That Nostalgic Chili Flavor Everyone Loves

Okay, folks, look, I'm running my hot, you know, my hot soapy water and getting that ready. But today I'm getting ready to show you guys how to make a Cajun and Dewey chili. And guess what? We're using that Dolores chili brick. Let's get it. Okay, so like always, I like to fly over some of these ingredients. And since we're going to start off and you guys are looking at the Dolores chili brick, this should take some of us around, people around my age, this should take us back when we used to do chili fritos, you know, chili hot dogs and all that kind of stuff, right? So we have that here and this is kind of big, folks. This is actually five pounds. I don't know if you guys can see, I'm getting ready to cut that in half because we only need a couple of pounds of that. All right, so we're going to start off by doing a little bit of prep, right? So we got celery, green bell pepper, and then we got an onion right here, and then we got a jalapeno. The jalapeno is completely, you know, optional. It's up to you how you want to do it. You know what I mean? But for me, I'm going to go ahead and just add it in there. Now I'm going to go ahead and prep this celery right here. Let's just go ahead and get this cleaned up. Now, you know, when my grandmother was cooking, this right here, all of this went in there. I don't know when I started doing that. You know, I guess we feel like we rich, huh? Well, my grandma would say something like that too. Like, hey, what's your problem? What's your malfunction, OG? Right, so we just get these cut down and then we'll go ahead and cut these, you know, and dice these. All right, so for me, I like to have it a certain size, even though we want to, you know, have that flavor in there too. But when we're cooking this and it's staying in there for about, you know, 25, 30, 35 minutes, you know, as it's simmering and cooking down, it releases its flavor anyway. But the general rule is when you're dicing, small is for flavor. When you dice them larger, it's for texture and the flavor. All right, so as we prep, you know, our onion, right? I'm just making sure that my dice sort of matches the same dice that I have, you know, for my bell pepper. I want you guys to tell me. Now you see how that is right there? Look, when I take this and I just go like that, you see? All of this is already diced. It's the way you cut your onion. You got to let me know, do you guys cut your onion the way you see I'm doing mine, or do you do yours a certain way? All right, so we have this here. Next, I'm going to add this bell pepper, and then when I add the bell pepper to it, what are these three things called when you got celery, onion, and bell pepper? Talk to me down in the comment section below. For my new people, you done heard it before, you know what I mean? But now we're going to educate, teach you about these flavors, and why we call it Cajun or Creole. All right, now we do the same thing, you know, for our bell pepper. Right, so I always take it, I cut it like you see I did, cut it by the top, then when I stick my knife in the inside, I just cut it on the ribs, just to get that center bulb out the way. Then if I take it out like this, come on, you know, it comes out like that. Then most of the seeds, this one didn't even have that many seeds in it. All right, now when I open it up like that, you see how all the ribs have been cut? That's what you want to see. Now we're going to go ahead and cut these down. Now each one of these little slivers that we cut out of here, that's a little bit more than a sliver, you know what I mean? I'm only going to cut so many just so I can show you guys, you know what I mean, how we're going to dice these, right? So I just want you to look at the size, right? So now that I have them here, I bunch them all up, push them up against my knife, take it, make sure I don't have my fingers out there like that. I make my first cut, and then I judge how do I want to, you know, what size do I want to have? Then if you got some, you know, that happen to get out, you know what I mean, then you just dice them down. You see that right there? And that's how we'll continue to do that. So listen, if you're cooking, you know, kitchen style, this is the holy trinity right here. That'd be your celery, onion, and your bell pepper. All right, so we got that prepped. Now I'm going to go ahead and do my jalapeno. Now this step right here is completely optional, right? Now I'm going to go ahead and seed this. For those of you guys that like to have that heat, you don't, you can skip that step as far as seeding it, because that's where you're going to get your, you know, your heat from, right? So if you take it, if you guys didn't know, you take a jalapeno, I cut the top part off. I'll let it settle this way. And what I do is I just cut it down the middle. Look, just like that. I hope you guys are catching that. Just like that. When I open it up, look, we got seeds on both sides, right? So now you want to get yourself a spoon. I'm going to do it right here on my cutting board, just so you guys can see. I take a spoon and I just, look, give it a little pressure, and it kind of like just comes out. All the seeds, that rib, remember that white part that I cut out when I'm working with the bell pepper? You don't need to cut all that out right here. See that? Now this is perfectly done. Let me go ahead and do it one more time so you guys can see it. Right? Let me do it this way so you can see. See how that comes out there like that? Just a spoon, folks. That's all you need. Right? I want to call it a kitchen hack, but it's really not. This is just like the best way. You know what I mean? So we have this. You guys want to have the heat, you can leave that. Put that and sprinkle that in the inside. That'll work for you. Right now, I'm going to put these in the trash. We just want the flavor from the jalapeno. Now, let me give you guys a real pro tip. Do not touch your eyes, scratch yourself, or nothing like that. You will regret it. All right, so I cut down my jalapenos, right? So after I seeded them, you know, I just cut them down, as you can see the size, right? So I get them all together, and now we just dice it. Here, I don't keep them so big. You know what I mean? Because we just want the flavor. Right? There you go. So you see the size? These came out nice. Now, I'm going to just push these over here like that. And just let those be. Move this chili so you guys can see. And that's them right there. All right, so now, we're almost at the end of our prep, right? So I'm just going to go ahead and cut that down like that. This is my andouille sausage. You can see the color of it. When you see that orange, you know we're working with it. You know, the right ingredients, right? Now, you don't have to have, you know, chicken andouille. I mean, you don't have to have andouille sausage or nothing like that. So what we're going to do now is just cut this down, just like you guys are seeing. I went ahead and wiped down my board too, just so that we don't have to have no jalapeno on here. I guess it really doesn't make no difference, but that's just me. I clean up as I go. Right? So once we get this like this, and what we're going to do is we're going to brown this, heat this up, and let it release its andouille flavor, you know, inside of the, you know, our cast iron, right? And when I say cast iron, some of you guys are going to be looking for the regular. Just, this is for all the people that don't know, cast iron is what Dutch ovens are made of. You know what I mean? Only difference is it's been coated with, you know, ceramic. All right. So just keep going. There we go. Now I'll do the same thing over here. I'm going to save a little bit of this because we don't need to have so much of this. Right? I'm going to heat this up. And you know, since I'm the chef, I'm the one in the kitchen, this will be for me. All right. So I got everything, you know, prepped, right? So I'm going to go ahead and open this up. I'm going to go ahead and add, apply some heat underneath the bottom. I'm going to start with a medium flame. We want to let that start getting hot. And I know I don't have to do this, but I'm going to go ahead anyway. This is extra virgin olive oil. This is garlic infused. I'm just going to add just a little bit, just to get it started, right? Once the heat comes up, I'm going to go ahead and put in, you know, my andouille sausage. All right. So I think we got enough heat in here. Yeah, I can hear it. All right. So what we're going to do is just add these in here like this. Now I'm going to go ahead and give me a paper plate. Reason being, because once these are ready, we're going to take these out and then we're going to start, you know, working with those veggies, right? So the main thing I want to do is, you see how I dropped that in there and it's standing up? We want to make sure all of them are flat, right? That's how we get that heat. You know, to make these heat up enough to release its flavor. All right. So let's make sure they all down flat. And then we get a little color on them. And you can look right now, you know, extra virgin olive oil is like clear, right? Little hint of green, but really olive color, but you really don't see it like that. You know what I mean? So just for the sake of argument, we'll say it's clear, right? And then you see that color right there? That's the andouille flavor. Now listen, we want to, okay, so when you brown an andouille, look, that's when you want to see the brown edges because that's where you get the smoky flavor. And that's where it really starts at. So now we'll take these out, right? And the reason I didn't put no paper, no paper towel on the paper plate is because whatever it drips, I want to put that back into the chili. That's all of our flavor, folks. You know what I mean? We just got to start thinking that way. In the beginning, I used to think, you know, everything was paper line, like how we do with bacon. You know what I mean? But nope, this is what you want. Anything that leaks down there, I'm gonna take that and scrape that right back in there. Now, you guys pay attention and you look down there and look at the color of that. You can see that andouille flavor. You can see fine at the bottom, all of that. Now I'm finna go ahead and make sure I got this set at a medium flame. All right, so now I'm gonna come with my onions. Really, we coming with the Trinity, right? But the thing is, I like to do my onions first. I don't care if a couple other little things get in there with it, you know, also, meaning like it might be a little bell pepper, a little celery in there, but I still like to give my onions a head start, right? So with them having a head start, meaning they in there first, I'm gonna move this around like this. Now, you know, I don't know if you guys know this, but onions, they real acidic. They got a lot of acid in them, you know what I mean? But it's the structure of them, they got just enough structure. It's a lot of water in there and it's got enough structure just so it can stay, you know, hard, right? I know that sound wild, so I'm gonna go ahead and just say pause. But when you have your veggies in there, notice how it's picking up the fine that's on the bottom. But if I leave that like that, it will do that. Now that we get that a head start and we starting to sweat those, I'm gonna separate my bell peppers from my jalapenos, right, and now I'll come with everything else besides the jalapeno, folks. Now that I have all of the veggies in here, you know what I mean? If I leave them like this, but here, let me just pull back like this. See how I picked up all of the fine? That's what you want, folks. Now, I'm gonna let this, let me go ahead and get this so they can steam and get a little heat on them, right? And work their way down. This will only go for about four minutes. All right, so now after about four minutes, now everything is starting to become nice and soft. Now I'm gonna go ahead and add my jalapenos. All right, so now after about a minute with the jalapenos, now I'm gonna go ahead and mince this garlic and put this right over the top so that it doesn't touch none of the, like I don't want it to touch the bottom of the cast iron, right? So we just clean this. Anything that like it pulls off like that, that's all good garlic. Now I add my second one and we do the exact same. All right, so now you guys see how I have it sitting on top. That allows me time to explain, you know exactly what I'm doing without it being too hot and starting to burn. Now, this only gonna need to be on there for about 30 seconds, right? So now I'm gonna get in here with this, you know, my whisk, excuse me, my spatula, and I move this around. We just wanna sweat that down. Ah yeah, you know right off the bat because as you, you know, mixing this together, what do you smell? The garlic. All right, so now I'm gonna let this garlic, you know, go for about one minute, right? Now we're gonna go ahead and start getting, you know, adding our Dolores chili, right? Now this is actually five and a half pounds. If you guys wanna know what it looks like, it looks like this. They call it a brick for a reason because when you get it, it's gonna be frozen. And all we do is we take this, we add this to it, right? So this should actually be a little bit more than, this is probably like about getting close to two pounds. I'm gonna go ahead and just drop this in here like this. You see that? Remember, it's called the brick chili, folks. We just put this in here like that, and we let this heat start to make that dissolve, right? Next, I'm gonna go ahead and bring in my broth. All right, so while I have this in here, I want you guys to look. I'm gonna bring this over here to this side, bring that over, right? I got myself a tablespoon. What I wanna do is put in a little bit of this tomato paste. Now, what we wanna do is we wanna cook this in there. You don't wanna just like put it in there and just let it, let it be, right? So I'm just moving this around. Even though I got this brick in there, it'll start, you know, working its way down. But what I wanna do is I wanna cook that tomato paste, right? We don't wanna just throw it in, you know, throw the tomato paste in and just keep moving. We wanna let it cook down a little bit, and that's where we start to build that real flavor. That's how we starting to get that, you know, flavor on top of flavor. Now, what I did was I added a little bit more of the chili, you know, in here, because I know that I'm finna feed quite a few people, you know what I mean? So now we're gonna go ahead and add in our broth, and that's beef broth. Now, let me tell you about this, for all of us that are watching how much sodium we take. Look, that's a low-sodium beef broth, right? So anywhere we can save, even the beans is on the low-sodium side. You guys should thank me for that. It's best to go ahead and just, you know, start to figure this out now. And this'll help this go ahead and start to, you know, melt. All right, so let's break this away so we don't catch no steam burn. Away, take this off. Right, now I'm gonna go ahead and take my square head, and look, I'm pushing down like that. It's almost ready and melted. Now, don't forget this is frozen, folks. This takes a minute, right? So I'm gonna just move this around here like this, make sure I run this around the bottom, because we don't want to burn none of it. Ah, yeah. Look at that right there. Now, this got like one little section. I just broke that little piece. I'll bring it up just so you guys can see it. That right there, but the longer it sits in here. And don't forget, this has already been cooked. What we doing is we just heating it up. Now, for the consistency, right? I'm gonna bring this into place so you guys can see. Just as I told you guys before, look, this is 50% less sodium. And then look at the beans right here, which I'm gonna drain these, the pinto beans. These right here is reduced sodium also. And the same thing with the kitten, right? We just controlling everything, because we got a whole lot of seasoning, folks. There's no need for us to add no extra salt. We don't need to put no extra, you know, Creole or Cajun seasoning in here. Nothing like that, because we don't want to just like, have it just over salty. And we want it to be as healthy as possible. I know it sounds crazy. Now, I saved a little bit of this broth in here, right? Because we use what we use out of it. But this right here, if we want it to be thinner, we, you know, we add it to it just to thin it out. But look at this right here. Yes, sir. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and drain, just like I told you guys. And we're gonna start adding everything to it. But before I do that, I think I want to go ahead and just add the rest of my ingredients, right? So, I'm gonna add that. You guys should know what that is. That's the W sauce, Creole sauce, excuse me, Creole seasoning, and everything else, right? Now we cook that in there. This marries, you know, everything tastes different. It's just like adding that pepper, right? Once it get hot, this is why we use herbs. Yes, sir. Now, this right here is where this Dolores brick starts to turn into something special. Now that we got it seasoned and ready to go. Look at that right there. I know some of y'all thinking right now, like, A.B., let me get a scoop of that. Let me put this on this chili dog, on this hot dog, and turn it into a chili dog. All right, so I not only drained, but I went ahead and rinsed them. I just rinsed them through the can. Both of these are going there. And for our Rotel, we add that. Now, those of you guys remember the ice cream man, what he had was just a brick chili by itself. You guys can see now how we leveled it up by adding our little seasoning to it also. You know what I mean? So we wanted to build this on top of, you know, flavor on top of flavor, right? But the ice cream man, he didn't do nothing but just melt it down and then put it in that bag of Fritos or on that chili dog. And it was great then. I'm gonna just say it was good then. It's great now. Now I'm gonna go ahead and reintroduce, you know, my Andouille. Remember I said I didn't want to put no paper towel? You know why? Because I want to get all of this flavor in there. So if you got that, I don't want to say it like that, but if you got that cheap paper towel, I mean that paper plate, it might absorb everything. But this one right here, look, it's sealed and I get it all in there, right? Now, oh my goodness. Talk to me down in that comment section below and tell me, do you want some of this right here? Or just tell me this, how many of y'all gonna go out and just, you know, pick yourself up that brick, right? Now, I'm gonna go ahead and add my bay leaf. You drop that in there, let that rehydrate and start to bloom in here, right? I got it on simmer. And then don't forget, if it's too thick, we got a little bit of beef broth, we can add to it to thin it out. Now I'm gonna let this simmer for about 25 minutes, folks. I'm gonna check it in about 15 minutes on a low simmer, make sure nothing's sticking on the bottom and I'll see you when it's ready. Okay, so look, the timer went off, you know what I mean? I stirred it one time, you know what I mean? Just make sure I hit it on the bottom, make sure nothing is sticking. The key is you want it to simmer. And when I say simmer, I mean low, right? So now we're gonna break this away, right? I'm gonna take this and put this over here. My goodness, look at this right here. Run this along this side right here. And this right here is chili, folks. Yes, sir. Now, I have a little bit, you know, beef broth left over if I wanted to like thin this out even more, but as you can see, this is a good chili. Look at this right here. Here's my bay leaf. It's been rehydrated, you see how it bent? That's what you want, I'm gonna leave it in there. I usually take it out. Somebody asked me, said in my comments, they were like, hey, we need that in there. You know what I mean? So I'm gonna go ahead and leave it in there too. Now, only thing left to do is like put this on top of some rice. You know what I mean? You can eat it with some crackers. You can put this on top of a chili dog. You can do whatever you would like, but I promise you, when I hit it like this, I bring it up like that. That there is that brick chili on steroids, folks. Okay, folks, look, I'm not finna fake. I done already tasted it. Hey, when I tell you it's fire, it's fire. Now, if you looking for like, it's really like a weeknight meal, but you ask me, no, this got like that game day feeling to it though, you know what I mean? So listen, this go good no matter what you put it on. Whether you put it on a hot dog, you put it in a bag of chili, excuse me, Fritos, you know what I mean? Whatever you doing, you doing. But for me, I know you guys saw that. I got rice down here on the bottom. And then I, and I got the crackers. You know what? I'm going for the double whammy. Right, so I'm gonna go down here. Let's go down here and get some. Ooh, let's go. There go that rice. There it is. Right, let's get a little bit of that. Ooh, I see jalapeno. Ah, just the whole thing is going down. Hey, I don't mean to do this to y'all like that, but cheers, folks. It almost make me want to dance. I know some of y'all would love to see me out here, you know, hitting that two-step, but if I was gonna do it, this right here is gonna be it. Now, you guys been following me for a minute, you know, I might go in twice, but I just went in three times, folks. This right here is fire. Listen, if you're looking for something simple, we're gonna let Dolores go ahead and get us halfway there with all of the flavor, and she made the chili already. Then we're gonna take it from there, and then we finna put our whoop on it, and then you're gonna have something like this. And then if you guys got Ritz, don't forget, Ritz come in flavored, you know, flavored. They come flavored also. So with that being said, let me know, is there anything that I didn't put in here that you guys think that I should have? Let me know what you would do. I wanna read it down in the comment section below. Now, if you're new to this channel, let me take this time to say, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out there, there's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. Man, I gotta tell you this right now, I'm finna pour myself a nice tall glass of ice cold, icy, and I'm about to eat, folks. With that being said, I'm out. Peace.