Wine with chili

Blog: Winemaker's Journal

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Most folks are likely to choose a cold beer to douse a fiery bowl of chili while watching their weekend or Monday night football game.

But when a good friend invited me over to test out her new stove and my chili making skills, I brought over a bottle of my most intense cabernet sauvignon.

For the chili, I bought two pounds of carne asada-sliced top round. Tri-tip or chuck roast is good too. These cuts are inexpensive and very flavorful. It's easy to find the thin-sliced meat in local grocery stores because they're wonderful for carne asada, the quick-cooked Latino beef delicacy to be rolled into tortillas.

I chopped a whole onion, three cloves of garlic and a couple of anaheim, pimento and ancho peppers left from my garden. While that mixture was sauteing in my friend's beautiful new Le Creuset enameled iron stew pot, I went to work on the stack of sliced beef, slicing again across the grain to get fingernail-size chunks. Any larger pieces of fat or gristle were discarded.

I added the meat to the pot and browned that thoroughly before adding 3 or 4 ounces of mild mixed ground chili pepper. I cheated a little and used a bag of Carroll Shelby Texas Chili spices. Shelby sold the enterprise and the recipe of spices has changed over the years and it's pretty mild compared to what it was. But it's still pretty darn good and easier than cooking down your own chili peppers and running them through a food mill. If you use regular mild chili powder, the secret is to use lots of it. Handfuls. You can add cayenne later to boost up the heat value to your preference.

As soon as the spices are mixed in, I added an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce and about 16 ounces of beef stock. Stir it all up, put on the lid, turn the stove down to simmer. You can add a can of kidney beans a few minutes before serving. Time to open up that bottle of wine and catch up on old times for 15 minutes or so while the meat and spices marry and the cornbread rises in the oven.

The day before, I had consulted with Wine Review Online for my choice of wine. Paul Lukacs and Marguerite Thomas have an impressive list of blogs on pairing wine with food, based on wine events where they've been known to open dozens of bottles of various wines with friends to find out what goes best with a specific dish.

Their Jan. 24, 2006 blog — http://www.winereviewonline.com/wine_with_chili.cfm — favored cabernets and zinfandels with character and good structure, but also found that a good chardonnay went surprisingly well with their chili concoction.

I wanted to bring my own 2007 Cabernet made from Bishop Vineyard grapes and would have done so even without Lakacs and Thomas's encouragement. It would probably pale next to their 2003 Antiguas Reserva by Chile's Cousino-Macul, also one of my favorites. But it was something of my own to share with a friend and a steaming bowl of spicy chili topped with grated cheddar cheese, sour cream and chopped scallions. Forget beer and football, I'll take the wonderful bonding of good friends, tasty food and a sociable wine.

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alex39 (alex saliby) says...

Personal preference: a Spanish red,
something with predominantly Grenache.

But, if the chile has been heated up by that cayenne, I'd stick to a Riesling.

And the chili recipe sounds delicious.

Nice entry.

November 7, 2009 at 9:58 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

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