An urge for Barbecue Chili

A coolish, gloomy, damp weekend is forecast – our first of the fall – and I am getting the urge to make Barbecue Chili.

Texans always get the urge to make chili when the weather turns cool, but barbecue is so much in our blood too, that it can be difficult to decide. One autumn – 1979, it was – I decided to see if the two could be combined.

They could, and I have been bragging about it ever since. I have been promising Karen for months that I would cook up a batch, but it was always too summery. This Sunday, I think, will be just right.

If you look for the recipe later on, you will find it in the “Cookbook” at the Back Booth.

You need three pounds of boneless chuck roast, and three pounds of boneless pork shoulder, on the lean side but with some fat, too. (There is a lot of dicing involved, and the boneless cuts make it much easier. If you want to be John Wayne and get bone-in roasts – they’re cheaper and have a little more flavor – go ahead.)

I use a 22-inch Weber kettle to barbecue. Pushed to one side of the fire grate, make a fire of about 30 charcoal briquets – the mesquite kind – and toss on two or three chunks of actual mesquite charcoal. Line a 10 by 13 aluminum cake pan with foil (makes cleanup a lot easier) and place it on the fire grate opposite the fire. Put the grill in place.

Salt and pepper the roasts and place on the grill over the drip pan. Position the kettle cover so the vent is over the meat and barbecue the roasts for four hours, adding seven or eight briquets and a mesquite charcoal chunk every 45 minutes or so.

Have ready two large onions, a large red and green bell pepper, two Anaheim chiles, and six or more garlic cloves, all diced. Let the roasts cool a bit after taking them out of the kettle, to make dicing easier. Dice the roasts into pieces no bigger than your pinky fingernail. This is a messy, onerous step, but so was mixing the paints for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

From the drip pan, measure four tablespoons of fat into a large dutch oven and sauté the onions, peppers and chiles in the fat over medium heat until they are soft and the bottom of the pot starts to brown a little. Add the garlic, one tablespoon each of salt and oregano, and four tablespoons (or more) of good chili powder (I like Gephardt’s Eagle Brand).

Stir the spices into the vegetables for a minute. Then add one 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, and one 8-ounce can of tomato sauce. Pour the excess fat off the drip pan, and add a cup of water to the pan and heat, stirring, to bring up the cooked-on meat juices. Add this, and the smoked meats, and water barely to cover, and black pepper to taste.

Stir it well, cover and simmer three hours. It makes about five quarts, but it freezes well, and will unfreeze you, on other chilly nights to come.