Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, where, in honor of the annual NFL Championship game, whose name is copywritten by a non-profit that is notably powerful and litigious, and the presence of a somewhat unlikely team to that vaunted stage, we’re making Cincinnati Chili. If you want to skip the deets and get to the meats, click this link. For everyone who wants to know why that title is protective and a pun, let’s dig in.

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah

Apparently, and I only just learned this, but that “sis boom bah” thing is supposed to be an imitation of a firework. It was originally “SSSSSS -BOOM – AHHH”. That’s neither here nor there, I just wrote the line and immediately thought “you know, that’s exactly the kind of weird phrase people expect me to know the meaning of. I should look it up.” Anywho, that title was actually supposed to allude to my immediate preface on this post, which I took to the actual TITLE to get ahead of: Cincinnati Chili, as with most chili, is one of the more intense “fight foods” in America. By which I mean it’s one of those dishes that people LOVE to fight over.

I just beg you don’t try and fight WITH the chili: Smearing chocolate icing on people is fun. Smearing “recently boiling” chili is a recipe for the hospital.

And Cincinnati Chili is ESPECIALLY ripe for the fight. Here are the unofficial and somewhat impromptu criteria of what makes a food a “fight food”:

-It tends to be something of a comfort or “special occasion” food. This is important, because it lays the groundwork for the fight itself: you need the stronger positive connections to justify the aggressive defense. People don’t fight over things they don’t care about. Pizza’s more of a fight food than hamburgers, for instance.

-It tends to be a food that has been partially co-opted into masculinity. By which I mean that, like, in the cultural lexicon of America, men aren’t categorized for cooking the same things as women. Dads do the grilling, moms do the baking. Chicken Soup is something your mom makes, but your dad makes chili. We don’t fight about tea, but we do fight about coffee. Stuff like that. It’s not that men are the ones fighting, necessarily, but there’s something in it. I THINK it’s connected with commercialism, in that a lot of male-based foods are that way in part because they’re associated more with meals you BUY instead of meals that you make, where the cooks or chefs are more likely to be men, and you’re therefore more willing to offer an opinion or criticism, because you’re approaching the food as a customer, not as a family member.

“This japchae’s too greasy” is the kind of comment you can give to a waiter, but not your mother, because the waiter doesn’t have decades of experience punishing you.

-Foods with regional variations are particularly well-suited, because it allows multiple sides to have semi-legitimate, self-reinforcing bases of support, meaning that people growing up in a region will naturally learn that region’s version as “correct”, unless expressly told “This is how we make it, but there are other ways to do it.”

-I feel like there’s another element I’m missing. I think…I think saying that they’re typically meat-based isn’t as off-kilter as it might seem, going deeper into the idea that they’re typically dishes that take commitment. Dishes that take hours to cook, or particular skill to do “well” (Pizza crust, for instance, is a known chimera of culinary issues) or that are expensive/would have been expensive. Meat was the big-ticket item for a long time, and often still is. If you burn a pound of broccoli, you’re out $3. Sucks, but whatever. A pound of GROUND beef is $10, so you gotta not mess it up. (That commitment also adds to the same thing with the comfort/special occasion food: it builds personal connection, and raises the stakes for the person cooking it. )

So you’ve got Chili, an already messy and fraught topic, and now you’re getting a specific regional variation, with…a LOT going on. So of course it’s very weird to people not from that area, AND it’s very fraught for people FROM that area. Small differences make for big arguments. So I want to preface this conversation by saying that I will attempt to explain the numerous potential variations of the dish, and that this specific version is simply my rendition of the idea. We good, Ohio? I mean, I LIKE Cincinnati…in theory. I’ve never been, but you’re named after one of the coolest dudes in Roman history: Cincinnatus!

An Unnecessary but Inescapable Political and Historical Aside

Cincinnatus was a Roman patrician (basically a noble) who went broke due to political strife, and retired to a farm. He was appointed dictator, a position in Rome that served as a kind of political panic button: Rome at the time was run by two Praetors/Consuls, below whom the Senate ruled. The Praetors generally agreed, but you could appeal one’s decision to the other one, and sometimes people felt that rather than have the Senate or Praetors handle something, it needed to be decided, and quickly, at which point the Senate could send up the Dictator-symbol and the Praetors would agree to pick a guy, and say “alright, THIS GUY is in charge, and he counts as a Super-Praetor”. The Dictator was, basically, the Roman state, and spoke with its full authority. There were a fair number of dictators who were appointed for relatively ceremonial things for this reason: they just needed ONE person to be “Rome” for a bit. Open the Roman version of the Olympics, or make a new Holiday, or try and appease the gods, etc. The non-ceremonial reasons tended to be “Oh shit, a bunch of guys just got, or need to get, murdered.” Like, one time, a battle went so bad for Rome that they had to make a dictator to appoint a bunch of dudes to the Senate because they didn’t have time to RE-ELECT ALL THE ONE WHO WERE JUST KILLED.

Say what you will about the Roman government. They had a remarkably hands-on approach to leadership, stabbing, and stabbing leadership.

Anywho, Cincinnatus was called up for one of the “murder needs doing” times, served as dictator competently and efficiently, and then quietly resigned, as was proper, and went back to work his farm. TWICE. The dude was handed supreme control of the Roman army, both times he solved the problem in under a month, and then he went back to being a middle-class farmer.

The story closely mirrored that of George Washington, which led to a BUNCH of people making references to it at the time, leading to the formation of a “Society of the Cincinnati”, referring to officers of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and their descendants, of which Washington was made the first president. 10 or 12 years later, the president of the society was Arthur St Clair, who was also governor of the “Northwest Territory” (aka “the Territory Northwest of the Rive Ohio”, not like, the Pacific Northwest), and renamed a newly-founded settlement after the society. What was I saying?

To the Meat of the Matter

So, Cincinnati Chili. Notable for being like Texas style chili, in a comparison that will piss off both parties. Specifically, both Texas Red Chili and Cincinnati Chili are bean-less. Cincinnati Chili is actually a lot like something we’ve made before, which was the chili for our chili dogs in honor of Sonic the Hedgehog, back in the last days of the Before Times. Put a pin in that for a second.

Take it from the hedgehod, if you need to.

And this recipe is actually very simple, if a little lengthy, which is one of the reasons I’ve been wallowing in definitions and history. It’s a “dump recipe”, as I call them, meaning you just dump things in the same pot over time. And in terms of Mise-en-place, there’s only two things you really need to care about: chopping onions, and mincing some garlic. And I didn’t even do the last one. (My family has recently started buying tubs of minced garlic from Asian markets. It’s at least appreciably finer minced than most store-bought kinds.) So really all I had to do was chop some onions and open a can of tomato paste and a can of tomato sauce.

This could be its own, tragic, meal.

Now, from there, it’s on to the real stars of the show: the spices. Cincinnati Chili has a specifically Mediterranean/Greek background. The most commonly attested lineage is that brothers Athanas “Tom” and Ivan “Jon” Kiradjieff, “Greek” immigrants fleeing the turmoil of the region at the time. I use the quotations because the town they were in used to be part of Macedonia, but was annexed into Greece years after they were born, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. They were born there to Bulgarian parents (the geographic region of “Macedonia” covers a region that is now in Greece, “north Macedonia, as the country is now called, and Bulgaria) So technically they were ethnically Bulgarian Macedonian Ottomans, who were born in what was now Greece, but were forced to move to Bulgaria following the annexation. And THEN World War 1 broke out, and they both had to serve in the Bulgarian Army. Like I said, lotta turmoil in the region at the time.

They created a version of the Coney Island Dog, theoretically based off of saltsa kima, a Macedonian/Greek sauce for spaghetti. They then said “alright, if the Americans like it on Hot Dogs, we can get them to eat it on spaghetti too, and they started selling “Chili spaghetti”. This led to the creation of Cincinnati Chili. They also created the “ways” system: as chili became more popular, people asked that more “traditional” chili toppings such as cheese and chopped onions be added. This became SO popular, that the brothers created a system for it: a “two way” order was just noodles and chili. Three way added shredded cheese. Four way either added beans or chopped onion. Sometimes a place will have a default, sometimes you’ll specify (ie “four way bean”). Five way was with both beans and onion.

The sauce was so popular, and blindingly simple to other immigrants that came to the region (many of them WORKING at the brothers’ Empress Chili), that they would take their family recipes for saltsa kima, and make their own version of Cincinnati Chili. This is partly why it’s such a “fight” food even for Cincinnatians (a demonym I purely guessed on, and am mildly offended was correct): while the original Empress itself was sold by Jon’s son Joe in 2009, the spin-offs are still popular. Skyline and Gold Star are two forerunners for “best” local variation, with devotees proclaiming one superior to the other. There is technically one location of the Empress still open in Kentucky. What makes them all different? Spices.

Seen here posing for their 2002 Alternative-Christian-Rock album cover.

This is why I specifically went out of my way to modify my version with its own mixture of spices: I can’t be forced to take a side if I make MY OWN SIDE. Specifically, I started with a relatively standard flavor base I saw repeated in a lot of recipes: Chili powder, salt, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, clove, etc. I DID steal from one recipe the idea of specifically using WHOLE allspice and cloves, which do, over the long simmering time of the sauce, breakdown to be quite soft. This was in part because at some point, we massively overcorrected from not having enough whole clove for Coke Ham, so that we actually had NO ground clove in the house, but THREE bottles of whole cloves.

Whole spices? In THIS economy?

Now, the first thing you want to do is warm up your tomato paste: get your pot heated up over medium heat, and plop in a whole 6 ounce can of tomato paste, and let it cook for 1-3 minutes. This will round out the tomato, and make sure there’s no faint metallic notes left from the canning. Then, you’re going to do something disgusting: add 2 pounds of ground beef, 80% lean, and 4 cups of water into the pot. Don’t brown the beef, just toss it in raw, and mix it with the water. You WANT the mixture to be a gross pink sludge.

Mmm, pink water and lumps.

This is for a couple reasons: firstly, it keeps the meat VERY soft. Unlike other chilis, this is really just a sauce, so it doesn’t want to have too toothsome a texture. You want it soft and rich. The water will also help the beef render out its fat gently, and it’ll mix the water and fat as you stir: this is important for the spices, some of which are more fat-soluble than water, so they’ll split their flavor more evenly. Some recipes have you bloom the spices in oil beforehand, others have you just cook the meat and water mixture, then add the spices later. (more on that in a bit.) SOME recipes use beef broth instead of water, and, in order to honor that, and make my recipe a little more distinct, I added 2 tsps of Better than Bouillon Beef Base. (This is basically a “half strength” mixture, as the normal recipe is 1 tsp of base for 1 cup of water to make “broth”, so I’m essentially making a half-strength beef broth. If you want to skip this and do 2 cups water, 2 cups beef broth, totally fine: I just like using the BtB because it’s an inky black tar of salt and umami.) I also supplemented it with 1 tbsp of smoked paprika, because I checked and it’s in SOME recipes, and I personally felt a little push of smokiness to get it closer to Southwest chili woldn’t go amiss. So just toss in whatever spices you think will work.

Toss them in, and STIR them, you piece.
(been mainlining NorthernLion SuperAutoPets videos, so it’s beginning to rot my brain.)

Once you have all your spices stirred in, smartass, you’re in a waiting game. Bring it to a simmer, and let it ride. You can simmer anywhere from 1 to 3 hours, stirring “often”, which I treated as “roughly every fifteen minutes”, because often is a relative term. THEN, you want to run phase 2: chilling.

See, this is an OVERNIGHT recipe. Which I picked for 2 reasons: 1, it means it’s not QUITE as much a reduction in time as the Cubanos from last year, and 2…it felt more authentic. Like, to me, the idea that every night these immigrant cooks would take whatever was left and just chill it for the night, to warm up and add to the next day, made the most sense. It felt like something you’d do to keep costs down in 20’s Ohio. So let it cool to room temp, and pop it in a fridge overnight. (Note: You don’t HAVE to do this: the chili is edible right now, so if you want to skip this step and add the last couple ingredients, you can shorten this from a 12 hour recipe to a 1-3 hour recipe. It’s all about how much time you’re willing to wait.)

In a PERFECT world, this will result in separation: since you used 80% lean beef, there is 6 ounces of beef fat in this pot of sauce. Chilling overnight should cause the fat to rise to the top, and solidify. But…uh…ours didn’t, really.

I post a fair number of pictures telling people “I know it doesn’t look like it, but this is right.” This is one of the rare “I know this looks right, but it’s NOT.”

This is probably somehow my fault. Maybe I needed to stir it more, or maybe the added spices and extra salt from the beef broth just dispersed the fat better, but I got MAYBE a ½ tsp of fat from the edges of the Tupperware, but my family said that was fine, and we forged on.

Reheating it, I added apple cider vinegar, and unsweetened chocolate, to further deepen and add complexity to the mixture. They’re ingredients that have a bit of controversy to them in the community, but I the first three recipes I found had them, so I used them. (I think the idea of adding them after the chill is so they’re not accidentally pulled out with the fat.)

AS that gets back to a simmer, boil some spaghetti, dice some more onion, and get some shredded cheese. To be really authentic, you’d use a very thinly shredded cheddar, but that would have required either personally grating cheese, or buying cheap cheese, neither of which my family was willing to do, so instead we bought some thick-grated cheddar from the Great Lakes region as a compromise, heated some beans in a microwave, and served it up.

I just discovered that apparently my old copy of Photoshop isn’t where I thought it was on my comp, so behold my glorious MS paint skills.

BASK IN THE GLORY OF THAT COLLAGE OF CHILI. I already know that took me longer than a want to admit. Anywho, the universal response to the chili was “very good”. I had 2 bowls of 5-way, and one of 2 way. Nate had 2 PLATES of 3 way. Mom…didn’t get much because Nate and I ate all the noodles, but she said it was very good. It’s a solid recipe, you should give it a try if you’ve got the time. Like, if you watch REAL TV the night before, just throw it on and stir it once every commercial break. Chill it overnight, and start re-heating it when the pre-show starts. Hell, throw it in a crock pot a hour before the game, and just cook the spaghetti as half-time starts. It’s surprisingly simple, but deeper than expected.

THURSDAY: …YES, I WAS SUPPOSED TO COME UP WITH AN IDEA FOR THAT, WASN’T I? UM…PEPPERS, MAYBE? A DISCUSSION OF SCOVILLE? MAYBE DO A WANDERING AMERICA’S MENU FOR CALIFORNIA, SINCE I DIDN’T DO THEM THIS YEAR?

MONDAY: IT’S VALENTINE’S DAY! SO WE’RE MAKING [REDACTED] TO CELEBRATE! DID WE NOT FIGURE OUT WHAT WE WERE MAKING BECAUSE WE WERE HANDLING THE DUMPLINGS AND CHILI? MY LIPS ARE SEALED.

Here's the

Recipe

Cincinnati Chili, Jon’s Way

Serves…I don’t know, like 8-10.

Ingredients

1 6 oz can tomato paste

2 pounds 80% lean ground beef

4 cups water

Spices/Chili MIx

3 cups finely chopped onion

5 cloves of garlic, minced (or 5 tsp pre-minced garlic)

2 tsps Beef Bouillon/beef soup mix (you can replace this by swapping 2 cups water for 2 cups beef broth)

1 15-oz can tomato SAUCE

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

3 tbsp chili powder

1 tbsp hot smoked paprika

2 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp cinnamon

5 whole allspice berries

5 whole cloves

½ tsp cayenne

Finishing

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, cut into 8 pieces

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 pound spaghetti

6 ounces shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup chopped onion

1 15.5 oz can red kidney beans, drained and warmed

Preparation

Bring a large pot or sauce pan (preferably around 6 quarts) to medium heat. Add the tomato paste, and cook, stirring frequently, for 1-3 mintues, until heated through, and browning occurs. Add ground beef and water, stirring to form a thick mush.
Turn heat to medium high, and bring to a simmer. Add ALL “chili mix” ingredients, stirring to fully incorporate. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 1-3 hours. (You could serve now, if desired.)
Remove from heat, and allow to cool to room temp. Move to an airtight container, and chill in the fridge overnight.
Remove any fat that has solidified on top of the chili, and return to a simmer over medium heat. Add chocolate and vinegar, stirring to incorporate. Cook spaghetti to package instructions, and drain.
Serve, ladling chili over spaghetti, and topping with cheese, onion, and beans as desired.