I pride myself on being a DIY kind of cook. I like to start with basic ingredients and make things from scratch whenever possible. That said, with a demanding schedule, in an effort to cook at home more often, I sometimes resort to items of convenience. Enter Homemade in Minutes - Cincinnati Chili.
This Cincinnati chili is a mix made by Frontier Soups. We acquired ours from Central Market’s North Lamar location here in Austin. Sean was initially drawn to this mix because it included a little sack full of chocolate chunks. How interesting – chili with chocolate in it!! We bought the relatively uncomplicated additional ingredients, a complete list of which (including the chili mix itself) can be found here.
The recipe makes a point of calling for sweet barbecue sauce rather than smoky. Interesting note – Texas is not known for its sweet barbecue sauce. We scoured the shelves at CM before finally settling on Rufus Teague Honey Sweet sauce. (The sauce is made in Kansas City – go figure.) Anyway, we were lucky that our only real option was a fantastic one – I could’ve eaten the sauce by itself it was so fantastic.
The chili really only took about 45 minutes to make and it was very tasty. It was well seasoned (I didn’t need to add any salt!), and the chocolate lent it a wonderful depth of flavor and a mildly creamy texture. Delicious! With a nod toward proper Cincinnati-style, we dumped it on pasta and topped it off with some cheddar cheese. According to Wikipedia, we should also have served it with onions and oyster crackers, but oh well, it was darned good anyway.
I would definitely make this one again, and since the mix has a long shelf-life, I may just snag a couple to keep around the house for just in case.