Chili

Time: 5 hours
Serves: 8-10
Goes with: Rice, Fries, Chips, Grated cheese, Sour cream, Guasacaca

This has been converted for ease of uk shopping, chiles were still ordered online though. Miss ingredients out where you fancy (e.g. don't have marmite, don't worry). It's pretty mild according to my tastes, and I've dropped ingredients all over (most notably coffee for allergies), see the original at The Food Lab here.

• 1.3kg stewing steak such as beef shin
• 400g pork belly

• 1.6kg canned red kidney/pinto beans, or 500g dried, soaked overnight
• 3 whole Ancho/Pasilla dried chiles
• 2 whole Guajillo dried, or New Mexico red/California/Costeño/Choricero chiles
• (optional) 1 chipotle chile
• (optional) 1 dried bird chile (or other hot, such as Cascabel/Arbol/Pequin, more if like spicy)

• 1.1 litre chicken stock
• 1 large onion, diced fine
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 2 bay leaves
• 800g chopped tomatoes
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp dark brown sugar

• Blending jug:
• Toasted/ground spices
• 1.5 tbsp whole cumin seeds
• 0.5 tbsp whole coriander seeds
• 2 cloves
• 1 star anise
• 1 tsp fish sauce (or 2 anchovy fillets)
• 1 tsp marmite
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 30g unsweetened dark chocolate, broken up
• (optional) 1 tsp peanut butter
• (optional) 3 sundried tomatoes

1. Ingredients out. (Note steps 2 and 3 are parallel if you have a second cook)
2. Meat:
1. Remove the rind from the pork belly (dry, cut into strips, salt, make crackling)
2. Roughly remove any bone, gristle, or excess fat from all meat
3. Cut into large (~1.5 inch) slices/chunks
4. Season meat on all sides with salt and pepper
5. In frying pans in batches, brown the meat heavily on one side only, move to a bowl, allow to cool
6. Pour any remaining juices into your blender/processor
3. Chili puree:
1. Get 'Blending jug' ingredients
2. Toast and grind spices
3. Add all ingredients to wherever you process things
4. Make the stock
5. De-stalk the chiles, then toast them on a high heat, flattening with a spatula for 2 to 5 minutes. Toasted but not burnt, careful.
6. Stew them in a 1-2 cups of stock until softened, 5-8 minutes
7. Add the chiles to the processor, blitz until smooth, around 2 minutes
4. Open, drain, and rinse kidney beans, put in a large bowl
5. Dice onion, mince garlic, keep separate on a plate
6. Chop the meat into 1-1.5 inch chunks

Break if you want, 5-6 hours from here

1. Preheat oven 125C
2. 4tbsp veg oil into 5-litre dutch oven, medium heat
3. Cook onions until softened not browned, 6 to 8 minutes
4. Add garlic and the 1tbsp dried oregano, cook 1 minute
5. Add chile puree and cook, stirring frequently and scraping bottom of pot until chile mixture begins to fry and leaves a coating on bottom of pan, 2 to 4 minutes
6. Add remaining chicken stock, meat, bay leaves, scrape the bottom of the pan
7. Bring to a simmer, then into the oven, lid slightly ajar for 1 hour (2 hours if it's shin not chuck)
8. Add the beans, tomatoes, cider vinegar and stir
9. Cook at a gentle simmer with cover slightly ajar until beans and beef are tender and broth is rich and lightly thickened, 3 hours longer, adding water if necessary to keep beans and meat (mostly) submerged. Note if using beef shin, this can take another hour on top until it's right and tender but not fallen apart - taste.
10. Discard bay leaves, then pretend you can taste them in the final dish
11. Add brown sugar, and add salt, pepper, more vinegar, to taste
12. Serve, ideally after being in fridge overnight