In My Mother's Kitchen: Mom's Chili
I make most of the recipes my mother has given me more or less exactly the same way she did. Occasionally there's a minor tweak to the "how" like using a crock pot that my mother didn't have, but the ingredients are typically the same. The major exception to this is my mother's chili recipe, which I actually posted way back in 2014.
I have no idea where my mother found the original base chili recipe (which is why I call this "Mom's Chili"). When my mother made chili, it did not have either bell peppers or mushrooms in it. This was for largely practical reasons. My sister did not like mushrooms, and since she was also not wild about dark red kidney beans (and may still not be), my mother wasn't going to press her luck by adding mushrooms to it. My mother didn't care for green peppers (I don't recall how she felt about other bell peppers), so those weren't going in there either.
I make this chili several times a year. In fact, if I flipped through all the pages of the cookbook my mother made for me, this is probably the recipe that I have made the most times. That in of itself is not that particularly interesting - it's fast, it's easy, it's delicious, it's healthy and it makes plenty of leftovers, all things that endear this recipe to me. No, the interesting thing is that I actually made those changes and added the bell peppers and mushrooms because I am not somebody who typically makes changes to the recipe. Oh sure, I can make substitutions (like ground chicken for the ground beef this recipe calls for) or vary the heat level (by adjusting the amount of chili powder), but I have always been someone who prefers to follow the recipe instead of ad libbing completely.
An example: my friends Kat (who was katspaw156) and Eric have a Bread and Soup party every winter. The one time I went to the "help us make the soup" portion of the party, there were people there tasting broth and saying things like "it needs more oregano" or whatever. I typically can't taste those subtleties for anything that's not "this is too spicy" or (more likely) "this is not spicy enough." My taste buds just don't work that way. What usually happens is M says "I like this but it needs more X" or "this is too spicy" and I annotate the post-it note on the recipe and leave it at that.
Similarly, the Chopped style Supper Club, where we had to create a meal from a list of (often strange) ingredients, was my idea of hell. As indicated in my meal planning, I always know what I'm going to make. On the very rare occasion that I don't, I usually say "oh, I have all the ingredients for meal Y" and then I follow the recipe for Y. I don't improvise something new. Other people, of course, don't have this problem. Jim (who was darlox) and who was my partner for that Supper Club had no trouble figuring out a path forward from wildly disparate ingredients.
I honestly couldn't tell you if my mother cooks to taste or followed the recipe. I'd guess the former given that for the most part she didn't have recipes written down until she started having us cook. I don't particularly remember dramatic changes in a given recipe, but then I wouldn't for the flavorings, just the ingredients you'd notice at the texture level.
With that said, I can't actually remember when or why I made those changes to my mother's chili recipe. Did I have some things that I needed to use up and throw them in? Did I decided to make the recipe from memory once and accidentally add some additional ingredients and go with it? When I was living with a vegetarian did I add them in lieu of the ground meat and leave them in later? I truly do not know, but I've been making it this way for at least a decade now. I do know that if I went through each of my mother's other recipes that I still make, I wouldn't find anything else that had such a substantial change to the ingredient list, and it's quite possibly I wouldn't find any other recipe that had been changed at all beyond adapting it for poultry instead of red meat.
My inability to taste subtle differences in flavor is one reason why I don't really consider myself to be some sort of gourmand. I like what I like, and I have strong opinions, but this is probably another case where I just have a lot more data points than most people, not that my knowledge of those data points is particularly deep. I say this despite my adventures judging a chili cook-off filled with terrible chili.
Despite what I wrote in the prior paragraph, I will make one claim about other chilis: Cincinnati Chili as exemplified by Skyline Chili is terrible and has no relationship to actual chili. To be fair, most Cincinnati residents would agree with the latter statement.
EDIT: My sister's long ago write up about her opinions of Mom's chili, with added commentary on meat loaf, blueberry muffins and spaghetti & meatballs.
I have no idea where my mother found the original base chili recipe (which is why I call this "Mom's Chili"). When my mother made chili, it did not have either bell peppers or mushrooms in it. This was for largely practical reasons. My sister did not like mushrooms, and since she was also not wild about dark red kidney beans (and may still not be), my mother wasn't going to press her luck by adding mushrooms to it. My mother didn't care for green peppers (I don't recall how she felt about other bell peppers), so those weren't going in there either.
I make this chili several times a year. In fact, if I flipped through all the pages of the cookbook my mother made for me, this is probably the recipe that I have made the most times. That in of itself is not that particularly interesting - it's fast, it's easy, it's delicious, it's healthy and it makes plenty of leftovers, all things that endear this recipe to me. No, the interesting thing is that I actually made those changes and added the bell peppers and mushrooms because I am not somebody who typically makes changes to the recipe. Oh sure, I can make substitutions (like ground chicken for the ground beef this recipe calls for) or vary the heat level (by adjusting the amount of chili powder), but I have always been someone who prefers to follow the recipe instead of ad libbing completely.
An example: my friends Kat (who was katspaw156) and Eric have a Bread and Soup party every winter. The one time I went to the "help us make the soup" portion of the party, there were people there tasting broth and saying things like "it needs more oregano" or whatever. I typically can't taste those subtleties for anything that's not "this is too spicy" or (more likely) "this is not spicy enough." My taste buds just don't work that way. What usually happens is M says "I like this but it needs more X" or "this is too spicy" and I annotate the post-it note on the recipe and leave it at that.
Similarly, the Chopped style Supper Club, where we had to create a meal from a list of (often strange) ingredients, was my idea of hell. As indicated in my meal planning, I always know what I'm going to make. On the very rare occasion that I don't, I usually say "oh, I have all the ingredients for meal Y" and then I follow the recipe for Y. I don't improvise something new. Other people, of course, don't have this problem. Jim (who was darlox) and who was my partner for that Supper Club had no trouble figuring out a path forward from wildly disparate ingredients.
I honestly couldn't tell you if my mother cooks to taste or followed the recipe. I'd guess the former given that for the most part she didn't have recipes written down until she started having us cook. I don't particularly remember dramatic changes in a given recipe, but then I wouldn't for the flavorings, just the ingredients you'd notice at the texture level.
With that said, I can't actually remember when or why I made those changes to my mother's chili recipe. Did I have some things that I needed to use up and throw them in? Did I decided to make the recipe from memory once and accidentally add some additional ingredients and go with it? When I was living with a vegetarian did I add them in lieu of the ground meat and leave them in later? I truly do not know, but I've been making it this way for at least a decade now. I do know that if I went through each of my mother's other recipes that I still make, I wouldn't find anything else that had such a substantial change to the ingredient list, and it's quite possibly I wouldn't find any other recipe that had been changed at all beyond adapting it for poultry instead of red meat.
My inability to taste subtle differences in flavor is one reason why I don't really consider myself to be some sort of gourmand. I like what I like, and I have strong opinions, but this is probably another case where I just have a lot more data points than most people, not that my knowledge of those data points is particularly deep. I say this despite my adventures judging a chili cook-off filled with terrible chili.
Despite what I wrote in the prior paragraph, I will make one claim about other chilis: Cincinnati Chili as exemplified by Skyline Chili is terrible and has no relationship to actual chili. To be fair, most Cincinnati residents would agree with the latter statement.
EDIT: My sister's long ago write up about her opinions of Mom's chili, with added commentary on meat loaf, blueberry muffins and spaghetti & meatballs.