "tah-mah-toe"... in fact, does anyone actually say it that way?! :)

Once the tomatoes are hacked up into bite-sized chunks, add this to the pot containing all of the other ingredients! At this point, it's time to add in the remaining seasonings that will combine with everything else to put the flavor over-the-top!

Given that you stuck with roughly the amounts of each ingredient that I had recommended earlier, you will probably need two packets of low-sodium chili seasoning as well as one more packet of Texas-style chili seasoning. Using the low-sodium chili seasoning will allow you to have more control over the amount of salt in the dish overall, to which you can always add later. This is also a good time to give it a coupla good cranks on the pepper grinder and toss in some garlic powder (which I didn't happen to have on-hand at the time I made this!). This would also be the time that you would be adding in some pulverized dried cayenne peppers that you grew in your garden last year!

Stir the batch up very well, then taste it! You'll likely need to make adjustments to the amounts of salt, pepper, and chili powder until you get it the way you'd like it! Be sure to stir up the batch very very well between each taste-test to ensure that the last bit of seasonings you added are well mixed-in before you pass judgement on whether or not it needs more of anything!

Hmm, this chili is lookin' good so far, but it needs something! A half-pound of mini penne pasta oughta set things right and bring balance back to the Universe! So, what are you waitin' for?! Boil them up and toss them in, then stir it up!! Don't forget to taste it again to see if any additional adjustments to the spices are necessary!

Quick tip! You'll want to under-cook the pasta just a little bit. Not a lot. By doing so, the pasta won't end up mushy after sitting in the pot with the rest of the ingredients for a few days in the fridge!

You may have noticed that, as a whole, we've done no cooking of the ingredients while they are all together! Some recipes call for chili to be slow-cooked for ages but, if you ask me, this is the way to make chili come out mushy and uninteresting with regard to texture! Simply cooking the meats separate before combining everything, then letting the whole batch sit for a few days to let the love happen is enough to get all of the various flavors to intermingle and will yield an incredible pot of chili without everything turning out excessively mushy!

Chili is always better after a few days, so be sure to make plenty of this chili ahead of time and factor in all of the "sampling" and "taste-tests" you'll inevitably do before bringing this out as the star player during your Super Bowl soiree! Don't forget to allow your people to take it "over-the-top" by having a variety of toppings like shredded cheese, sour cream, fresh sliced jalapenos, tortilla chips, and hot sauces available!

On the day of the party, all you have to do is dump it on in a slow-cooker on LOW, then give it time (and the occasional stir!) until it's hot enough to serve up! Could it get any easier?! I doubt it!!

Thank you very much for reading this Instructable!! As this is an entry into the Tailgating Contest, I would very greatly appreciate your vote for winning submission! Please be sure to click the "Vote!" button in the upper-right! Thanks!

P.S. Check out my food blog at HelluvaCook.com for other awesome recipes and shenanigans!