Chili

Chili is great and can only be made better by beer, right?  Yes.  

I have never found a good standby chili recipe, but then I haven't looked very hard since Richard doesn't care for chili.  This recipe was Richard pre-approved because it forced me to buy stout.  

This proved a good basic recipe but I did alter it a little.

First of all, the recipe as written is enormous.  Five pounds of beef?  I definitely don't need that much.  So, the first thing I did was to cut the recipe in half.  Even then, however, the proportion of beef to beans/chili seemed off.  So this is what I did.  I replaced ground chuck-which of course cooks down substantially-with leaner ground round.  I also used only one pound of ground round, which was just the right amount.  An added benefit of the leaner meat is that you don't have to drain it.  

From the perspective of the vegetables, I thought the recipe would have been better served written in cups rather than pounds.  I used about 3/4 of a large white onion, and a whole medium red and a medium yellow bell pepper.  

We bought a four-pack of the Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, so I used probably less than 1/4 of the bottle, which I thought was just right.  

Seasoning-wise, I added some salt and a little more cumin.  I also added just the slightest touch of cinnamon, which I think helps warm up the flavor a bit.

Delicious result.