Chili is by far the best winter dish. It’s warm, flavorful, and spiced. As a child, my dad would bust out his classic chili recipe just as the weather started to turn frigid. It has always been one of my favorite family dishes and my top comfort food. But most importantly, chili is my family’s Super Bowl staple.
Every February when gameday rolled around, my dad cooked up a massive pot — or two — of Super Bowl chili. Our family lugged the fresh chili over to whichever of our family friends was hosting the Super Bowl party that year, or left it bubbling on the stove in the years we hosted.
As guests arrived and the game began, everyone headed into the kitchen to spoon themselves a steaming bowl of the flavorful dish. We sat crowded around the TV, spread out on couches, kitchen chairs dragged into the living room, or on the floor. We spooned warm bites of the Tex-Mex stew into our mouths as we cheered on our team of choice, laughed at commercials, and watched the halftime show performance in awe. Spoonfuls of perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned chili interspliced exciting plays and victorious touchdowns (can you tell I know nothing about how football works). If football divided us on Super Bowl Sunday, with different people rooting for different teams, food brought us together.
I am now a college student with access to my own kitchen for the first time. This comes with both the creative freedom to feed myself whatever I want, and the responsibility of meal planning, grocery shopping, and not burning myself on the stove as I learn how to cook without parental supervision.
During freshman year, my roommate, who is an international student, came home with me for Thanksgiving break. While we were home, my dad made his famous chili, at my request. My roommate, tired of eating dining hall food for months and missing home-cooked meals, immediately fell in love with the dish. She ate bowls and bowls of the chili over the week we were at home. When she suggested we learn how to cook it ourselves in our sophomore-year apartment, I couldn’t help but agree. I assumed it would be difficult, but I figured it was worth a shot.
I asked my dad to send me his self-written chili recipe, pulled out of the family cookbook he is currently compiling. Accordingly, it is titled “Dad’s Quick and Famous Chili: The Super Bowl and Winter classic.” When my dad makes it, he cooks six pounds of meat a time in a giant pot. My roommate and I decided to half the recipe, then wrote down all of the ingredients and headed to the grocery store to purchase peppers, onions, ground beef, tomatoes, and seasonings.
The real issue proved to be the beans. My dad cooks his chili with Bush’s Chili Magic Beans. This is essentially the secret ingredient; most of the seasoning for the chili is in the cans of beans. However, the Nashville Kroger does not carry this particular product. My roommate and I had to buy unflavored cans of pinto beans and figure out how to season the chili ourselves.
At home, I browned the onions and ground beef, spooning out the excess fat, and sauteed the peppers. Then, I combined the meat and peppers in a pot with all of the other ingredients (tomatoes, beans, and seasoning). This proved to be problematic, because the pot we had was barely big enough to fit all these ingredients. It was almost impossible to mix everything together without things spilling over the sides.
I Googled what seasonings go in chili. Turns out it is mostly just chili powder (makes sense given it’s in the name). I added what I thought was a lot of chili powder and let it simmer for a few minutes. I tasted the concoction and said to my roommate, “Wow, that tastes like nothing!” I remembered I had some packets of Old El Paso taco seasoning in the cupboard. I pulled out two and dumped them into the bubbling pot, with some extra onion powder for good measure. I tasted it again, and it was much better.
After simmering for 30 minutes, the chili was finally ready. We quickly realized that we had made far too much chili, and would never be able to eat it all before it went bad. We called up our friends and invited them over for dinner to share our giant portion.
Once our friends arrived, it was time to prep the toppings and sides (as my dad would call them, accoutrements). At home, we always have Pillsbury Crescent Rolls as a side. Many of my friends are international students, unaware of the glory that is opening a paper tube with a loud pop, unrolling the triangles of dough, and forming them into croissants on a pan. They watched in bewilderment as this process unfolded (literally) in front of them.
We also chopped up cilantro and avocados and put shredded cheese out to add to the chili. We spooned the chili into our bowls and added our desired accouterments, then gathered in the living room around our projector (college student TV core), sitting on the couch and floor. The setup was not unlike the Super Bowl, just with fewer people.
The chili was perfect, or at least close to it. It was well-seasoned with just the right amount of spice and warmed my body as I ate. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I did my dad justice with this one.
Since that day, I have made chili a few more times. It has become the staple meal for when I host my friends, because it’s easy to make a lot at once, and it’s just so good. Who knows, maybe one day I will be hosting my own giant Super Bowl parties and serving this classic chili recipe to my guests.