Why Hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophes, the site that doesn’t have an S, no matter how many times I write it with one. I’m your Constantly Incorrect Author, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe is simple, and for stupid reasons. If you want to skip straight to simplicity, click here to whip up a bowl of chili. If you want to hear me overcomplicate things, let’s forge on.

 

I Gotta Go Fast

Today’s recipe is, fundamentally, because the new Sonic the Hedgehog comes out this week.

“Oh, I didn’t know Jon was a Sonic fan,” you mutter to yourself.  And that’s because I’m really not. Like, I owned ONE sonic game, and I played it fairly often as a kid. I watched the show as a kid a couple times. I just scored a 72% on some “Ultimate Sonic Fan” quiz, but that was mostly just by knowing people’s names and having a vague understanding of all the nonsense that goes on with emeralds in the games.

Seriously, in the Sonic Universe, this collection of rocks would basically make you a God.

Instead, the idea came to me as a sort of domino effect: Back in December, I was eyeing up January and February for Trivia ideas, since I now run a local trivia game, and I noted that Sonic the Hedgehog was coming out basically ON Valentine’s Day. And I said “Well, shit. There’s no way I’m going to be able to have both of those on the same trivia.” I decided I would probably do Valentine’s Day Trivia and thought to myself “well, them’s the breaks.” And stopped thinking about it. Then, a DAY later, Binging with Babish made Chili Dogs from the Irishman. Which reminded me: “Hey, Sonic the Hedgehog also loves Chili Dogs Maybe I could do something for it on the site...”Then, in January, I repeated a task I have tried multiple times, to no avail: I gathered my mother and Nate, and pitched a list of meal ideas I was considering for the site, and asked for input. To which I received the standard response: A series of non-committal grunts, shrugs, nods, and other generic forms of “that sounds fine, do whatever.” Except my mom happened to toss out “chili dogs” as something she wanted.

With the thing popping up three times in a row, I decided it was clearly something to get on top of. I just had ONE problem: what the hell was I supposed to make? See, the thing is that, when my family makes Chili Dogs (the relatively few times we’ve done so), we’ve gone full “no effort Americana”: Canned chili, store-bought dogs and buns, pre-shredded cheese. Just NOTHING that’s “cooked” in a sense that would be interesting to read. And on the other hand, while my family has a chili recipe that we’re quite proud of, it is NOT formulated to go on Hot Dogs. It has far too many beans and veggies in the mix. So I couldn’t make my family’s chili, nor could I make a “normal” chili dog. Which meant I had to make SOME of the components, but not all. And I’ll be honest, whether this was going to be a post about home-made hot-dogs or homemade simple chili FOR chili dogs was an open question until Friday night. I TECHNICALLY had everything I needed to make hot dogs, assuming the local butcher had casings, beef, and beef fat. The only reason we’re not currently talking about home-made hot-dogs is because a 30 second inspection of their freezer section didn’t show any pre-packaged beef fat, and since the Hot dog recipe would take HOURS to make instead of 30 minutes, I wasn’t willing to invest more than 30 seconds blocking a small walkway to give myself more work.

I mean, I didn’t read EVERY package,but I eyeballed more than a few.

So instead I bought several weird ingredients, one of which you may hear about another time, and decided to make Hot Dog Chili. How does one MAKE Hot Dog Chili? A Good question. Let’s discuss it.

 

Just Chillin’ with the Dawgs.

This is where I ran into some considerations/issues. As I noted, I wasn’t going to make my father’s chili, since it was too chunky and thick to go on Hot dogs. But…how thick was thick enough?

I have a rule not to take advice from cars, but I could be convinced to ignore that rule.

And this really opens a DEEP can of worms, because, as I’ve mentioned before (Editor’s Note: It is at this Juncture that Jon tried to access the site to check exactly what he HAD mentioned before, and discovered the site was having technical concerns. This revelation took quite some time to even partially resolve) AS I’M SURE I’VE MENTIONED BEFORE, Chili is a complicated dish. It has a complicated etymology, and there’s a great deal of discussion on what makes the best chili, and/or what the ideal chili contains. We’ll explore this more on Thursday, but basically, the big question was: are there going to be beans in this batch?

If you’re unaware, whether or not beans belong in chili is a hotly contested issue in many camps. Personally, and I understand this will upset some people, I believe that chili SHOULD have beans in it. By which I mean that my personal idea of a perfect bowl of chili comes with beans. I understand and accept that others do not feel that way. HOWEVER, I wasn’t sure that I wanted them in this batch: the Beans in chili provide both starch and additional protein to the stew, which…aren’t really needed if you’re going to pour it over Hot Dogs and Hot Dog Buns. And while I knew it wouldn’t be HARD to add beans, most of the chili-dog recipes I checked didn’t use them, so I decided not to. As such, I’ve decided to not put beans in this batch of chili, while asserting that I believe the perfect Bowl of Chili has beans, threading the needle to piss off both camps.

It takes effort to be this frustrating.

Alright, this section was going to be longer, but the distraction by the technical issues killed my train of thought and ate up writing time, so let’s get this thing MADE.

 

A Big Ol Pot of Trouble

This recipe is maybe the platonic ideal of what I call a “dump recipe”. And since we’re going with a less complex/vegetal chili, we don’t need to break down as many components, so it’ll cook faster too.

The first thing to do is get a solidly size pot, and get it up over medium heat. You should probably put a little bit of oil in the bottom of it, and then add a pound of ground beef.

Because I’m a hypocrite, I did NOT put the oil in.
And that’s why I suggest you do.

This is a matter of preferred technique, but I did not, as many recipes did, immediately add water and other liquids. This would steam/boil the beef instead of frying it, which is a perfectly valid approach, I just prefer the extra beefiness I get from browning the beef in a good fry beforehand.

I then compensated for this bit of technique by utterly fucking up my onion entry. Intentionally, but still. See, what you SHOULD do is take the beef out, and then add the onions, stirring to translucence and golden brown. That’s because the onions, in sweating out their juices, are going to deglaze the fond you just created by frying the beef, and it allows you to fully cook both the beef and the onions without overcooking either. But, on the other hand, that would mean I’d have to like, dirty another bowl to hold the beef while the onions softened. And I just couldn’t be bothered today. So the onions just went straight in the pan with the beef still in.

Pictured: Laziness.

Give it a couple minutes to soften up, and then you can start adding the rest of your flavoring components. I started with a tablespoon of beef bouillon paste, because…Look, because I like adding it to beef dishes. It’s more beef flavor and saltiness. I THEN added a little bit of water to fully deglaze any fond on the bottom of the pan, before adding a 15 oz can of tomato sauce, and started seasoning.

Getting a little steamy up in here.

This is a very slapdash operation, and it’s one you can twist to your personal preferences. For instance, the recipe I was taking inspiration didn’t use any cumin in their chili, except what was already in the chili powder. As we’ve mentioned before, “Chili Powder”, as opposed to “chile powder”, is essentially a pre-mixed blend of spices used in Chili, including cayenne, cumin, oregano, garlic, and salt. (Different manufacturers will balance them differently) And from this point, it’s all a matter of taste. I personally found the original mix of the recipe I little bland, which could easily be due to older spices in my pantry, so I increased the amount of chili powder, added some additional cumin, added some smoked paprika and a little extra cayenne, and added some more onion and garlic powder.

I also increased the spices because I had used more tomato sauce than the recipe called for, because they wanted me to use half the can, and then add water and ketchup. Which felt untidy to me, since Ketchup Is basically just tomato paste mixed with sugar, vinegar, and spices. And Tomato sauce is just tomato puree mixed with spices. So why change spiced tomato products? I can just add vinegar and sugar to this pot! A plan that probably would have gone better if I then remembered to do either of those things. Instead, I just replaced the ketchup and water with more tomato sauce, and increased the spices.

I was going to have another picture of the pot here, but I looked in, and it was functionally indistinguishable from the first pic, so I decided instead to take a picture of THE KING.
(That’s what El Rey means.)

If all of this sounds chaotic and unplanned, it’s because it is, and that’s fine: chili is a pretty accommodating stew, and as long as you don’t add a ton of an ingredient, you can typically just taste it and see if it’s where you want it. Just remember to be careful particularly with anything that adds a lot of hit (ie, cayenne), the cumin, and the salt: as you reduce the liquid, the salt content is going to increase, so just because it tastes under-seasoned 5 minutes in doesn’t mean it will twenty minutes from now.

Once it’s all in the pot, simmer it for about 20 minutes with the lid on, and another 10 or so minutes with the lid off to help reduce and thicken the chili. If it looks like it’s a little too reduced (meaning it’s gotten too thick), I loosened mine with a little bit of beef broth, for more meaty flavor, but you could do veggie broth, mushroom broth, water, whatever. Now, if you’re SMART, it’s time to prep the hot dogs and get things going. I, however, am not. Because I tried to time this recipe to make Lunch before my brother’s closing show…and forgot that, obviously, he needs time to DRIVE to the theater, so I was finishing the recipe like,  6 minutes after he needed to leave. As such, I had to let my chili cool, move it to a quart container, and pop it into the fridge for a couple hours.

True fact: I have been using one of these quart containers as my chef-y water bottle for like, the last month.
Also, this is a nice picture of the chili. But the important thing is you know that I’ve been keeping hydrated.

Once my brother was done running around the stage in my size 13 High Heels, it was time to reheat the chili, and get the assembly up and going. Now, Sonic almost always eats his Chili Dogs as a hand-held unit, which I personally think are weak-ass chili dogs. For my money, the correct assembly of chili dogs is a platform of toasted buns, some split-open and seared hot dogs, and a blanket of chili and cheese over the top. Basically an open-faced sandwich of hot dog, chili, and cheese.

My mother prefers to dice up her hot dogs, and likes her buns soft in the mix, but otherwise, that’s the system we use: griddled (or pan-fried) hot dogs, with chili on top. Now, if you’re having trouble splitting your hot dogs precisely in half for griddling, join the club. I cut three hot dogs for the recipe, and NONE of them were right.

Also, trying to tear them in half doesn’t really help, though it does create a lot more surface area.

I sprinkled my hot dog with some suspicious shredded cheddar: despite my family loving to collect cheeses, we often forget the pre-shredded, simple day-to-day kinds, so we have to rely on bags whose expiration dates mean nothing because my mother’s solution to the issue is to buy and freeze bags of the shredded stuff when it’s on sale to pull out for use later. So my bag of Cheddar Cheese gleefully informed me that it expired back in 2018. As Nate pointed out, however, shredded cheese is an easy food to check. If it smells right and looks right, and you can see the whole bag, you’re fine. If it smells funky, or you see any mold, toss the whole bag. Or just, you know, maintain your cheese drawer better than we do. I had absolutely no ill effects, so the cheddar was fine, it was just a bit of a gamble.

And it’s not like we come to chili dogs for SAFETY.

And the results were….perfectly adequate. Was this the best chili I’d ever had in my life? Not by a long shot. But for only being 40 minutes of cooking, and only needing one ingredient chopped, it was easily the best ratio of effort to quality I’ve encountered in a long time. I’d put it on par with a mid-range canned chili. Everyone agreed that they weren’t mind-blowing, but they were pretty good, or “solid”, and that’s not always the easiest needle to thread between mother, Nathan, and me. So if you want a quick and easy chili recipe to dump on Chili Dogs (or chili burgers, or Chili omelettes), I’d say this one’s solid. I wouldn’t eat it on its own, since it doesn’t have a lot of structure, but as a topping chili, it’s a great turn-around.

I’d particularly like to thank our Patreon supporters today, since we’ve been working with some technical issues, and it’s through their support that we can afford to handle the technical costs of the site. You all are All-stars. But we’re also always happy to see our many friends who support us by sharing and liking our content on Social media, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

 

THURSDAY: JON BREAKS DOWN CHILIS. THE FOOD, NOT THE BUSINESS. THEIR TIME WILL COME SOON ENOUGH.

MONDAY: JON SCREWS UP MAKING A SANDWICH WITH ARGUABLY ONLY 4 STEPS, AFTER MONTHS OF WAITING TO MAKE IT.

 

Recipe

Jon’s Very Loose Recipe for “Topping” Chili

Serves 4

 

Ingredients

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 pound ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tbsp beef bouillion paste (optional)

¼ cup water

1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce

1 tbsp chili powder

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp smoked paprika

¼ tsp cayenne

¼ tsp onion powder

¼ tsp garlic powder

½ cup beef broth, to thin (if needed)

 

Preparation

1. Bring a medium saucepan or pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the beef, and let sit, undisturbed, for 3 or so minutes to brown. Break up the beef, and cook until fully browned. Add the onions, and lower the heat to medium, stirring and cooking to soften, an additional 5 minutes or so.

2. Add the bouillon paste, if using, and stir to incorporate. Then add the water, and scrape the bottom of the pan clean of all browned bits. Add tomato paste and all seasonings, and mix thoroughly. Cover, bring to a simmer, and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer 15-20 minutes covered, then remove the lid and continue simmering to reduce. Taste over the last 5 minutes, and add additional seasoning as required, and thin with the beef broth if your mixture is too firm.

3. Spoon over desired product, and eat.

 

Chili Dogs

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 hot dogs, split down the middle

4 hot dog buns, buttered on the inside

One recipe Chili (above)

Chopped onion and Cheddar cheese (optional) for topping.

Preparation

1. Over medium heat, toast the hot dog buns until crisped and slightly browned. Then, in the same pan, griddle the hot dogs for around 3 minutes per side.

2. Place the buns, spread open on a plate, place hot dogs on top of the buns, and spoon over hot Chili. Top with Cheese and onions if desired, and serve.