Several years ago one of my friends used to host a chili cook-off. To the plethora of chili’s prepared by the group he added a Wendy’s chili (without telling anyone). We all got our several cups of chili to taste and evaluate.
That year, Wendy’s was not only my lowest-ranked chili, but was the group consensus last place (in the mild category).
The next year the group also placed Wendy’s last.
I don’t think that any serious lover of chili would consider that Wendy’s is worthy of consideration—or even being called chili.
Maybe we need a chili thread, Mark. Along with a lot of recipes. I’ve got a fair few, myself. Of course all of us from Texas think that we can make a mean chili.
I've seen those threads. I have a great beer chili recipe that ROCKS! Mmmm! Chili! Nothing better than home made, but that still won't stop me from loving Wendys.
Kinda like comparing Hersheys and something like Ghirardelli. Sure Ghirardelli is better, but Hersheys chocolate still ROCKS!
AS a life long resident of New England, having a mother who's family is from Connecticut, I can say that steamed hamburgers/cheeseburger are a specialty of the Nutmeg state only. I have never seen them anywhere else, but they are delicious.
As far as the Wendy's chili, I'm pretty fond of it myself. But I've heard stories about Texas chili from my ex-Texan coworkers (and a friend who went to school there for a few years). Too spicy for me ! I can understand why a true chili lover wouldn't like it, but I'm sure the same applies to any hardcore fan of anything
And yeah, I've heard that normally pasties are without any condiments, but everyplace I've had one offered gravy with it *shrug* So it's always been gravy for me. Not a big fan of ketchup on stuff myself (that would be more of a discussion for the ketchup thread I was reading the other day).
The fiancee says we are supposed to go east next year for our anniversary (since we are going west to Las Vegas/LA, etc for our wedding/honeymoon). If so, I will try to make a stop in CT to try out one of these strange looking burgers
Tomorrow, I’ll resurrect a chili thread and post a recipe that Dome will consider only about medium-hot that Dave might like to consider reducing the amount of peppers that I recommend.
But it is not so much how hot it is, it is the quality of the heat. In this case, care is taken to get the chili flavor well into all of the meat (chili here always means chili con carne)
But a word of caution to the faint of heart—reducing the amount of chilies really results in an overall loss of flavor. No problems with increasing the amount however. But heat for heat’s sake alone is not the goal. Depth and complexity of flavor is what we want.