A Major Award

My wife and some of her friends put together a chili cookoff/chili feed party last night. The idea came from a conversation with Laura and Ben over a batch of tasty but too hot to eat comfortably chili I made a month or so ago. Five of us have January birthdays, so we decided that a chili cookoff would be a fun way to get together and celebrate.

The turnout for the party was great. There were 11 batches of chili up for judging submitted by nine cooks. The judging was a head-to-head taste test with everyone at the party voting for their top three picks. A first place vote was worth 5 points, second favorite got 3 and third got 1 point. The entries varied from cookbook recipes to custom creations. There were ground beef, beef, pork and chicken entries. Since these were eating chilis rather than professional competition recipes, every entry contained beans or rice. If I had it to do over, I think I'd leave the beans out of one of my submissions.

I made two batches of chili to enter in the contest, one was a Texas style red chili and the other was a chili verde. The green chili won the contest by a landslide. I think this was a combination of the uniqueness of the recipe among the other entries, which were all some red chili variation, and my secret weapon: a cilantro lime crema topping.

Several people asked for the recipe, so I'm going to try an record what I did to make the winning entry. I used the pinch of this and dash of that method to put it together, but I think I can still remember all of the key ingredients. If you're interested, use the instructions below and lots of tasting and tweaking to put together a batch for yourself.

Turkey Chili Verde with Cilantro Lime Crema

2008 Capricorn Chili Cookoff winner
(c) 2008 Bryan Davis some rights reserved

• 4c Chopped Sweet Onion (2 big onions)
• 2T Vegetable or peanut oil
• 1t Kosher salt
• 1t Ground coriander seed
• 1t Ground cumin
• 1t Ground thyme
• 1t Garlic powder
• 1T Chili powder (homemade is best)
• 2t Crushed chili flake (green if you can find it)
• Fresh ground black pepper

• 1 - 1 1/2lbs Dark turkey meat (I used legs, see notes below)
• 2t Kosher salt
• 4T All-purpose flour
• 1t Ground coriander seed
• 1t Ground cumin
• 1t Ground thyme
• 2t Garlic powder
• 1T Chili powder (homemade is best)
• 2t Crushed chili flake (green if you can find it)
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 2T Vegetable or peanut oil

• 2 cans Whole tomatillos (or 10-12 fresh tomatillos if you can find them)
• 2 cans mild green chilis
• 1T Brown sugar
• Vegetable or poultry stock

• Small bunch of cilantro
• 1 Lime
• 1c Sour cream, plain yogurt or crème fraîche

• 2 cans white beans

Saute onions in oil in a heavy sauce pan with salt, coriander, cumin, thyme, garlic powder, chili powder, crushed chili flake and a few cracks of fresh ground pepper. Cook onions until they start to take some color and about half the water has cooked out of them. Dump the cooked onions into a crockpot to wait for the rest of the goodies.

Chop turkey into bite size pieces. I used turkey legs because I wanted a lot of connective tissue for the deliciousness that a long stewing can give. If you use legs, be prepared for a lot of knife work. You need to bone out the leg to get the meat. A turkey leg has 7 or 8 large tendons that will need to be removed and several tough layers of connective tissue. I think you could substitute turkey thighs or chicken thighs instead if you want to save some time. Don't use white meat though because it won't survive the stewing process; you'll just end up with a bunch of turkey dust in your chili. Once the turkey is chopped, salt liberally.

Mix the second batch of spices and the flour and toss with the turkey to coat. Add some oil to the same sauce pan you cooked the onions in and cook the turkey in batches until lightly browned (4 or 5 minutes). Cook in batches so you get frying and browning instead of stewing or steaming of the meat. Dump each cooked batch in the crockpot with the onions.

Dice the tomatillos and add to the crockpot. Add the cans of chilis and the brown sugar as well. Give the pot a good stir and add some stock if it doesn't look moist enough. The onions still have a lot of water in them that will cook out as everything stews in the crockpot, so don't go too crazy. The contents should look moist, but not be standing in liquid.

Turn on the crockpot, put on the lid and take a break. Very the temperature of the pot depending on how long you have to cook it. Leave it on low if your going to let it stew all day. If you want to eat in a couple of hours, turn it up higher. The slower and longer you leave it to cook the better the turkey will taste.

When you've caught up on your tv watching, make the crema. Pick the leaves off of the cilantro stems and finely chop them. Don't throw away the stems because we're going to use them in a minute. Add the cilantro to the sour cream in a small bowl. Zest the lime and add that as well. Finally juice the lime and add that to the sour cream mixture. Stir well and season with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste. When I make it, it comes out looking like a loose spinach dip.

Very finely chop the cilantro stems you reserved during the crema step. Add these to the slow cooker about an hour before you want to serve the chili. Rise, drain and add the beans at this point too if you're using them.

Taste your chili at this point and add any of the seasonings to balance the flavor. The hardest part for me is putting in enough salt. Tune the spices in small increments, because you can go from bland to overwhelming really quickly, especially with the chili powder and flake.