***HALLOWEEN EDITION***
Chili for a Crowd is an easy but delicious classic ground beef and bean chili. It’s pleasantly lively but not too spicy, so it works well for all ages. Chili for a Crowd regularly accompanies important football games and Christmas parade evenings at my house. (Life on the parade route is sweet!) But for years we ALWAYS made Chili for a Crowd and Indoor Hotdogs for Halloween. It’s a flexible, economical way to make a wide range of guests happy.
We turned Halloween into an annual party when the girls were little. We were in a great trick-or-treat neighborhood and we had several friend families who were not. So everyone came to our house before dark, and we would try to get the kids to eat a hotdog at least before letting them out to loot. I would also make a big pot of chili and ice down plenty of adult and kid beverages. Kids ate early–we hoped–and the grownups ate later. The utter brilliance of this routine was that the dads got a yard pass: they took a cold beer and the kids out to trick-or-treat. Meanwhile, the moms stayed at the house, stirred chili, had a glass of wine, gossiped, and answered the door. My favorite Halloween memory is finding 7 or 8 grade schoolers sitting (totally unprompted) in a circle on the den rug, intently trading for favorites. The budding negotiation skills on display were awesome.
PRO TIP: Consider your audience when buying Halloween candy. The only one who’s ever excited about Bit O’ Honey or that orange and black peanut butter taffy is the dog, and that’s a vet visit waiting to happen.
As you might suspect, Chili for a Crowd makes a lot of chili. It will feed 12 or so adults easily, and you’ll still have enough for those who want chili dogs. You’ll notice the recipe is simple to cut in half if you don’t need that much. Or, if you prefer, you can freeze any extra chili by the quart, pint, or whatever volume works for you. Chili will last several months in the freezer.
I’ve been making Indoor Hotdogs forever and I’m happy to share them with you! Grilled dogs are great, but usually if I’m bothering to fire up the grill at home, I’m making burgers, chicken, steak, or seafood. I learned this method from my mom, and you’re going to love it. Indoor hotdogs are broiled on a sheet pan, quick to make, require very little cleanup, and you still get that great Maillard reaction that makes food–especially meat–taste so good.
(Culinary vocabulary freebie: That’s mal-yahr in French and mal-yahrd in English, BTW. The Maillard reaction is indicated by the dark crusty areas on food surfaces where the amino acids and sugars have caramelized after coming into contact with a sufficiently hot surface in the relative absence of water. Think of the sear on a dry-aged steak in a cast iron pan, or the stripes on a hotdog cooked on a hot grill. Your foodie friends will be impressed that you can toss this term around casually.)
BOO!
Chili for a Crowd
Ingredients
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 T. bacon fat
- 2 or 3 lbs. ground chuck
- 2 6 oz. cans tomato paste
- 4 15 oz. cans chili beans in sauce, do not drain
- 1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes, do not drain
- 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
- 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
- 2 10 oz. cans beef consommé
- 1 12 oz. :ight or dark, not IPA
- 2 packets Chili-O seasoning
- Hot sauce, shredded cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, sliced scallions, chopped cilantro, saltines. . . all optional for garnish
Instructions
- In a heavy-bottomed stock pot, saute the onion in bacon fat until translucent. Add the ground chuck and cook until browned. Drain. Add the tomato paste and stir well to distribute the paste throughout the browned beef. Cook this, stirring, for a couple of minutes so the tomato paste loses its raw taste. Season with salt and pepper. Add the rest of the ingredients (except garnishes) to the pot and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat to very low and simmer as long as you like, but at least 45 minutes. Stir often enough that the chili doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. Check for seasoning, correcting if necessary.
Indoor Hotdogs
Ingredients
- Buns
- Hot dogs (count on several of the adults eating one, too.)
- Ketchup and mustard
- Other toppings as needed--cheese, relish, canned french fried onions, etc.
Instructions
- First remove the buns from the plastic bag, do not separate, and wrap the whole batch in foil. Preheat the broiler.
- Put the hotdogs on a sheet pan and run them under the hot broiler for a few minutes. Leave the oven door cracked. (This is important.) Shake the pan a time or two during cooking so that they roll around. You can get some black marks on a couple of sides this way so the hotdogs sort of look like you grilled them, and they taste great. It only takes a few minutes, but don’t forget to leave the oven door open a bit. You don’t want to accidentally bake them--they get a weird texture and sometimes burst that way.
- You can put the wrapped buns in the oven on the bottom rack at the same time. You just want them warm.
- Put a hotdog on each bun and arrange on a platter. Let everyone accessorize as they like.
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