There as many chili recipes as there are Texans. To say that this chili recipe is the world's best may be a little difficult to prove, but it's pretty darn good!

The secret to great chili is using the right ingredients and taking your time. You've got to let that chili bubble away for several hours to get the real chili experience.

I think another often overlooked secret to great chili, is making your own homemade chili powder. Store bought chili powder is too aggressive, and I don't much care for the taste. Make your own by combing three spices, and see how much better your chili tastes!

Homemade chili powder is:

Equal parts

2 Tbls dried oregano

2 Tbls ground cumin seed

2 Tbls hot chile powder or flakes

That's it just mix it up and you've got a great homemade chili powder that's going to make a big difference in your next batch of chili.

I'm going to give a recipe for a Texan style chili. Now a lot of Texans might say that true chili should never include beans...and I can't help but agree with them; but this is pretty good, and using black beans makes the chili a whole lot healthier, not to mention a lot cheaper!

It may seem like this recipe has a lot of directions, but it's really quite simple, and most of what you see is my efforts to explain the hows and whys of what you're doing as you prepare the dish.

Chili Recipe (makes enough for a big family meal…with lots of leftovers!)

• 2 onions
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 5 green or red peppers (a mixture of the two works well)
• 2lbs of beef chuck cut into 1 inch cubes
• 10 big ole tomatoes, or 15 medium or 20 small ones, all coarsely chopped up. (Use fresh if tomatoes are in season and local tomatoes are flooding the market. Fresh tomatoes in season can't be beat! If tomatoes are not in season, you might be better off using a large can of canned tomatoes)
• 2 Tbls chili powder
• 1 tsp cracked black pepper
• 3 cups of cooked black beans (a common mistake has people adding uncooked beans into the chili. figuring that they'll cook up in the chili liquid as the chili simmers. They will, but the acidity from the tomatoes will keep the beans kind of crunchy, no matter how long you boil them for, and I think that the beans are better when they almost disappear into the mixture. )
• Salt and sugar and dried chile powder or flakes to taste

Add a couple Tbls of oil to a large heavy bottomed sauce pot on medium heat. Add the onions and peppers and sauté until slightly softened, about ten minutes.

Add the chili powder and stir for about a minute, then add the garlic and stir for an additional 30 seconds. You don't want the garlic to start burning, so after the garlic is ready, immediately add in your chopped tomatoes.

Transfer everything out of the pot into another pot or bowl, as you get the beef ready.

Now, add a couple more Tbls of oil to your saucepan on medium, sprinkle salt and pepper onto the beef, and add about half of it to the pot to brown. This is one of the most critical steps on the road to great chili. You want to take your time, and get that beef nice and brown all over. You want it brown, not just grey cooked looking, as that deep brown gives a lot of beefy flavor to your chili. Keep the heat moderate and just keep at it, the rest of the chili cooking is effortless, so it's worth it to spend the time here. Repeat with the second half of the beef.

As long as the bottom of the pan has not burnt (and by cooking at medium you should be fine...that crusty stuff on the bottom is like chili gold!) just add back all the stuff you just put into a second pot or bowl into the cooking pot.

Add about a quart of water to the pot and set the heat down to low. You want to see the chili just barely simmering away. You want to get beef so tender that it literally just melts apart into the chili, and the secret to that is LOW AND SLOW!

Every hour or so, check to see that there is enough water to just cover all the ingredients.

This chili recipe takes a while and you'll want to keep this simmering slowly away for about 6 hours, but there's really no effort required…and what's better than a Sunday afternoon spent watching football with the smell of your chili perfuming the house?

After you've been simmering for about 4 hours, add the cooked beans into the chili, and keep that the pot trucking away for another couple of hours, stirring occasionally.

You'll know it's done, when it looks like real Texas chili! It should look like a uniform mixture. You won't see bits of beef, and bits of tomatoes and bits of beans…you'll just see your reddish brown masterpiece!

Now you're ready to season. Add about 2 tsp's of salt, the black pepper, and as much extra chile as you'd like. Keep tasting it and adding more salt until it tastes like it should. You can also add a Tbls or two of sugar if you think it's too sour.

If you think it needs more of a chili kick, add more chili powder by the tsp, until it's where you like it.

Great chili is all about harmony and balance. You want perfect union of flavors, so nothing should be too dominant. This chili recipe is a great basic chili, and once you make it once, it might become your family's new favorite chili!