Did you know chili was a popular cowboy food?
Cooks pounded dried beef fat pepper, salt and chili peppers together into a brick and called it brick chili.
These bricks were easy to transport and could be easily reconstituted with boiling water over a campfire.
Welcome to the Chop Chop Podcast.
I'm Harry Rosenblum.
Our mission at Chop Chop Family is to enrich the lives of families by inspiring and teaching them to cook and eat real food together.
And we have some news here at the podcast.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Stella, and I'm so excited to start co-hosting the Chop Chop podcast.
Stella, it's so great to have you join me here on the podcast.
Today, we're going to chat about a great dish for winter.
It's named for the main flavor component.
That is often considered spicy, but the name sounds like when you're cold.
Can you guess what it is?
Let's make cooking cool!
Harry, it sounds like we're talking about chili.
That's right.
I just made two different chilies last week.
For the past 25 years, I have hosted a chili party every year on New Year's Day.
And this year, I made one meat chili and one vegetable chili.
What kinds of ingredients do you put in your chili?
Well, chilies, of course, often called chili peppers because they're in the pepper family.
But there are lots of kinds of chilies, and some are spicier than others.
And I always have beans in my chili as well.
There's a way that the spice level is measured.
The Scoville heat scale was created in 1912 by a pharmacist and chemist, Wilbur Scoville.
He created a standard method for measuring the heat of peppers.
To do this, he diluted pepper extracts with sugar and water until the heat was barely identifiable.
The amount of dilution needed for each pepper extract became the Scoville heat unit.
So bell peppers start at zero, and the Carolina Reaper has a Scoville heat unit of over 2 million.
Wow, that is super spicy.
I wonder how people determined the spice level before 1912.
I guess they just had to bite into it and see how hot it was.
Exactly.
There's evidence of peppers' culinary use dating back 10,000 years.
So you could say humans and chilies have evolved together.
Stella, have you ever grown chili peppers?
I have not, but my grandmother is a big gardener so she has a lot of different peppers in her garden.
Nice.
I have had mixed success growing them at my house.
They like it hot and full sun, and I plan to try growing at least two varieties this year.
There are estimated to be somewhere around 4000 kinds of peppers, so you could experiment and see which ones you like and which ones grow best in your area.
Hi, this is Matt the Engineer, and I have a game for us to play.
Can you guess this month's mystery sound?
Let's turn down the music and give it a listen.
Hmm, that's a cool sound.
Do you think it's something in the kitchen or something in the garden?
I'll be back before the end of the show to let you know what it was.
Do you want to hear a joke?
What did the stew say to the microwave?
Close the door!
I'm chilly!
Let's talk about recipes and how we plan out how to cook things.
Great idea.
I like to read all the way through a recipe before I make it, just to make sure that I have all the ingredients and I know what steps are ahead of time.
For my chili party last week.
I chose my recipes a few days before and then I looked in my cabinets and refrigerator to see what I had on hand and what I needed to buy.
I had some dried chilies and some canned beans and some dried beans, but I needed some other things.
I needed to buy carrots, celery, onions, and some canned tomatoes.
Harry, do you like to experiment with your chili or do you follow the recipe exactly?
I like to experiment, especially with the spiciness.
I like spicy foods, but I know that my guests might not like as much heat as I do.
So I put out a lot of accompaniments, both to make it more spicy, like sliced jalapenos and various bottles of hot sauce, but I also included things that would lessen the heat if people added too much spice.
Things like sour cream or cheese or shredded cabbage are great to add to offset the spiciness or to add other textures, colors and flavors to the dish.
Even putting chili over something like rice can offset the heat of the chili if you're sensitive to spicy foods.
In my family, we actually often eat chili over pasta.
This might sound a little weird, but this variation of the dish is called Cincinnati chili, since it originates in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Our version is not authentic because the real thing has spices like cinnamon, allspice and clove and the chili has a thinner consistency.
But it's definitely a family favorite.
Sounds delicious.
I have never had Cincinnati chili, but I'd like to try it.
This year, I also sliced up a watermelon radish that I had and it was so pretty.
If you've never seen one, it's a large radish about the size of an orange.
And when you cut into it, the center is like bright pink and it looks like a little watermelon.
It's a very mild radish and it added a great color and a nice crunch to my chili.
All right, it's time to reveal our mystery sound.
Let's hear it again one more time.
That's the sound of a pot of chili slowly simmering.
Why does it sound different from a pot of water?
Well, chili contains a lot of thickened liquid from starches, fats, and proteins.
That thickness makes bubbles grow larger before escaping and causes the bubbles to rise unevenly and burst suddenly.
Thanks for playing along.
Thanks for listening to the Chop Chop podcast.
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Go to chopchopfamily.substack.com and join the conversation.
This podcast is written produced, edited and hosted by Harry Rosenblum and Stella Maiden, with engineering by Matt Patterson.
Sally Sampson is the founder of Chop Chop Family and writes the Substack.
Shout out to Frank.
Thanks for adding your voice to our show.
Music in this episode by Juanitos and Lisa Hammer.
We are also a part of Kids Listen, the number one place for finding great podcasts for kids of all ages.
Please stay in touch whether you have a joke you'd like to share or if you'd like to tell us what you had for lunch.
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Thanks for listening.
