Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Season Finale! Drew’s Chili!

Hey, hey everybody!

Good morning and welcome back to Sunday Gravy!

Well holy fucking goddamn hell everyone. We made it!

It’s a wrap, motherfuckers!

Season goddamn 9 is officially on permanent record now.

Every year right after the Owl I have this mixed sense of dread and excitement because I know I’ve got some serious work coming up and my ass better get to cookin’. As always Sunday Gravy is a labor of love where I get to reap the benefits by eating delicious food as well as getting to learn quite a few new foods, techniques and cooking methods. 

I can say without question that my cooking skills improve exponentially with each season of Sunday Gravy. It’s always cool to be throwing down an ad lib meal and I find myself using a trick or ingredient that I featured in one of my episodes. I get to carry that with me from here on out too. 

As per usual for the final episode of the year I like to hand out a couple of awards.

Let’s start with BEST FOOD PORN SHOT.

Of shit yes. That’s from our Khachapuri! episode. I will be making and experimenting with this bastard throughout football season for sure.

Next we have the MOST FUN HAD WHILE WRITING AN EPISODE OF SUNDAY GRAVY award.

This one was easy.

The day we did the Hot Wing Gauntlet Challenge.

That was awesome. I’m still pissed I didn’t get another hotter level of sauce. Next time.

And since this is my blog I get to cheat and split the winner for BEST OVERALL DISH because it was way too close to call. Each of our two winners have officially entered into my standard “I will cook this shit forever” meal rotation.

First we have…

Peperonta!

With a big hat tip and hearty thank you to 2Pack for sending me this wonderful cooking pot.

I can’t begin to tell you how simple and fucking delicious this is. When I served that on the pork chop?

I had to swap out my undies.

HOLY GOD! Incredible. Amazing. Just make this dish people.

Next winner…

DAUBE!

You’re probably thinking “Beef stew with some wine? Really? Best dish this year?”

Yes. Fucking absolutely goddamn right!

Only next time I’m cooking this shit and letting it rest for about 3 days in the refrigerator before serving. (Just like the fucking recipe says dumbass!)

Notice something similar between these two winners?

Simple, minimal, classic.

These will both dwell in my kitchen forever.

One last award.

I’m going to call this one the HOLY SHIT I HAD NO IDEA I COULD FUCKING DO THAT! award.

Envelope please…

LOOK AT THOSE FUCKING ENGLISH MUFFINS! HOLY SHIT! BEST GODDAMN ENGLISH MUFFINS EVER!!!!

And they were easy to do too!

It was a really fun season, folks. The two times that I made Chinese/Asian food just blew me away too. My Chinese food skills are elevated as fuck now and I owe all of that to Sunday Gravy.

Yep, it’s been a blast.

However!!! My ass also gets worn the fuck out by the end of the season and it is most definitely time to tap the fuck out and watch some motherfucking football!

WOOOOOO!!!!!!

I thought today’s meal would be a fun one, and it was!

You all know this recipe, many of you have probably tried this recipe and many more look forward to reading this recipe annually because it means it’s Superb Owl time.

I can personally say that the reason I am here on our lovely little internet spot was a direct result of Drew Magary. In our Kommenting days he was known on the mother blog as Big Daddy Drew.

Drew? This one if for you.

/pours out warm flat beer

//opens cold fresh delicious beer

Today we are making Drews’ chili!

Let’s let Drew give us the tale of the tape!

recipe by Drew Magary

“FOR THE CHILI:

2 pounds ground beef or chicken (make sure it’s a fatty percentage; too lean and it turns out all dry and crumbly and you will be less than a man)

1 onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, chopped

1 shallot, chopped

1 jalapeno, chopped

1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes

1 16 oz. can tall red kidney beans, drained

1 16 oz. can corn, drained

1 can beer, any kind

1 16 oz. can chicken broth

1 tsp liquid smoke

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp fennel seed

2 tbsp cumin (add more at end if necessary)

2 tbsp chili powder (add more at end if necessary)

1/4 cup white vinegar

Salt & pepper to taste

Ashes from a joint (optional)

Lotta Frank’s Hot Sauce

2 glugs olive oil”

And away we go!

Let’s get a gander at our vegetation.

I wanted to cook this recipe exactly as outlined. No cheating and no substitutions despite my brain just fucking screaming at me “One goddamn jalapeno?!? That’s all?!?!”

I stayed true to the recipe. Basically.

Now get busy with that shallot!

As Drew says every year “Shallots are the thing that make restaurant food taste like restaurant food.” Or something along those lines.

Pour in your oil and get the chopped vegetation into a pot.

This will cook for 5-8 minutes or so until the veggies have sweated down and the onion is translucent.

Time to introduce the meat players for this dish.

I went half ground beef (80/20 ratio) and ground pork (85/15 ration) since I like the combination of the two meats.

Get that into the pot.

I’m pretty fucking sure your asses have browned some goddamn ground meats before so do that. 

Now for our hardware.

You got your crushed tomatoes and stock, the corn and the beans. I followed direction and dumped everything into the pot

The software!

If you’re like me and looked at that tablespoon of fennel seed and thought “Holy shit, that’s a lot of fennel seed” don’t be stressin’. It works just fine in this application. Oh yeah, the liquid smoke is definitely critical here. You WILL notice its presence in the finished dish.

That meat should be browned by now.

Since the original recipe did not mention any drainage of fats at this point, there was no drainage of fats at this point.

Get the tomatoes, corn, beans, chicken broth, beer and vinegar up in there.

A true frothy pour of beer.

Spices join the party next.

Now, Drew mentions “Franks” hot sauce specifically but my only variation was, I’m a Red Rooster hot sauce kinda guy.

The flavor is very, very similar so I didn’t think it would change the outcome. Besides, that’s a big fucking bottle of Red Rooster sauce already on hand. I’ll save a few bucks thank you kindly.

Slap a cockeyed lid on the pot and start the simmering.

When the chili starts bubbling, reduce the heat to low and let the motherfucker go.

Let it simmer on low for 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally. 

Let’s get a look at the 2 hour mark.

That’s starting to get there. You can see the sauce tightening and reducing down in volume. It smells fantastic too.

It smells so fantastic that after smelling it for over 2 hours and then realizing I needed to let this go ANOTHER 2 fucking hours…

I improvised.

Shit man, I was starving over here! Besides doesn’t a good chili, like a good stew or mother sauce get better the next day?

I ended up refrigerating overnight and serving the next day.

Let’s get a look.

There you go. You can see the proper density, the chili has condensed down and NOW you can dip a chip in there and the chili will stick to that chip thereby announcing that we are, indeed, ready for chili time.

Grab a bowl and get busy.

Start with a little diced onion.

I like red onion in my chili but you do you.

Cheese it up if you like, grab some Fritos and a beer and get busy.

Drew mentions sour cream many, many times but I kept it classic.

Get a closer look.

This is rich, hearty, savory, you really get the liquid smoke and damn this is tasty. The Fritos just fucking work with chili, man. Maybe it’s because my dad always did his chili this way.

Hell yeah. Let’s grab another bowl.

If I’m being honest here, this stuff is really, really good but I personally need to kick that heat up quite a bit.

Hey, I stuck to the recipe and used the single jalapeno. Trying to be all faithful and shit!

For the second bowl, let’s bring in an old friend that we met earlier this year.

Remember this fucker?

Yes sir. You know what? This sauce is fucking delicious. I’m going to buy another bottle when I finish this one.

Oh shit! Now we’re talking!

And with that….

Foreplay is over people. Bring on the real fucking…FOOTBALL!!

I want to once again thank everyone for following along this year. It’s you that keep me doing this and I appreciate every one of you

As an annual reminder, Sunday Gravy much like Request Line and the mock drafts are some of our offseason features that are here specifically to carry you good folks along during the dreadfully awful NFL offseason and to give you just the slightest glimmer of something to look forward to, and keep you focused on our humble site here.

Thanks to all who have been here all along and welcome back to our in-season readers. Good to see you all again.

Our very own Scotchy will be filling this Sunday timeslot for the next several months with his world renowned game day previews and his ideas for addressing homeless issues in Northern Ontario.

Enjoy them while they last.

As of now I do plan on being back in February for Season 10 but life is a fickle motherfucker and we’ll play it by ear.

Best of luck to your team unless it’s the Packers or the Q-aaron led NY Jets.

SKOL MOTHERFUCKERS!

PEACE!