Chili

I was in charge of doing most of the cooking for my dorm's super bowl party this weekend, which basically meant that I had to cook chili for over 40 people. On Saturday, I made a beef stock to use in the chili. I really can't express how much better homemade stock is than store-bought stuff. Not only does it actually taste of something other than salt, but it's also cheaper and doesn't require that much effort. All you have to do is get some bones and veggies, roast them (optional), and then simmer them in water all day.

Marrow bones and mirepoix after roasting

Simmering stock

I meant to make several extra quarts of stock to freeze and use later, but unfortunately when we were unpacking the groceries, we left a package of bones out of the fridge so all 2.5 quarts of the stock had to go into the chili.

Sunday was a lot of work. I had to chop 12 onions and cook them in several increments since I don't have a large saute pan, which took a while. Then, I had to cook 12 pounds of ground beef in four separate increments, draining as much fat as I could from each (we got cheap 73/27 beef). Those two things took seemingly forever, but the preparation was mostly done at that point. The stuff I made was loosely based on Emeril's recipe.

That's a 3-gallon pot of chili.

I didn't really like it but others seemed to have. In the end, only half was eaten, so that should tell you what my dinner is on Monday.

The vegetarian chili.

Oh, yeah, I also made a vegetarian chili for the vegetarians of the dorm. I wasn't very happy about that, but at least it turned out alright. I have a rather large disdain for vegetarians (excluding those who have been advised not to eat meat by a doctor). I'm not going to go into it here other than to say that meat is really good - eat it.