Brought to you by the marketing department of tobacco giant Phillip Morris USA and Marlboro Cigarettes: “The Marlboro Chili Book.” It intended to sell you on the manly virtues of getting the “Marlboro Chili Kettle”, readily available from the company. My dad never bought one, and I took the recipe book. It was about 10 glossy-printed pages of recipes interspersed with classic daguerreotypes of real cowboys doing real cowboy things, like sitting around the chuck wagon eating chili. They called this one “Headquarters Chili” because it had in it fresh vegetables and canned tomatoes – something you would not have on a cattle drive. (Also from this book was “Cowpoke Chili”, something a little more representative of cowboy food on the road.)
This is the very first pot of chili I ever made. I cooked it for friends at the high-school graduation party I threw. “This is good,” I heard many of them say, and that was gratifying to hear. Also, I don’t think I’d ever noticed the taste of cumin before I first cooked this, and I was like, “Cumin, where have you been all my life!?”.
2 small green peppers, chopped
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup cooking oil
3 – 4 pounds lean, coarsely ground beef, crumbled
2 cartons (26.4 ounces each) Pomì Chopped Tomatoes
3 tablespoons chili powder +
1 tablespoon pure ground hot New Mexico chiles
or
4 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons crushed cumin seed (or ground cumin)
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
3 15-ounce cans pinto or kidney beans, undrained
- Cook green pepper, onions, and garlic in large pot until tender; then add crumbled beef and cook until beef is lightly browned.
- Reserving beans for the end of cooking time, add tomatoes,chili powder, cumin, and Tabasco sauce. Cover and simmer 45 minutes.
- Stir in undrained beans; cover and simmer, 25 min.
- Makes about 4 quarts.
Recipes out of the Blond Box 