Chef Abe Asay’s Award Winning Chili recipe:
- 2lbs Beef chili grind or 80/20 ground beef
- 1 lb Bacon
- 2 tbsp canola or olive oil
- 10 ea garlic cloves minced
- 2 large yellow onions medium dice
- 3 ea poblano peppers
- 4 ea jalapeno’s seeded or keep a 2-4 unseeded depending on the heat you want
- 2 tbsp toasted black pepper
- 1 tbsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp crushed chili flakes
- 1 cup dark chili powder
- 1/2 cup smoked paprika
- 1/4 cup onion powder
- 1/4 cup garlic powder
- 10 dashes of a vinegar based hot sauce
- 1 Tbsp rooster sauce
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 2 tbsp smoker drippings( if no smoker use good quality liquid smoke)
- 8 oz 66-70% cacao chocolate
- 2 1/2 quarts Crushed San Marzano tomatoes
- 1 pint of Beer of your Choice from a local Petaluma Brewery
- 1 1/2lbs Pinto Beans (Optional)
In a large stock pot add oil, ground beef, salt & pepper saute on a medium high heat until meat is browned. Remove ground beef add oil, garlic, onion & peppers saute on a medium high heat until onions are translucent. Add beef back into the stock pot along with all other ingredients except for bacon *(and beans if using see below).
Cook chili on medium low heat stirring every 5-10 minutes for about an hour. While chili is cooking cook bacon in satuee pan to your liking remove bacon to cool save drippings to add to chili.
Chop bacon and add along with bacon drippings to chili *(add beans if using beans in recipe) cook on medium low heat for another 15 min. Taste chili for salt and spice adjust to your liking. Serves 8-12 people depending on how hungry people are….Cheers.
*( if using beans use 1 1/2lbs Pinto beans cook in separate pot from chili add beans at end of chili cooking as to avoid over cooking beans)
For more about this event see our previous posts:
- VIDEO/PHOTOS: Winner’s of the Great Petaluma Chili Cook-Off
- Get Ready For The Great #Petaluma Chili Cook-Off
- Attention Chili, Salsa and Beer Challengers It’s Time To Enter The Great Petaluma Chili Cook-Off!
Great interview with Abe from Taps…he’s the man that makes it all happen. That’s a very complex Chili recipe with 23 ingredients including Rooster Sauce ????…mine has about 5 ingredients…no wonder he walked away with the Judges AND The People’s Choice top awards at this years event. He’s a Chili Genius!
Abe has always done a great job down at TAPS so it’s no surprise he came up with the Grand Champion chili this year. Congrats and good luck at the World Food Championships!