When I came across Jamie’s Shiner Bock chili while binge-reading the archives of the cavender diary (totally exuberant in both personality and decor!) on Thursday night, I was incredibly keen to give it a bash.
It is Very Very Encouraging that I seem to be getting my try-new-things cooking mojo back!
Because it is often pretty difficult to get American | Mexican ingredients here, I figured we’d have to substitute some of the ingredients – particularly the chili powder (not at all the same as what we know as chili powder1) and chipotle chili powder. We decided to drop into to the excellent Herbies on Saturday morning just in case – and they had both!
(As an aside, while we were in the neighbourhood, we stopped in to Essential Ingredient and Don impulse bought some Lillie Q’s Carolina BBQ sauce – WOW! SO GOOD!)
We even found monterey jack cheese in Norton Street Grocer! Sadly though, there was no way we were going to find Shiner Bock beer, so we subbed with Negra Modelo.
I prepped while watching Great British Bake Off, then let it simmer for about 3.5 hours …
… and it was completely amazing! Even better than expected.
1I think 3 tablespoons of ground chili would have just about killed us.
what is the difference between the chilli powders?
What is sold here as chili powder (eg, mccormicks chilli powder) is ground chili / peppers / capsicum (with nothing else added).
US chili powder is a mix of ground chili / peppers / capsicum + cumin + other spices. Our mix from Herbies was chili, cumin and paprika.
Definitely a trap for new players. Our version is rather a bit hotter by volume!
I was wondering what the chilli thing was as well.
To be fair, I had absolutely no idea that there was a difference before I acquired the USian husband.