A week ago my spouse had a craving for chili and I was feeling ambitious so I decided to try to make a more “Texas style” chili with fewer beans and more hunks of meat instead of ground beef. I started with a package of bone-in short ribs which I seared in a my enameled cast iron pad. I removed the short ribs from the pan and then cooked onions and garlic in the short rib grease. Next I returned the ribs to the pan and added one regular can of whole tomatoes that I had pureed with a can of water in the blender, plus 2 dried chipotle chiles. I then lowered the heat to low to medium low and cooked for 2 hours. This made the meat very tender.
Next I removed the meat from the pot and stripped it off the bones using a fork. Removed chiles from sauce and poured sauce into holding dish. Braised 1 lb of boneless short ribs cut into 1 inch pieces. Removed meat from pan and cooked more onions, garlic, jalapeno chiles. Poured sauce, meat, 2 cans of diced fire roasted tomatoes back into pan, added 2 tablespoons chile powder, 1 tablespoon ancho chile powder and cooked for 60 minutes. Added 1 ear of roasted corn, 1 can of black beans, and cilantro. Simmered 15 more minutes before serving.
The final product looked like this.
Served with mini corn bread loaves for a tasty meal.
All and all it came out pretty good for a made up on the fly recipe. My only regret is that I didn’t braise all the short ribs, bone-in and boneless together. The boneless rib meat wasn’t as tender as I would have liked. Cooking it longer would have helped this. Also I’d probably add more different dried chiles into the original braising liquid if I were to do it again.