Soup-er Sunday: Buffalo Chicken Chili

There are two things I like about this chili. Number One: No beans! Number Two: No Beans! Just kidding—there are lots of things I like about this chili. No beans is certainly one of them. Also I like that the ground chicken breast keeps the fat and calories down…right up until you add cream and sour cream and bleu cheese crumbles and…. I also like that this chili won me my first chili-cook-off prize for Most Unique! The other categories were “Best Traditional” and “Most-Alarming,” so I was super pleased with the win. My husband said if there had been a “Best Overall” category, this chili would have won it. I’d like to think that he’s not just stroking my cooking ego J

So I started with a recipe that I found in Rachel Ray’s magazine. (Incidentally, Rachel has a second, different BCC recipe, that I came across online later.). Anyway, I did a test run of the magazine recipe last weekend. While pleased with the flavor, I thought there was a pretty high meat-to-sauce ratio, so I made a mental note that when I made it the next time for the chili cookoff, I would double the various liquids in the recipe (beer, tomato sauce, Frank’s Hot Sauce) to make it more soup-y. And then I made a few other additions and adjustments until I got to the final (winning!) result.

I also did some thinking on the subject of Buffalo Chicken Wings. What makes people think of Buffalo Wings? For me? Ranch dressing, bleu cheese dressing, celery sticks. Celery already makes an appearance in the recipe, but I thought why not include some ranch dressing and bleu cheese? Thus I have included the recipe for the toppings as well!

**

Buffalo Chicken Chili with Bleu Cheese Crumbles and Buffalo-Ranch Sour Cream

**

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 pounds ground chicken

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped or pressed through garlic press

2-3 celery ribs, finely chopped

1 medium to large onion, finely chopped

2-3 carrots, finely chopped

1-2 jalapeños, seeded and finely chopped

Salt & freshly ground pepper

2 teaspoons ground cumin (half a palmful)

1 ½ teaspoon ground coriander (one-third palmful)

6 - 8 ounces beer (your favorite brew—I used Miller Light)

1 bottle cayenne pepper hot sauce (some will be used for chili, some for ranch topper)

Two 15-oz. (or one 29 oz.) cans tomato sauce

One 8-oz. carton heavy cream

One 16-oz. container sour cream

Crumbled blue cheese

**

Buffalo-Ranch Sour Cream

1 cup sour cream (or whatever you didn’t add to the pot of chili)

1 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons Penzey’s Buttermilk Ranch Dressing spice*

Frank’s Hot Sauce (to taste)

*if you don’t have a Penzey’s near you, you could probably buy Hidden Valley’s ranch dressing seasoning OR buy ranch-flavored vegetable dip in the sour cream section and just add the hot sauce

***

1. Heat a medium Dutch oven or large skillet over high heat. Add olive oil and butter and melt together. Add the chicken and cook, breaking up the meat, for 6 minutes. Add the garlic, celery, onion, carrot, and jalapeño. Season with salt, pepper, cumin and coriander, and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Add the beer and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook the mixture over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes to reduce the liquid.
3. Stir in ½ cup of the hot sauce and all of the tomato sauce. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. At this point, you’ll need to start your quality control. Do some tasting. Then slowly, in small increments, add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream here and a dash of heavy cream there. Taste again. Needs more hot sauce? Toss some in. Needs more cream? You got it. Sorry people, this is just how I cook.
4. The chili is ready to eat once you’re satisfied with the flavor. Of course, in my opinion, chili is always better the next day…after having been refrigerated and re-heated. Top with a bit of Buffalo-Ranch Sour Cream (recipe follows) and bleu cheese crumbles.

A Couple of Notes:

• The best part about a chili recipe is you can add more or less of something without really hurting the end product. Just do lots of quality control (tasting) and remember you can ALWAYS add more, but you can NEVER take back out!

• Rachel Ray's magazine recipe included all the ingredients except for the sour cream and heavy cream. The first time I made the chili I did not include either of those two ingredients, either. I still thought it was tasty! So if you're watching your calories, don't add in the cream or sour cream and the chili will be quite low in fat and have less calories.

• Adjust the vegetables as you would like. Since this recipe doesn’t have any beans, I thought adding more of the veggies worked nicely for texture purposes. As far as chopping goes, I just toss them in the food processor and let it do the work.