bigbad's the chili maker in this house but i've gleaned the basics over the years. it's got 6 or 7 diffferent peppers (some sweet, some hot), lots of different ground up beasts and birds plus bacon, a dozen different spices and herbs and aromatics, chunks of tomatoes and five or six different kinds of beans.

let him serve you up a bowl with a dolllop of daisy and a sprinkle of sharp cheese and i promise you'll have a little orgy of tastes and textures goin' on in your mouth.

I use cubed tri-tip, lots of beef stock thickened with gritts or cornmeal, no beans and lots of chili spice,cumin and red pepper.

Cobalt's co-worker makes white chicken chili. He says it is really good and is going to get the recipe for me.

Chili is great there is so many difernt way people make it. You can make it with beans or with out beans (no to menmention all the diferent beans people use), with ground Meat, cubes of meat or even with out meat. One of the nice things is if you have a basic recipe you can make it with what ever you want or have on hand at the time. All this chili talk has got me making a batch for tonight. I'm making black bean chili (due to the fact I had black beans on hand). I started off cooking one and a half pounds of ground beef draining and taking it out of the pot setting it a side. Then melting a couple table spoons of butter in the pot add one onion roughly chopped and cooked them till they were soft. Added 2 cloves of garlic and cooked till soft. Added about one tablespoon of chilie powder (note best to add the chilie powder before the liquid chilie Powder is fat soluble so you get a better flaovr) and one teaspoon of cumin. Then added 3 pounds of black beans (soaked over night in water) 3 cups of beef broth(if you need to add more liquid just add water ass needed), 1 chipotle pepper (a smoke jalapeno adds a nice smokey flavor) and a can of diced tomatoes drained. Bring it to a boil then turn it down to a simmer let simmer covered till the beans are soft take out about 3 cup of the chili and put in the blender and blend untill smooth and put back into the pot. Add the groud beef that you browned off .
Let cook till you are ready to eat (another nice thing about chili the longer you cook it the better it gets).

I make it too. I use chicken breasts, cannelini beans and I cheat and buy a dry mix.

i use that blender trick a lot too, boog. i love it.
or, depending on the kind of soup, stew, stoup or whatever, i'll toss in mashed taters if i've got 'em on hand.