Chili con Carne with Scratch-Made Chili Paste
A long-simmered chili built on scratch-made chili paste instead of chili powder — the paste takes the flavor to an entirely different level.
Ingredients
1 pot (about 6 servings)- 2 lbs ground beef — 80/20 ground chuck, not lean (ground pork or sausage blends in well)
- 3–4 heaping spoonfuls scratch-made chili paste
- Salt, to taste
- Coarse-ground black pepper, to taste
- Ground cumin (comino), to taste
- Cayenne pepper, to taste
- Paprika, to taste
- 1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce (paste works too — use less and add a bit more water)
- Garlic — pre-minced from a tube, finely minced fresh, or garlic powder
- Onions, diced
- Optional: 1 can pinto beans, rinsed thoroughly in a colander
- Reserved chili stock (from making the paste) or water, enough to cover
Method
- 1
In a large skillet or pot with a lid, brown the ground beef.
- 2
Fry the paste: push the beef to one side (or remove it), drop the chili paste into the rendered fat, and fry for 2–3 minutes, stirring, until it darkens a shade and smells toasted rather than vegetal. It will spit — keep the lid handy as a shield. Frying blooms the paste's heat and color into the beef fat, which carries them through the whole pot in a way raw purée stirred into water never does.
- 3
Season: add the salt, coarse black pepper, cumin, cayenne, and paprika. Season more aggressively than feels necessary at first.
- 4
Add the rest: tomato sauce, garlic, onions, and beans if using.
- 5
Add the reserved chili stock (or water) — enough to cover the ingredients, but not so much that it takes forever to reduce.
- 6
Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer for at least 1.5 hours — another hour only makes it better. Stir every 15 minutes or so. If it isn't reducing fast enough, uncover. If it reduces too much and starts to scorch, add a bit more stock or water to keep cooking longer.
Notes
The fat is what makes the sauce thick instead of watery — that's why 80/20 chuck is specified. If lean beef was unavoidable, whisk in 1–2 tablespoons of masa harina near the end to thicken. Beans are controversial at best in a Texas chili, but good. --- MACRO ANNOTATION (2026-08-02, not yet cooked this way) --- THE PROBLEM, AS A NUMBER: as written (2 lb 80/20, undrained), a serving runs roughly 421 kcal / 27 P / 31 F / 8 C, and fat is about 66 percent of calories. Against a 2300 kcal / 75 g fat day that is 41 percent of the fat budget for 18 percent of the calories. The dish is not merely rich, it is disproportionate: you pay for it in fat rather than in calories. WHY LEAN BEEF FAILS HERE (this is already in the note above, restated as mechanism): the rendered fat does two jobs. It thickens the sauce, and it is the medium the chile paste is fried in. Blooming the paste in beef fat is what carries color and heat through the whole pot. Lean grinds do not render enough to fry paste properly, so you lose a technique step, not just body. THE FIX: 85/15, drained lightly, plus masa harina. 85/15 still renders enough to fry the paste; 90/10 does not. Masa is not a compromise thickener — it is nixtamalized corn, so it adds toasted corn flavor that belongs in a Tex-Mex chili. 20 g across a 6-serving pot is about 12 kcal and 3 g carbohydrate per serving. COMPARISON (per serving, 6 servings, 2 lb beef, ~250 g pintos where noted): as published, 80/20 undrained, no beans .......... 421 kcal / 27 P / 31 F / 8 C (66% fat) 80/20 undrained, + beans ......................... 470 kcal / 30 P / 31 F / 16 C (60% fat) 80/20 drained ~35%, + beans ...................... 374 kcal / 30 P / 21 F / 16 C (50% fat) 85/15 drained ~25%, + beans, + 20 g masa ......... 372 kcal / 33 P / 18 F / 18 C (44% fat) <-- BUILD THIS 90/10 undrained, + beans, + 20 g masa ............ 364 kcal / 35 P / 16 F / 18 C (40% fat) BEANS ARE A MACRO LEVER, NOT JUST A STRETCHER: they add about 49 kcal and 6 g carbohydrate per serving with almost no fat, which dilutes fat DENSITY — 66 percent down to 60 percent on volume alone. Cook them separately and add near the end: beans simmered in from the start absorb chili liquid, go mushy, and thicken the pot toward pasty. Separate also means you control the ratio per bowl and can freeze beans and chili independently. MASA TECHNIQUE: whisk into a slurry with a little liquid first, then simmer 10+ minutes. Dumped in dry it clumps; undercooked it tastes raw and pasty. PORTIONING: at the 85/15 build, a 1.5x serving is about 558 kcal / 49 P / 27 F / 27 C — a real dinner that still fits when lunch was lean (a seared ahi plate banks most of a day's fat budget). That makes a 2 lb pot four dinners rather than six. Portion and freeze in the 1.5x unit. KEEPING: chili genuinely improves on day two or three as the paste's heat integrates and the harsher chile notes round off. Freezes without loss. NOT YET COOKED THIS WAY — these numbers are estimates from component math, not a weighed pot. When the 85/15 + masa version gets made, weigh the finished pot and replace this block with measured per-100 g values.