Episode 173 of Just Two Good Old Boys has a whole chapter on recipes, and one of them is a house favorite: John C. Dvorak’s COMDEX chili, named for the old tech trade show. Ben makes it a couple of times a year, tweaking the recipe each time, and his verdict is blunt: “It’s actually really good.” No exact ingredient list was given on air, but we got the recipe below from the No Agenda Fun archives,
From dvorak.org
This recipe won the first COMDEX Chili Cook Off.
The next year it won the People’s Choice award.
It has been retired. If I were to enter it again
I would lace it with pure ancho powder as that
seems to be the direction that the competition
is going: exaggerated ancho flavor.
DVORAK’s
Tex-Mex Four Bean Chili
Ingredients:
1/2 pound smoked ham, diced
1 3/4 pound boneless chuck cut in 1/2-inch cubes
1 large torpedo or two red onions, diced
28 ounces of ground whole tomatoes (canned)
30 ounce can of Hunts Red beans
15 ounce can of pinto beans
15 ounce can of Great Northern beans
27 ounce can of kidney beans
4 ounces of fresh de-seeded jalapeno peppers choppped
1 TBL chili powder (prefer Grandmas brand)
1 TBL crushed red peppers
1/4 cup Dry Sack (sherry)
4 cloves of garlic
Concept:
This is a spicy bean stew that shows off a mixture of four distinct
looking and distinct tasting beans. It was developed over ten
years of trial and error testing. Canned beans make the dish
easier to prepare. CAUTION: It is hard to stop eating this dish
once one begins.
Directions:
Saute the onion in butter. Separately, in a large pot put the
ground tomatoes, add all of the beans and the crushed red peppers
and heat to simmer. Meanwhile, when the onions are half cooked,
add the sherry and boil down by 2/3. Pour mixture into pot of
beans. Add more oil to saute pan and brown beef and garlic with
ham. Add TBL of chili powder to cooking meat. Continue cooking
for 3-5 minutes, then add to pot of beans.
Add chopped jalapenos to bean, meat, and tomato mixture. Add
tomato sauce (optional). Heat for 10 minutes. Serve in a bowl
accompanied by cold beer.
[Just Two Good Old Boys #173 1:01:19]
