How to Make Arlene’s “Tasty Chili” and Cheesy Cornbread 🌶️

Well, hello and welcome to “At Home” today. We’re so glad you could be with us. It is a cold, cold day here in Pittsburgh. I tell you, yesterday was cold. Last night was really cold. And you know, when it gets cold like that, I immediately think chili. Because you know what? That’s one of those things that gets hot, and when you eat it kind of warms you all up. Aw, it just sets well. And it’s easy to do, you can make a big pot of it. We’re gonna do that today, so stay tuned. We’re gonna put a little twist on it, make it something more than just a bowl of chili. First, I wanted to tell you about something. You know, my parents are both gone. They’ve gone to be with the Lord. And when you clean out the house, you know, where they’ve spent their lives, there’s so many little mementos that mean so much. And you think, oh, I know they were here when somebody gave this to them, this happened, the circumstances around all of that. Well, this is something, this little sign right here. This was something that was a part of our house since I was a little child. I can’t remember when they got it. And I was fascinated by this, ’cause this brought me such comfort as a kid. It says, “Jesus never fails.” What a powerful, powerful message. And so I ended up, I thought, well, I’d like to have this. So it hangs at our house now. I can remember hanging in the living room at my mom and dad’s, sometimes when they moved it, hung in the bedroom, hung in the hallway. This hangs in our house today. And so I took it down thinking, wonder how old this is. ‘Cause you can tell it’s like the sketching and everything is not modern day. I looked on the back and on the back it says, “Reverend William Casley gave me this in 1937.” Before I was born, a long time before I was born. Reverend William Casley was the minister that dedicated me to the Lord when I was a baby, the only, the last person that he ever dedicated was me before he passed away and went to be with the Lord. And in 1937, he gave this to my dad. My mother and dad were just married two years then. You know, I’m saying all that to say this, this message, Jesus never fails, it never gets old. It’s as true today as it was the day that this plaque was made. This message, if you can get a grasp on it and realize it in your heart, Jesus will never fail you, no matter what’s going on in your life, he is a God that can be trusted. He’s a God that can be believed in. He will never fail you. This is a proven fact down the annals of time. Jesus never fails. In 2004 or 1937, Jesus will not fail you. We’re gonna pause now to have our At Home Hint, come right back and we’re gonna get our chili started. We’ll see in just a minute. Here’s today’s At Home Hint. When serving saucy, cheesy or layered baked dishes like lasagna, allow it to cool and set for a few minutes before cutting. This makes cutting and serving much neater. If you’ve got a helpful hint, you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, Cornerstone Television, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. All right, we’re gonna begin our chili. And in here I have about a tablespoon of oil and a little bit of butter ’cause I like that foundation, that flavor. And you wanna get that melting, very good, you need a tall pot for this because I figure if you’re gonna go to the trouble of making chili, make a lot, freeze it, give some to the neighbor, whatever. Or you can cut the portion in half. If you live alone, you might wanna think about that. But to this now I’m going to add two pound of ground chuck. All right? And we’re just gonna drop that in there because we want that to brown up pretty good. So you’re gonna immediately start to break it apart with a spatula, and it doesn’t have to be totally, completely brown. The browning, it really adds flavor to the chili, and I really, Paul and I, we like chili. We have, you know, people think of chili as like oh it’s a quick supper. It’s nothing special, but you can make it special, and you can make it special by adding things to it or serving it in different ways, which we’re gonna show you today is this is my favorite way of having chili. Let me get the fire up nice and hot in this so we can get it browned off. Now I’m gonna go over the ingredients while this is browning so you get an idea. Two pounds of ground chuck. I want you to see has very little fat in it. You don’t want ground steak, ground round. That’s too lean. You need a little bit of fat to flavor it, but this is beautiful ground chuck and I think of the proportion of fat to the proportion of meat should be up there in the 90s, but it should not be 100% without fat. You need some fat in there. Okay, so we’re gonna let this brown up. While it is, let me walk you through some of the other ingredients. Okay. Now, we have green pepper. We have garlic, onion. Don’t wanna put that in yet because until this browns, you put the onion in there now, that’s gonna get burned. So will the garlic. So you want this to get a head start. You want the meat to start to brown. Okay, and then I’m gonna come back to that later. And over here we have, what is that one? This would be the thyme, or oregano. Oregano and thyme, and we have chili powder. We have all kinds of tomatoes, different kinds of tomatoes. We have stewed tomatoes, and I like them because they have some celery and onions and green peppers in them already, even though, we’re gonna add some more. It just helps to enhance the flavor. We also have a large can of tomatoes sauce. I like that idea. We have a large can of crushed tomatoes in tomato puree. We have a large can of tomato juice. A lot of tomatoes here. If you don’t like tomatoes, don’t eat the chili. It’s not gonna work. And in this one, it’s the the milder diced tomatoes and green chilies. When you see chili, you think hot, it just adds a little slight tang. Really, it’s not bad. And then of course our light red kidney beans. All of this goes into chili. Okay? Now let me brown this up some more. Get it going here. This should brown off very quickly and there shouldn’t be a lot of grease. If you use a cheaper cut of meat and there is a lot of grease, you wanna pour some of that off before you start to add the other things. I’m gonna add my onion now, ’cause this onion it’s about a cup or a large onion, it’s chopped, and we’re going to add garlic. You wanna make sure you get all that, ’cause that’s gonna really add the flavor. You know what? Don’t don’t get wild with the garlic ’cause everybody, I know a lot of people if you really like it, you really like it. And you think, oh, more garlic, more, But if you don’t like it that, well, and somebody’s got so much in it that that’s all you can taste, that’s not pleasant. Doesn’t taste good. So be thoughtful a little bit about the other guy that’s gonna eat. You can also add more at to table from yourself, you know, just with a garlic powder or garlic salt. Okay, now we’re gonna do the green peppers. They’re in there. That would be one large green pepper chopped. Okay, and now we’re just mixing this around. This is gonna get some beautiful color to it. Wish you could smell it. It’s a wonderful smell. I like the colors, the fresh onion, the fresh green peppers. Okay, and what I like to do before I add the tomatoes, I like to add the spices now because when you’re brown in the meat if you add the spices, the spices are cooked into the meat. They’re not floating on the tomatoes sauce or the tomatoes that you use. So it’s better to put them on the meat. Okay, so we’re gonna start with our oregano and basil. Okay, and some thyme. I guess that’s time. Not quite sure. Oh, this smells like the oregano. Okay. Must be ground. And then this, we call a chili powder. Okay, we took a vote. Everybody says go big on chili powder. Actually I have two teaspoons, but we’re probably gonna go a little bit more ’cause these are all guys on the crew. So there’s one, there’s two. Go three?

• [Mike] Oh, absolutely.
• Okay, we voted for three. All right. If it’s really hot, Mike gets to eat it all. And that’s what he is counting on, as a matter of fact. Do another.
• Oh, one more. Live dangerously. Then he has assurance that nobody will be eating it. Okay, but you know what you can do. You can add hot sauce to it when you sit at the table, when you’re eating if you can put some more on that way. This is coming along beautifully. Now I’m gonna do some salt. Okay, and some black pepper, which also adds to that. Now my secret ingredient, you say that’s stupid, Arlene. When there’s tomatoes, sometimes a tomato leaves a bitterness. So I put about a third of a cup of sugar. Just put it in there, too, okay? And you can adjust your seasonings after you get it going. And after it starts tasting a certain way. Think, well, you know, I think I need a little bit more hot stuff. Look at this. Is this beautiful or what? Ha, chili chili in the works. Okay. Now, I’m gonna start to add. We’ll do this stewed tomatoes. Don’t worry about them. Oh, you know they’re in chunks. If you wanna, if you wanna get in there and mash them, you can, but they’ll cook down. They’ll cook. This doesn’t cook like forever and ever either. You don’t have to cook this for two hours or something. Doesn’t have to, but just be careful when you’re emptying out these cans so that when you have a high heat you don’t want it to splash up on you. Here’s our tomato sauce. Uh-huh. We gotta get those chilies in there. If we don’t get anything else in there, the chilies have to get in because, boy, do they add a nice dimension of flavor. Now the only thing I would not put in here now would be the kidney beans, ’cause I don’t want them to be mush. Okay? So as I’m working with this and I’m stirring and this is gonna come to a real wonderful boil just cooking, cooking. You want this to cook for about a half hour, good half hour. If you like it longer, go longer. Look how nice and thick it is already. That’s what I like. Now we do the tomato juice. That adds such flavor. A large tomato juice. Told you this makes a lot. It really does. But again, if you’re going to the trouble of making it, why not make a lot and freeze? That’s the easiest way for me to get some work done when, you know, you know you’re gonna have a busy week ahead, make a big pot of chili. Lots of ways to serve it too. All right, let me see. So these two, we’re gonna let this cook for about a half hour. We come back. We’re gonna make Mexican cornbread. We’ll be right back in just a minute. Well, if you’re just joining us, you’ve missed us putting together Arlene’s Tasty Chili, and this chili I’m telling you, if you ever try it, you’re really, really gonna enjoy it because it’s already nice and thick. We’re gonna bring it up to a boil. Let it boil down for a while. And while we’re waiting on that, don’t wanna cover it, ’cause I kind like it to cook down and thicken up a little bit. While we’re waiting on that, we’re gonna make our Mexican cornbread. Okay. This is simple too. I kinda like the crunchier taste of a corn muffin or something like that when you have chili, because you could serve it by putting a square of cornbread, split it open, put it in your bowl. Put chili on top of it. Oh, that’s a good one too. Okay, here we go. We’re going to preheat our oven, first of all, at 450, which is really, really hot, okay? And we have about a cup and a half of the yellow corn meal. We have a half a cup of flour. Okay, buttermilk. I need my buttermilk. I don’t see that. We have buttermilk? Let’s see, right in here at the bottom? Yeah. We’ll do a half a cup of buttermilk. Okay. Do about half of that. You know, buttermilk makes the absolute best biscuits. If you haven’t had buttermilk biscuits, you gotta try them. All right, now we’re going to let me get this here. Now, I like to mix those two up together first and we’re gonna add some baking powder little bit of sugar, little bit of salt. Okay, and some oil. This is about a fourth of cup of vegetable oil. You would not use olive oil. That’s way too heavy for something like this. And of course, to give it a little tang, we’re gonna add some chili powder. Can’t get away from that with this meal today, you know, it’s a hot thing to do. And this is some green chilies that you buy in a can and they have been drained well, okay? Actually you just add everything at one time to this which is the kind of cooking that I like to… And of a small can of golden cream style corn. Give a little body. You know, I never cared… Well, Paul doesn’t care too much for Mexican food and I’ve stayed away from it, ’cause you tend to shy away from the stuff that your husband doesn’t like, ’cause what are you cooking for if he’s not happy? But when I get out and I get tasting some of this stuff, I love it. And I think, well how come I don’t make it at home? And then I remember he doesn’t like it. But one of the things I’m really getting into is Southwestern cooking, which is, it’s great. I like the chilies. I like the cornbread, the tortillas and stuff. It’s just a whole different way of eating, but it’s good. It’s delicious. Okay? Now we’re gonna add our two eggs. This would be large eggs, and this is cheddar. Can use Monterey Jack, cheddar, whatever you wanna use. It all works good. And that’s only about half a cup. Okay. That goes in, and then our buttermilk. Ah. Now this is one of those things that I like in stuff, but to sit and have a glass of buttermilk not one of my favorite things. And I found that either people really, really like it, or they really, really don’t. There’s no middle of the road with buttermilk, but it’s supposed to be good for you, I guess, you know? And I guess it’s all in what you’re used to. Funny how that we get our preferences and our likes and dislikes from the way we were raised, a lot of times. My mother was not a big fish person. In fact, she refused to cook fish ’cause she didn’t like the smell. Now my dad, he liked fish and, poor thing, he’d get a can of sardines or something, and we as kids, you know, we’re like, oh dad get them sardines out of here. They really don’t smell… And you know, dad would just sit there and he’d eat them, and my mother, she wasn’t too happy, but she wouldn’t say anything. You know, she would not say a word, but so as a result, if you’re not eating a lot of fish when you’re a kid, you kind of have to acquire a taste when you get older, because you know, it’s good for you, and you should be eating it. So that’s one of the injustices you gotta, as parents, I think we need to acquaint our children, grandparents too, with all the kinds of foods so that they can least taste them and see what they like or what they don’t like. Now we wanna make sure that’s completely and totally mixed up, which it is. You have your pan here. It’s greased. Very, very well greased. Okay, and then we just put that in. You know, I’ve made regular cornbread, too, without the Mexican part of it, and I love it when there’s corn in it because I just like that extra crunch that it gets in there. Oh, makes such good cornbread. If you don’t like the chili, don’t put the chili powder in there. It would be alright without it. Some of us would think it wouldn’t be as good, right Michael? This is a guy that sits and eats his chili with the chili powder sitting right by his plate. So he knows whereof he speaks. We also know that he really likes that a lot. All right, 450 oven. Now remember, you wanna be sure that that oven’s that hot. Don’t put it in, Think I was 350 and then, oh, I should have… And then you turn it to 450 and stick it in. Has to be that hot right at the top. So here we go. And that’s gonna bake 25 to 30 minutes. Okay, and I’m gonna set the little timer. Isn’t this cute? Somebody gave this to me. We have all kind of things on this set anymore. Never know. Little ladybug. Okay, I’m gonna stir. Look already how different this has taken that look. Oh, can you believe that? Doesn’t that look wonderful? All right, We have just a little bit more time for this to cook. Soon as the cornbread’s done, we’re gonna be in the dining room sitting at the table and I’m gonna tell you how you can make this better than just a bowl of chili. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. Well today we’ve made my famous tasty chili, and I told you I was gonna show you how to make it not just a plain bowl of chili. Here it is. Here, look at this. Ah, oh, we just sprinkled a little bit of cheese on the top, and this is about two thirds of what it makes. There’s still a little bit more. So you would have plenty. Okay. Let me show you what we’re gonna do. We’ve cooked some penne pasta. We have it right here. And you wanna serve this in a bowl, like a nice broad soup bowl, and you just take some pasta put it on the bottom of the bowl. Now you don’t wanna put like a like you were having spaghetti because guess what, it’s gonna be too many because this is filling. So about like that would be fine. Now you’re gonna load your chili all over the pasta, just like that. Oh, I tell you what, I wish you could smell this. I wish you were here and you could smell this, because look at the cheese coming off the plate. Oh boy. Now that in itself would be great. We are not done yet, because next after we do that, then we’re going to add some more cheddar cheese. We just, that was a garnish there wasn’t very much. Now you sprinkle the cheddar cheese, as much as you want, remember this stuff’s gonna melt. And it adds another… Actually these are layers of flavor that we’re doing with this, okay? And then this is the end of the road here, which is fabulous. This is sour cream, use low fat, if you want to, whatever, but you wanna put a dollop of that on top. And as you let that set, the heat from the chili will begin to melt that, and it will go all through your chili. Ha, I can’t hardly talk. My mouth is watering so bad. Now this right here is a lot of food. It really is. Doesn’t look like it, but it is. And then of course we made our Mexican cornbread. I gotta show you what this looks like. This is something that it’s not hard to make but, oh my, look how delicious. Isn’t it beautiful? Well, we hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s show, and think about chili the next time. Be sure to join us because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here at home. We’ll see you then.
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