Normally I only post a recipe when I've just made the food. Then I give a little anecdote style offering along with the actual recipe (or reasonable facimile of a recipe - this stuff just comes out of my head most of the time). It's sort of like my own Chicken Soup For the Soul. Maybe I should make a category for it: Chicken Soup That Will Melt Your Soul Because Almost All Of The Recipes I Have Are Hotter Than Your Ass Will Be Able To Safely Contain The Next Day or something like that.

I'm going to make an exception to the unwritten "write up the recipe after you've cooked the food" rule this time because I saw Kate's chili recipe and discovered that Sgt. Hook needs my recipe in order to save the blogosphere from the weak-ass nastiness that has so far been submitted to his chili cook off.

DISCLAIMER: I'd already been hankering for some chili lately and tried to find my Death Chili recipe with no luck. There's an actual recipe for this one and it's for a good reason. I tend to be making chili at the same time I am consuming beer. Depending on how much beer I consume the chili will grow to inedible levels of hotness. Even for me, and that's pretty freaking impressive.

Anyway, I can't find the recipe but I'm going to reproduce it here for you from memory. It should be safe as I am currently completely sober (a bit jumped up on coffee but I don't think that'll affect anything except spelling errors).

Jim's Death Chili*
aka Jim's Chili of Anal Destruction**

Ingredients

• Top Round Steak - 2 pounds or so, at least 1" thick. Top round roast works too (it's the same meat after all) and will probably be cheaper but is harder to cube. Your choice.
• Tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce or Maggi sauce
• Smallish bottle of cheyenne pepper sauce (tobasco's medium sized bottle, just about everybody else's regular sized bottle)
• 1/4 cup of hot oil (in the Oriental foods section)
• 1/4 cup paprika
• 1/4 cup crushed red pepper (this is why we call it chili, y'all. the red pepper makes it come out a lot cooler than it would otherwise)
• Couple of tablespoons of habanero sauce
• 1/4 cup of jalapeno sauce
• Half dozen small to medium tomatoes (not beefsteak - we're looking for juicy tomatoes here)
• Handful of flour (to thicken the roux)

Preparation

2 (two) days before you make the chili you need to start the meat marinading. Mix everything except the tomatoes, flour and meat in a container that's big enough to hold the meat. One of those white ceramic roast things with the glass lid usually works pretty well. Cut up the steak into 1 inch cubes. Err on the side of grandiosity as you won't get a good shred if they are cubed too small. Stick the beef cubes in the marinade. Put in the fridge.

Get those tomatoes out of the fridge! Tomatoes should be stored at room temperature. And save the fat from the beef, you'll need it for the roux. If you don't get at least a handful of fat off of it you'll need to pick up some suet from the butcher. It's okay, you've got a couple of days to go get it.

Cooking

I'll now assume that it is two days later. It is two days later, isn't it? You wouldn't say "Oh, two days is surely not necessary. I shall marinade for only a single day" now would you? For if you do such a dastardly thing then surely the fates will frown upon you. And the chili (which is really the more important of the two at this particular time).

Roll the tomatoes on the cutting board to bruise them slightly. Peel 'em. Chop 'em up. You don't need to dice them, they're going to fall apart on their own. You can try to substitute peeled canned whole tomatoes here to save a bit of work but use one tomato less than you would have as they are super-saturated in the can.

Put the beef in a pot big enough for it to be all in one layer. Add the tomatoes and heat on low for about 2 hours, covered except for periodic stirring. The liquids from the sauces and the stewing tomatoes will separate once the chili gets to temperature. Remove two or three cups of it and save.

At around an hour and a half you should make the roux. Rend the fat that you saved (or suet if you didn't have enough fat) to liquid. You need about a quarter cup of liquid fat. In a pinch you can use lard but that's nasty if you ask me. Mix in flour until the roux (just liquid fat at this point but we're going to start calling it roux already because that sounds a lot better) thickens into a gruel-like mass. Whisk in those cups of liquids that you saved. Add some more flower if you need to. The object is to have a sauce just a bit thicker than buttermilk pancake batter.

Add the roux back in with the chili and mix well. This is where the chili should fall apart like the French Army during a fireworks show.

Service!

Serve as-is with fresh bread, sour cream, limes. You can also use it as a base for the most fantastic burritos you'll ever have. If you go the bread route, use a hard white bread like supermarket French bread, flat bread or (if you know the secret of making it, and no I don't know so don't ask me) fry bread.

Do not drink water with this. It will do absolutely nothing to cut the heat or provide relief. Beer works well and so does milk. In each case they break up the oils in the chili and allow the heat to wash into your gullet and out of your mouth.

There you are, straight from my heart to your tummy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I also hope I got the proportions relatively close. Yes, I know that there are no beans in this recipe. That is because there are no beans in chili. Chili is a meat entree, not a stew.

* To my knowledge, nobody has ever died as a direct result of eating my chili.
** So named after a former housemate spent an entire shift on the company crapper after a particularly inebriated Jim's Death Chili episode.