Around the Kitchen Table - Turkey Chili

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. I'm missing my co-host today, Susan Sarah. Hopefully she will join us in progress, but if not, we will get on with the dish I have planned for today. And you know, it's wintertime up north, although I can't tell you what the temperature is down here because people tend to boo, hiss, and throw things at me when I tell them how warm it is in Florida. But up north, they're suffering through another bad winter and Something about something warm and satisfying and comforting like chili is just a really nice dish to make. It makes the house smell really nice while it's cooking, and it's a welcoming food when you come in from the cold. Not even just the cold, though. If it's hot outside, chili still has a great place on the table. I remember when I was little, my grandmother would make chili for me, and I would get quite messy when I ate chili because we didn't use spoons, of course. We used flour tortillas to scoop up the chili with, and that made me even messier, but I think that's why my grandmother loved me so much because I was such a healthy eater, and I still am today. I do love my chili. I've gone from eating beef. I stopped eating beef ages ago, and now I cook with either— generally, I cook with chicken, ground chicken. I do use ground turkey. Today I'm actually using a combination of both. I got some really nice ground turkey at the market and I had some ends of ground chicken. Every time I make hamburgers, there's always a little bit left in the pack that I don't use. Lisa eats beef, so it goes in a little Ziploc bag and goes in the freezer. Then when I make chili or meatballs or something else, I pull them all out and thaw them. That way I have meat that I'm not wasting or just kind of cooking just to cook it and then throwing it away later. It's a good outlet for it. So today I'm gonna make a combination of turkey and chicken, but you can use one or the other or do your own combination, whatever you really like. Let's talk about chili for a minute. Traditional chili, if you want Texas chili, Texas chili does not have any beans in it at all. You really won't find any vegetables in Texas chili, and you're gonna use chunks of beef. Or pork. The jury's out on which is, which is the preferred method. Pork always makes an excellent chili, but I don't think I would use all pork. I would use some pork mixed with beef if I was going to do the cubes. You can also add beans to it if you want, but it's not going to be a Texas chili. Chili con carne actually was more of a Tex-Mex type of chili, and because Mexicans always had beans in their diet, you know, they added the beans directly to the chili. And it was also something on the cattle drives. That they would eat because, you know, they were always eating beans, and then when they had meat, you know, the cook would throw something together and make kind of a stew out of it. But if you order Texas chili, or a bowl of red as they like to call it, you generally won't find any beans in it. It may be served on the side. They have no problem with serving you some beans on the side, but generally won't be in the chili. So today we're making just a 3-bean chili, and it's a chicken chili, turkey chili, whatever you want to call it. But I've got 3 different beans because I like variety. I like to mix it up, and I wanted to have a little different color in the mixture. I don't know how much of it you'll really see in it, but I'll know they're in there, and there's a little bit of different flavor with each bean. You can use whatever beans you want. You can use all the same kind, or you can mix it up too. You can even add more. I'm not a fan of black beans, so I left them out. But I do have some— I saw some pinto beans in the chili sauce, so I thought that might add a little bit more flavor to it. So the components of chili are really pretty simple. It'll take you just minutes to prep it because basically all you have to do is chop an onion, chop some garlic, and, you know, get everything out of the packages and cans and set up. You want to rinse your beans. I didn't rinse the ones in the chili sauce, but the other beans I did drain and rinse. So you want to do that and have them ready. And, you know, if you feel up to prepping your own beans from scratch, you know, even better. But you know, right now, simplicity rules. I don't have all the time in the world to do it. Well, actually I do, I just choose not to. I like my canned beans as well. So I'm gonna start by— I have some onions in here. Let me change over. There we go. And I have some chopped onions in here with a little bit of garlic, and I'm gonna sauté these up. And I was hoping Susan would be here to go through the slideshow with it, but We're going to let those cook a little. I'm going to just come back here, and if any of you have any questions about chili or anything you'd like to know, you know, if you want to make a vegetarian version of this, it's simple too. You use all your beans, and there's some really good other vegetables you could add in. You could add zucchini into it. You could add eggplant into it. You could add corn or hominy. If you want to stay a little more traditional into it. So there's a lot of things. Okra. Some of the vegetables, you just want to be careful when you put them in because you don't want them to turn to mush. So if it is a really soft vegetable like zucchini, you might want to hold that off until the end. But anything that will cook down and still hold its shape is pretty good in here. Same thing with potatoes. Potatoes will break down, so if you're going to add them in, add them in towards the end and don't let them overcook too much. Not too far to the end because you want them to be cooked. We've got our onions cooking. House is smelling really good right now. Something about onions. Whenever you pass them, they make you hungry. You smell them when you're out in the street driving around and you're by restaurants and they've got onions cooking. Activates the saliva glands, I think. I'm not sure if my comment tracker is working real well. I will check the page too because we did have some issues with that yesterday. Let's see if we have any questions. Kitchen Shaman is saying she uses temp in her chili for protein. That's a great idea. Also, Chili is kind of, to me, is kind of a personal item. So whatever you put in it is okay. It's a stew. It's a soup. Think of it in those terms where there really aren't any rules that you have to stay by. I mean, you can make it whatever you want. It is yours. Season it however hot you want. Season it however mild you want. Just try and get some full flavors in there. Chili powder is great. Cumin adds a little more flavor to it. We're going to add some of those spices into that. Let's get back to my onions. They're looking good here. Switch it over. They're sautéing really nice. Nice and flavorful. Now I'm going to add a little bit different twist to this. Again, this is my twist. It's not something you have to do. I'm putting a little bit of brown sugar in with these onions. All mixed up. And I'm going to hit it with a little bourbon. Blame this or not, okay? And there we go. Fire! Fire! Okay, we got some flames going. I thought, well, I had the bourbon, and bourbon is a little bit higher proof than a liqueur, so it did flame pretty good. And along with the, uh, the smell of onions is the smell of burnt hair from my hand. It's a lovely thing. So anyway, I've got that in there, and I added the bourbon just to give it a little bit of a smoky flavor too. Now that I've done that, I'm going to put in my meat. The one thing about ground turkey is that it isn't as separate. You know how when you get ground beef and it looks really separated? It's more of a sausagey kind of texture than a ground kind of texture. So you may notice I've got a wire whip here too, in addition to my spoon, and I'm going to use that to break it up a little as we get further on. It's a kind of a strange tool to use for this, but it is something that does do the job. Once the meat starts to cook a little bit more, it will be a big help. Now we're going to use a spoon, turn it over. I'm going to let it cook a little. You just don't want to let it form too much. So let's give it a little bit of time. The onions are moving around. We want to let this cook and start to brown up nicely before we add the rest of our spices and beans in. And I'm making a big batch of chili because I want to freeze it. Yeah, it's, it's something that you make every now and then. It's not something that you'll make on the spur of the moment because for good chili you really want it to— well, it's not difficult— you really want it to simmer and build those flavors for a few hours. So that being the case, I'm just letting it go for a while. Okay, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask, or any comments while we're browning the meat here. I think I might crank this induction cooker up a little. Now I did have some oil in here. One thing you'll find if you do use beef is beef tends to have a lot more fat in it, and depending upon the quality of beef you get, you might want to drain some of that fat off. I mean, I think the fat coming off of it adds a lot of flavor, but you don't want it to be overly greasy either. So turkey and chicken don't have as much fat in them, so you have to help it a little bit, and I did that with the olive oil in the beginning. This is going to be a nice dinner tonight. I have to make something good for Lisa. Well, I have chili then. Unfortunately, I'll be without my tortillas because I have not come up with a gluten-free tortilla recipe yet, but I will be working on that. Of the spices we're going to put in the chili, chili powder, of course, is going to be the biggie. That's the basis of any chili. Cumin or cumin cumin, however you want to pronounce it. I grew up Mexican household, so it was cumin. Some corn masa, masa harina is the flour we're going to be using as a thickening agent. I mean, you could use regular flour if you want. You could probably leave it out altogether. It's not a deal breaker. You can also use just cornmeal, very fine cornmeal if you have it as well. You just don't want to put anything too heavy in it so it's not gritty. Gritty is not one of the textures you want in chili. So we have that, and then I did start off with onion and garlic. You can add more onion and garlic to it if you like. A little bit of oregano also goes in this. It just adds a little more to the chili. And what else did I leave out? Paprika, a little bit of paprika. We're doing good here. Again, you really have to tend this chili just in the beginning. Once the meat is browned, seasonings are in, everything else is in, it just about cooks itself. I mean, you can do a slow cooker version of this too. I have seen people leave it and then just let the slow cooker do the rest. With beef, I think that would probably work a little bit better. Like I said, with turkey, it does tend to clump a little, so I like to be there to kind of help it. Here we go. Here's a nice comment from The Kitchen Shaman, "I'll be exploring the gluten-free tortilla as well. I found a couple recipes already that I want to explore." And you know, I've seen some too, but the problem with some of them is they don't look like tortillas. I've only seen a few people make them where they actually look like tortillas and they brown like tortillas. Some of them are nice-looking wraps, but I wouldn't necessarily call them a tortilla. That's something I have to get in the kitchen and just experiment, especially now that I am also dairy-free and soy-free. Instead of using butter, I could use lard, but lard's not something you want to use anymore when making the tortillas., but I'll probably end up using Earth Balance, which is my new best friend for butter substitute. Oh, Haley is here. Let's say hi to Haley. "Are you feeling like chili, Chef Dennis, due to the cold?" Yeah, it's due to the 75-degree weather. I'm feeling like chili. It's chilly today and hot tamale, Haley. MJ is here, says, "Nice colors, my friend. Susan Sarah will join you soon in the show." I'm wondering. I usually get a message from her when she doesn't. Either something unexpected happened, hopefully nothing bad. I don't mind an absence if it was just a small problem, but hopefully nothing did happen to Susan. She is very punctual. Let's get back to my meat here and stir this around a little bit. Ah, it's starting to look a little bit better. The one thing about using a poultry instead of ground beef is you do lose a little bit of that little darker color that you get with ground beef. This is starting to come out good. It's cooking pretty well. I think I can start adding some of my seasonings in. It's actually breaking up. Did a good job with the spoon as it was cooking. That's why I said, you know, you want to attend it while it is. And then I go in here with a wire whisk to break it up a little bit more, to turn it back into a little bit of ground meat. Kitchen Shaman is asking about using coconut oil. I cook with coconut oil. It's just got that little bit of different flavor, just like coconut flour. If you like it and you use it, that's fine. For the tortillas, I don't know how they would work, but that's a possibility. Let's add my chili powder. This is a combination chili powder. Cumin, paprika, and I do have a little bit of onion and garlic in it. Let's get this mixed in. We have some sea salt, and again, this is a personal taste. You want to salt it to your flavor profile that you like. Richard, I use Earth Balance now instead of butter, and I actually buy the soy version of it, and it's pretty good. And I see that they sell it in sticks. So my local grocer doesn't have it that way, but I'll probably have to shoot out to Whole Foods to find it that way.. But I was surprised. It kind of tasted like butter. Shocked that I would ever use something like that, but it is good. Now I'm going to add my beans to it. There are the kidneys. Here are the cannellini white beans. Straggler. And here are my chili beans. And again, that's something that I just thought for fun I would add in. Mmm, looking good. You can actually use a little more beans too if you want to keep it a little more on an even balance. Maybe a can of black beans wouldn't have been a bad idea just for the color. I think it's looking pretty good right now. Now I'm going to add some tomatoes. Let me show you what I have. I'm going to turn this down a little bit too. I got everything to fire. I love my induction cooker. I have a product called passata, and it's really used a lot more in Europe than it is in the United States. It's basically a crushed tomato that has been— everything has been taken out of it except the tomato. It's a very heavy mixture. And it's raw. It's not cooked at all. So it's a really heavy tomato puree, for lack of a better word. Okay, I'm going to add a little water in the jar. This is a 24-ounce jar. I used to buy them up north all the time for my sauce. They had a passata, and they also had a diced tomato. So I did a combination of that, mostly passata but with some diced. And when I got down here, I didn't find it again because the company was from New Jersey. But the local market started carrying it, and it is organic also, which is a nice bit of luck. That's mixing in nice. That's looking good. Okay, and after it cooks for a little while, I'll taste it.. And I'll re-season it as need be. So now I've got a little bit of chicken stock. And again, not a deal breaker. You can leave it out. You can use vegetable stock. And now I'm going to put in my masaharina. You can serve this any way you like. You can serve it with tortillas. I would serve it with flour if you're going to serve it with tortillas, but corn tortillas will work too. You can serve it with crusty bread. Nothing wrong with a nice loaf of good crusty bread to go along with this. Now that everything is mixed together, what you want to do is you just want to let it simmer for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to 2 hours if you have the time, on a low heat and let the flavors build. This, like everything else that we make that is saucy and has ingredients in it that are going to blend, will take some time to really build the flavors. Today the chili is going to be really good, it's going to be tasty, but after it sits overnight, it's going to be real flavorful and it's going to have a nice pop to it. And again, if you want to add some heat to it— I'm a little bit of a wimp— but cayenne, or if you want to take some dried chilies that you see at the grocery store and grind them up a little yourself and add them in, that'll be wonderful too. You know, if you want to use all fresh dried chilies, you know, grind them up yourself, you can do that instead of the chili powder. In Texas, we would use a combination of different ones, or you always hear chili Colorado, you know, New Mexico and Colorado, and that area makes some wonderful chilies as well. Another nice suggestion from Kitchen Shaman is that chili in a bread bowl is the best. Great idea. True that one of the first things a chef should learn is how to taste their food while cooking. Absolutely, you should learn to do that, and you should never be afraid to taste anything as it's in progress. But the most important tasting is going to come at the end, because a lot of times during cooking you taste it and it seems okay, or it seems close, but after it sits and cooks for a while, the flavors will adjust and they will change a little. I like to err on the side of seasoning a little lightly with things like heat and salt or sugar if I was adding it. Always add a little bit towards the end. Getting back to serving it, you can serve this in a nice bowl. You can garnish it with some cheese. You can garnish it with— I've seen it garnished with sour cream. It's not something I would do to chili, but people like sour cream. It will go well if you don't want to have cheese with it. Garnish it with a little wedge of lime and maybe some cilantro or Italian parsley. Dress it up a little bit. We would eat it. I would get a bowl of this and I would chop some sweet onion, and I would serve it with chopped sweet onion and some cheese. Now I'm dairy intolerant or allergic, so I won't be having the cheese on at this time, but I may chop up some fresh onion. Although, I do have some goat cheese, and I can have— rumor is I can have goat cheese, so we might test that. Aslan Bloor is in the house. Hey, Aslan. Yeah, new day, new time. And Haley, thank you. It looks delicious. Haley, I'm just sitting here breathing it in, and I haven't had lunch yet, My stomach is rumbling even more. I may sneak a little of it before it's quite done just to have some. That's how easy it is to make chili. I mean, the prep is absolutely no time at all, just like I said, cutting up an onion. If you're not inclined to do that, most grocery stores sell chopped onion now, so buy a little container of that and just put it all together at home. You make this on a night you're going to be around for a few hours. Let it cool down. Put it in some little plastic containers and freeze it. Next time you have— that the snow comes or the ice comes, or you just have a craving for chili, take one out, thaw it out, and you've got yourself a nice bowl of chili ready to go. Tortilla strips are another great idea, Kitchen Shaman. Yeah. Little fried corn tortilla strips. Yeah, I wouldn't serve a corn tortilla unfried with it. It would be all right, but the flour goes better with it. But fried strips are a wonderful thing too. Cashew cheese. Hmm, I haven't done that yet, KitchenShame. And don't worry about spelling, Aslan. You know— oh, here we go. Also with rice. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely with rice, Elena. I didn't even think of that. Goes great with rice. I mean, kind of make a little bit of a— well, I make a mess, I said, when I eat anyway, but a little bit of a burrito with the tortilla, with the flour tortilla, some rice, some chili, and some cheese and onion, and then just kind of slurp it all up. It's a beautiful thing. Gotta love it. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming today around my kitchen table. Let's take another look at this chili. It's simmering away and I'm going to let it cook. I said I'll probably let it cook for a couple hours. I have time. I've got another show coming up that I'll be on in half an hour, so I'm going to grab a little something to eat before that starts and I'm going to let my chili simmer and take some pictures of it right after that so I can post the recipe for you. Oh God, that red color looks great. I got to take a picture of this. There we go. I am just loving it. Some days it's good to be me. Today is one of those days because I have some really good-looking chili there. Thanks again for stopping by Around My Kitchen Table. Make yourself some chili, freeze some of it, and enjoy life. I will see you all really soon. Soon.