Won 3rd place at local chili cook off this weekend

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SmokinAl

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We took our chili recipe & toned it down because we thought it was to spicy for a competition. We were wrong, we toned it down too much. The chili that won was spicier than ours. I think if we had made it a little more spicy we could have won. Well we'll work on it for next years competition. But since this was our first try we were happy with 3rd place. We used ground chuck, hot Italian sausage, & bacon for the meat part. The thing we did different than all the other competitors was we smoked the ground chuck & sausage before adding it to the chili. It really gave it a great flavor.Here's the recipe. The ingredients in red at the end are from the original recipe & if you want to add some heat just add any or all of them.

Al’s chili cook off recipe

List #1

2 lbs. ground chuck 80/20

2 lbs. hot Italian sausage links

1 lb. thick cut bacon

List #2

1 lg. sweet onion

3 green onions

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

1 orange pepper

1 yellow pepper

2 jalapeno peppers

4 stalks celery

5 cloves garlic

8 oz. mushrooms

List #3

2# tomato sauce

2# diced tomato’s

1 pkg. chili seasoning ( I use French’s )

2 tbs chili powder

2 tsp cumin

¼ tsp worcestershire

2/3 tsp oregano

2/3 cu beef stock

Fry bacon until crisp. Save bacon grease.

Form 4 burgers with the 2# of ground chuck.

Put burgers & sausage links in smoker, smoke burgers about 1 ½ hours, and sausage about 2 hours @ 220. I put them in the smoker cold when I first light it up. If you let the smoker get to temp first then put meat in I would take a half hour off smoke time.

Chop bacon & burgers up into small bite size pieces, remove sausage casing & chop sausage into bite size pieces too.

Chop or dice all ingredients in list #2

Put ingredients in list #3, in large pot on med. heat, also add saved bacon grease

Add ingredient list #2 to pot.

Put burgers & sausage in smoker the same time you start cooking the other ingredients in the pot.

When done smoking and after chopping up, add burger meat, sausage, and bacon to pot.

Total cook time 4 hours, so meat will only be in pot 2 hours. Cool & refrigerate overnight. Reheat the next day. Enjoy!

 

The original calls for:

3 jalapeno's with seeds

1 1/2 to 2 packages of chili seasoning

5 tbs chili powder

1 tsp tabasco

2/3 tsp cayenne

Here's a photo of the ingredients.

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Here's the meat all cut up ready to go in.

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Here's the finished chili.

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Thanks for looking.
 
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Congrats that's great for a first competition
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I'd be interested in both the spicy and less spicy versions I'll send ya a PM
 
Yaaaaa!!

 Congrats Al!!

Looks delicious!

   Craig
 
Looks great.  How much time did they give you before judging?  Were you allowed to prep anything ahead of time or did you have to do it all on site?


We were allowed to prepare it at home, then just bring it to the comp & reheat it. We made it the day before, so it would sit in the fridge overnight. It's always better the next day.
 
Really looks great Al, and third place isn't too bad, plus you get to eat the rest of your Chile---Wish I could help!

Bear
 
Really looks great Al, and third place isn't too bad, plus you get to eat the rest of your Chile---Wish I could help!

Bear


We didn't get to eat it, we had to pass it out in small sample cups. All the contestants gave away all their chili. It was fun though, cause everyone thought our chili was awesome.
 
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Yes sir that looks like some right awesome looking chili there Al. Can I have some too. I just live up the road a piece.
 
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Thanks for all the kind remarks, I really appreciate it. I hope all of you who requested the recipe enjoy the chili as much as we did.
 
Excellent looking chili Al...Sometimes it's nice to get complements from a group of people. At least you got to try all the competitions chili and had fun doing it.
 
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