What can you add to chili for flavor? Corn chips, to be exact. Chipotles in adobo makes a wonderful background sound for its chili, as does the chile pepper which is accentuated by the cacao powder. Add these spices, however, and it doesn’t feel like there’s something cooking skill-defying about it at the end.
When I imagine the basics of chili—the sauce, the meat, the beans; I’m not going to wade into any of the internecine battles over the particulars—what I picture is a song I love played through the speaker of a phone. It can be very good. I’m certainly not going to complain about hearing it. But what it needs to be great is some treble and some bass. For those low notes, I add a few dashes of Red Boat Fish Sauce to my chili (ground beef and limited beans, for the record). For the high, an addition that I’m pretty sure I arrived at by mishearing a friend’s recipe: one whole apple, peeled, cored, and food-processed to the point where it will disappear when cooked, leaving only a faint sweetness and acidity behind.
