Turkey Chili From Nyt Cooking Food

TURKEY AND HOMINY CHILI WITH SMOKY CHIPOTLE

Steps:

• In a large pot over medium-high heat, warm 1 tablespoon oil. Brown half the ground turkey with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper, stirring occasionally until golden, 6 to 8 minutes. Stir in half the garlic and half the chili powder and sauté for another 30 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, transfer turkey to a bowl. Brown remaining turkey in same manner, transferring it to bowl with rest of turkey.
• Add remaining 2 tablespoons oil to pot and sauté onions, bell peppers and jalapeño peppers with remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring, until onion is translucent, about 10 minutes.
• Return ground turkey and any liquid in bowl to pot and add tomato purée, hominy, beans, beer, chipotles, oregano and bay leaves with 3 cups water. Simmer chili, partly covered, until it is thick enough for your taste, about 1 hour. Serve hot, garnished with sour cream, scallions, cilantro and lime wedges.

SIMPLE TURKEY CHILI

Steps:

• Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Place turkey in the pot, and cook until evenly brown. Stir in onion, and cook until tender.
• Pour water into the pot. Mix in tomatoes, kidney beans, and garlic. Season chili powder, paprika, oregano, cayenne pepper, cumin, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 30 minutes.

TURKEY CHILI

Steps:

• In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until translucent and starting to brown at the edges, 5 to 7 minutes.
• Use a fork to fish the tomatoes out of the can and add them to the pot, leaving behind the juice for now. Season with salt and cook the tomatoes, breaking them up with the wooden spoon and stirring occasionally, until jammy and their liquid has reduced significantly, 5 to 7 minutes.
• Stir in the chili powder and cook until fragrant, just a few seconds. Add the ground turkey, season with salt and stir to combine, breaking up the meat with the spoon. (Don't worry about browning or cooking it through here, as it will do so when it simmers.) Stir in the reserved liquid from the tomato can.
• Use the fork to fish out as many chipotle peppers from the can as you would like, starting with two or three, and add to the pot, breaking them up with the wooden spoon, along with all of the adobo sauce. The more peppers you use, the spicier your final chili will be; if you like spice, just add the entire can. (Store any peppers you don't use in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week and in the freezer for up to 2 months.) Fill the empty chipotle can with cold tap water, swish it around and add to the pot. Stir to combine.
• Bring the chili to a simmer over medium-high heat - you should see occasional small bubbles breaking the surface of the mixture - then cover the pot and reduce the heat to continue simmering over medium-low, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced and the tomatoes have broken down, about 20 minutes. The chili should look thick and shiny, but not too thick that you couldn't ladle it into a bowl. (If it's too watery, then simmer with the lid off for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.) Taste and add more salt if desired. Serve with cheese, sour cream and cilantro, if using.

ONE-POT TURKEY CHILI AND BISCUITS

Steps:

• Prepare the biscuits: In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, sugar, salt and baking soda.
• Using a pastry cutter or your hands, cut or rub in the butter until mixture resembles rolled oats. Fold in the buttermilk and scallion. Gently stir mixture until it comes together in a moist, sticky mass. Cover bowl and refrigerate until ready to use.
• Heat oven to 425 degrees.
• Start the chili: In a large ovenproof skillet, heat oil over high heat until it thins. Stir in turkey and cook, breaking up meat with a wooden spoon, until it's no longer pink with some browned bits, about 7 minutes.
• Reduce heat to medium-high, and add onion and jalapeño, and cook until translucent and tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic, chili powder, 1 teaspoon salt, oregano, cumin and pepper, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute longer.
• Using kitchen shears or your hands, break up tomatoes and add them, along with the juices, to the pan. Add beans and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, and scrape up any brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until slightly thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. If the mixture seems very dry, add a few tablespoons water. It should be juicy-looking but not wet. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro. Taste and add more salt, if needed.
• Divide biscuit dough into 6 equal balls. Use your palm to flatten each ball into a 3/4-inch-thick disk. Arrange on top of turkey chili. Brush biscuits lightly with milk, and sprinkle grated Parmesan on top. Transfer skillet to oven and cook until biscuits are golden at the edges, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving. Serve with sour cream and pickled jalapeños, if you like, and more scallions.

TURKEY CHILI

Steps:

• In a large skillet, saute onions, garlic and bell peppers in olive oil over medium heat until onions are translucent. Add ground turkey and cook until browned.
• Add remaining ingredients and stir well to combine. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

HOW TO MAKE CHILI

Steps:

• A great chili rests on two foundations: its protein, and the peppers that flavor it. It is, essentially, a stew. We'll get to the chiles, but we'll begin with the protein. If you're cooking with meat, look for a cut high in fat and flavor. If you're cooking with beans, find a sturdy variety: A pinto or navy bean is an excellent chili bean.Chuck beef, from the steer's shoulder, is excellent for chili. But you can also do very well with brisket and short ribs, and there are fantastic chilis made of lamb and pork shoulder. Whatever protein you use, cut the meat into 2-inch cubes, or, if you'd like to work faster or simply prefer the texture, use ground meat. In much of Texas and at the butcher shop anywhere, you can get your meat coarsely ground, which just about splits the difference between cubes and ground. But you can also use a combination: Some cooks even like to use a number of different cuts, combining stew meat with ground. Consider between ¼ and a ⅓ of a pound per person. It should yield enough fat to flavor your chili well. Whatever you choose, be sure to fry some bacon in the pot before you get started, and then set it aside to crumble into the chili later in the process. There are those who swear by ground turkey chilis or who make the dish with chicken. Be careful when doing so, however, so that the meat does not dry out. Consider between ¼ and a ⅓ of a pound per person, supplemented perhaps with a few strips of bacon to help keep everything juicy. Or use chunks of dark meat from the richer, fattier thighs, or even duck.Farm-raised or wild-shot game - venison, buffalo, moose, marsh duck, goose - often bridges the distance between red meat and poultry: It delivers powerful flavor whether it comes from the field or the sky. Cook between ¼ and ⅓ pound per person, substituting some ground beef or lamb if the game is very lean. As with turkey and other lean cuts, you'll want to add some fat to the proceedings, for flavor and lusciousness. There are those who consider beans in chili to be an apostasy. But beans in chili can be delicious and, indeed, are an easy way to "stretch" a chili from a dish that serves 6 to a dish that serves 10 or even 12. (Figure something in the neighborhood of a cup of cooked beans per person.) Pinto beans make a wonderful addition to a beef chili, and white ones are beautiful with poultry and lamb. Some may cook only with beans, using chiles and spices to deliver big flavor into each legume. It is a good idea, in this case, to think about increasing the variety of chiles used, and to consider increasing the level of spice as well. A base of sautéed onions and garlic, heated through with oregano before adding chiles and beans, is a fine way to launch a vegetarian chili. (Take a look at Melissa Clark's recipe for a vegetarian skillet chili, if you want a starting point - or a finishing one.) All will defend their decisions as the only permissible ones. And do you need to cook the beans from scratch? You do not, unless you want to. Chili should never be a project.
• Traditional Texas chili is made with meat, chiles and little else. What kind of chiles and what form they take is a matter of some debate. Best in our view is a mixture: fresh jalapeños, dried anchos and pasilla powder. Top row, from left: Dried ancho chiles, dried New Mexico chiles and fresh jalapeño peppers. Bottom row, from left: Dried chipotle peppers, dried pasilla peppers and fresh poblanos. Some varieties of chiles are hot, some sweet and some smoky. Some are dried and toasted and ground together; others are toasted and then simmered in water or stock before being blitzed in a blender or food processor or fished from the pot and discarded; still others are used fresh. As a general rule, you'll want to add any chili powder early in the process, preferably after you've seared the meat and as you're cooking down any aromatics. But whole chiles can be added along with the cooking juices, and pulled out before serving. The world of chiles is broad, but here are a few varieties that work especially well in chili. There was a time when some of them were hard to find, even in large urban supermarkets. That is no longer true, save perhaps in the case of the delicious Chimayo. In which case, as ever, the internet can provide. Poblano: A big green pepper that is not too punchy in its heat. As poblanos ripen, the fruit reddens. Ancho: A dried, ripe poblano pepper becomes an ancho chile, sweet and smoky, mild to medium hot. Pasilla: This is a dark chocolate-brown dried pepper of moderate pungency, and brings great deepness of flavor to a chili. Jalapeño: Arguably America's pepper, this fiery little fruit can provide real zip and freshness when added to chili. When it has been smoked and dried, a jalapeño is called a chipotle. Chimayo: A New Mexican pepper of extraordinary richness, which when dried and ground brings a deep redness to all that it touches. If you can't find any Chimayos, note that any pepper from the state of New Mexico, usually labeled a "New Mexican" chile, is a worthy substitute, fresh or dried.Confusingly, chile powder and chili powder are two different things. (More confusingly, The Times has conflated them for years.) Chile powder is just dried, pulverized chiles. Chili powder, on the other hand, is a mixture of dried, ground chiles with other spices, and it helps bring a distinctive flavor to the dish that bears its name. HOMEMADE CHILI POWDER: Come up with a good recipe for chili powder, and it will give you some of the confidence to call your chili the best you've ever made. To follow the Texas restaurateur Robb Walsh's recipe, toast three medium-sized ancho chiles in a pan, then remove them and allow to cool. Do the same with a ½ teaspoon of cumin seeds. Seed the anchos and cut them into strips and then process them in a spice grinder with the cumin seeds, a big pinch of Mexican oregano and, if you like, a shake of garlic powder. Use that in your chili, and then store what's left over in a sealed jar. Use it quickly, though. It grows stale fast. STORE-BOUGHT CHILI POWDER: Chili powder is, like the dish it serves, a Texas tradition, most likely dating to the arrival in the state of German immigrants who thought to treat the local chiles as their forebears did the hot peppers in Europe, drying and grinding them into a kind of New World paprika. Eventually other spices were added - cumin and oregano and garlic powder, for instance - and now each chili powder you see in a store is slightly different from the last. For some, using chili powder in chili is anathema. They don't like the uncertainty of knowing what the mixture is going to taste like in their stew. They don't trust that the powder is fresh. They believe the resulting chili won't have layers of flavors. For many others, though, chili powder is a delicious timesaver, particularly if they've found a chili powder they like. If you do find one, use it a lot. The critics aren't wrong about the freshness.
• You've gathered your protein, and made executive decisions about your spices. It's time to make the chili. Making one calls for layering flavors into the stew, deepening each as you cook. Start by browning the meat in batches, then removing it to rest while you sweat onions, garlic and peppers, in whatever form you're using them, in the remaining fat. If you're making a vegetarian chili, start with the sweat! Then comes liquid, which will deglaze the pot and add flavor, while also providing a flavorful medium in which to simmer your meats or beans. In her Texas-style chili (below), Julia Moskin here at The Times taught us to use dark beer along with water and some canned tomatoes, but you can use plain stock instead, or a lighter beer, or more tomatoes in their juices, or a combination, according to your taste. Some like to add body to their chili by adding masa harina to the stewing liquid, or a sliced-up fresh corn tortilla that will dissolve in the heat. Julia allows for both in her recipe, which we've taken as our standard, but we encourage you to use the information you've gleaned here to make chili your own. The dish is very simple: browned meat and chiles, or chili powder, or both, simmered until tender. Everything else is up to you. Add a few dried peppers to simmer alongside the protein, and if you're cooking beef or game, consider adding a tab of dark chocolate to help deepen the flavor of the sauce. Then bring the heat to the lowest possible temperature until the protein is, as the saying goes, fork-tender. That could take 30 minutes if you're working off coarsely ground beef. It could take four hours if you're working with venison or a big clod of beef. If your stovetop can't go lower than a fast simmer, cook the chili in the oven instead, partly covered, at 325 degrees. Or use a slow cooker set to low, and keep a good eye on it after four hours or so. Fish out the dried peppers, and you're ready to eat. Once you've aced Julia's master recipe for Texas-style chili, you can explore other chili styles, whether it's a vegetarian chili with winter vegetables, Cincinnati-style chili, chili-gumbo of south Louisiana, Pierre Franey's lamb chili with lentils or his turkey chili. All reflect and celebrate America's ever-changing relationship with the dish.
• The chili's done, but don't eat it yet. As with gumbo and beef stew, chili is a dish that benefits mightily from an overnight "cure" in the refrigerator. Reheat gently on the stovetop or in a low oven when you're ready to eat, and top it with any or all of these fixings. • Chili gains a lot from the bright punch of alliums: Chopped onion and scallions are a great bet. As are avocado slices, or, one better, homemade guacamole. • Cut through the dish's richness with the clean flavors of fresh chopped tomatoes and cilantro leaves. • Or if a lightly vinegary finish is more your speed, top your chili with pickled jalapeños or red onions. • To mellow your chili's heat, pair it with a spoonful of sour cream, or some plain Greek yogurt. • Shredded Cheddar or Monterey Jack can add a mellow saltiness. • And, lastly, consider the fried egg. A worthy companion, it can even make last night's chili dinner into a hearty breakfast.• Pour the chili over rice, whether white or brown; spaghetti, as a nod to the Cincinnati style; or warm and creamy grits. • Or top it with corn or tortilla chips, crumbled Saltines, oyster crackers or Fritos. (Or, put the chili on top of those Fritos for a Frito pie.) • Serve it with warm tortillas or one of many kinds of cornbread.

TEXAS CHILI

Steps:

• Place a Dutch oven or other large pot over medium heat. Add the oil and heat until shimmering. Add the meat and sauté until browned, then transfer to a plate.
• Add the onion to the pot and stir for 1 minute. Take two large sips from the beer, and pour the rest into the pot. Stir in the tomatoes, coffee and tomato paste.
• Add the brown sugar, chile sauce, cocoa powder, hot pepper, cumin, coriander, cayenne, salt and kidney beans. Return the meat to the pot. Reduce heat to low and simmer, partly covered, for 1 hour.
• Add the white beans to the pot and simmer over very low heat, partly covered and stirring occasionally, for 1 to 2 more hours. (Longer cooking improves the flavor.) Adjust salt and cayenne pepper as needed and serve.

TEXAS-STYLE CHILI

Steps:

• In a small heavy skillet, toast cumin and coriander seeds until fragrant. In a mortar and pestle, or in a coffee grinder, grind to a powder and set aside.
• Meanwhile, roughly cut beef into 2-inch cubes, or slice it against the grain into pieces about 1/4-inch thick by 1 1/2 inches square. Sprinkle with salt.
• In a large, heavy pot over high heat, heat oil until shimmering. Working in batches to avoid crowding the pan, brown the meat, turning occasionally until crusty. Adjust heat to prevent scorching. As it is cooked, remove the meat to drain on paper towels. Add more oil as needed for browning, but do not clean out the pot.
• To the empty but crusty pot, add onion, garlic, jalapeños, masa harina or tortilla (if using), chile powder, cumin-coriander powder and oregano. Cook, stirring, until onion has softened, 5 to 10 minutes. Add meat, beer, tomatoes, chocolate, whole dried chiles and 1 quart water. Bring to a gentle simmer and simmer about 1 1/2 hours, or until meat is fork-tender. Remove the dried chiles. Taste and add salt if necessary.
• Serve immediately or let cool and refrigerate. The chili tastes best one or two days after it is made.
• Reheat over low heat if necessary and serve in bowls, sprinkled with chopped onion and cilantro. Add Fritos for crunch, or dip tortillas into the spicy gravy.