A few years ago I paid a visit to Duluth Grill in Duluth, Minnesota. I am a man who loves dining in the Northwoods and so when Duluth Grill reached out to me and offered me a free copy of The Duluth Grill Cook Book II I could hardly contain my excitement. Sure, I had no idea that there was a first cookbook, but I was eager to try this one out.

I am a man of strong principles and one of these is that beans have no place in chili. Sorry, that’s not how we did it where I’m from and I intend to keep it that way. To see how this would fly, I started looking for food ideas at ThorsFork.com which helped me put together a chili recipe to participate in a chili cookoff and took home the grand prize. So here it is, the Award Winning Unvegan Original No Beans About It Chili Recipe.

Ingredients:

2 lbs 80% Ground Chuck Beef
16 oz (1 package) Trader Joe’s Uncured Bacon Ends and Pieces
1/3 cup Chili Powder
1 1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 cup Sweet Onion
1/2 tsp Dried Oregano
1 Bay Leaf
5-6 Cloves of Garlic
2 Seeded Jalapenos (3 for extra heat)
1 Cayenne Pepper
1 Dried Ancho Pepper
28-29 oz Tomato Puree
1 Bag Shredded Sharp Cheddar
1 Bag Fritos
Your favorite hot sauce

Directions:

Rehydrate the ancho chili by removing the stem and emptying out the seeds. Then place in hot water for 30 minutes to an hour until it has fully plumped. Drain, then blend for a couple seconds. Dice the onion (seriously, do this before working with the hot peppers because you don’t want your hands covered in spicy death while you cry and rub your eyes from the onion) Roast cayenne and jalapeno peppers over stove or other fire until skin crackles. Allow to cool down, then de-seed jalapenos and dice all peppers. For good measure you can dice the garlic now or just use a garlic press later like me.

Cook bacon fully in pan or pot. Don’t make it crispy, but make sure it is cooked through. Remove bacon and place on a paper towel to soak up the excess fat. Keep the bacon fat from the pot or pan you used to cook the bacon. Cut bacon into small pieces and set aside for later. Add the bacon fat to the pot you will use to brown the beef. After browning, drain the beef.

Now you can pretty much add everything to the crockpot. Remember to bust out the garlic now if you didn’t dice it earlier. Cook on low for six hours.

By the way, you might be wondering why there’s no salt. First, bacon has plenty to make up for it. Second, I added a secret ingredient at the end, which you may have noticed in the picture up above: five packets of Taco Bell Fire Sauce. It also has plenty of salt, as do most hot sauces. Feel free to add hot sauce to taste, but I don’t find it necessary to add the heat earlier on because it doesn’t need to be slow cooked like the peppers. Serve with cheese and Fritos. Also, let me know what you think if you do make this chili. It’s a new recipe and can certainly stand to be altered.

This year I got biblical for Valentine’s Day. No, not like that you sicko. Instead of having a boring, fancy meal with my girlfriend, we decided to get cooking. And not just any kind of cooking, we decided to use Lobel’s Meat Bible, which was sent to me by Chronicle Books a few months ago for free. I knew this book would be incredible just based on the cover, but the back cover really sealed the deal for me because it says, “Armed with Lobel’s Meat Bible, carnivores will find themselves with more delectable meaty choices than ever before.” Mmmm meaty choices.

It would be a disservice to call this book a recipe book, as it carries loads of information about our most common meats like beef and chicken, but also delves into game meats and organ meats. All of this information coupled with the recipes makes this a true unvegan bible. After a quick flip through the pages of the bible, I found the perfect Valentine’s Day meal: Carbonade of Beef in Belgian Beer. I must admit that the beer was the first thing that caught my eye and after a quick glance at the ingredients, the girlfriend and I decided this would be grand.

Since the recipe was coming from a bible and the feast was in celebration of St. Valentine, we decided to balance out the obvious Christian undertones of our meal by buying Kosher ingredients (to see the full list of ingredients and recipe, see image at the bottom of the page. The recipe was made to serve 6 people, so we toned down the ingredients a bit in the hopes that we could still cook the meal correctly.

Then we began following the recipe. Duvel was my Belgian ale of choice, and I hoped that using it for a recipe would be even better than drinking it. I won’t get into all the details on how to prepare this dish, but suffice to say, it started out with a whole lot of meat. About 40 minutes into preparing the meat and the other ingredients, I reached a part of the recipe that made my mouth drop. It read: “Cover and cook at the barest possible simmer for 3-4 hours. Wait what? This sounded insane to me, but apparently it wasn’t.

So our romantic Valentine’s dinner became a late-night feast, but it was so worth it.

When the three hours were up and the carbonade was ready, it was an amazing dish. The beef was so tender and flavorful, packed with Duvel’s flavoring, along with the other yummy ingredients. The only thing that was disappointing was that we hadn’t prepared something to accompany it. The recipe said it would go nice with potatoes, but when we started eating, we realized that the dish would go even better with something like rice or couscous. Nonetheless, it was quite the dish, quite the Valentine’s Day and it showed the the Lobels know quite a lot about their meat.

Check out Lobel’s Meat Bible yourself and have a meaty existence.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Country Bob’s, Inc., a little company looking to get the word out on their sauce, Country Bob’s All-Purpose Sauce. They loved my blog (obviously) and wanted to send me some free sauce to write about. Being a shameless sell-out, I jumped at the offer.

I researched the company a bit (ie. checked the website) and found that Country Bob gave a whole lot of credit for his success to God. Hey, if athletes can do it, why not sauce-makers? I also found on the website that Christ himself had risen through the ranks of Country Bob’s to become CEO. I’m not sure if he usurped the title from Country Bob himself, but Bob seemed to have no problem putting “Christ is our CEO” on the website.

After about a week, my package of sauces came in the mail. I decided a Labor Day BBQ would be the perfect chance to test out the sauce and to get a range of opinions, specifically from my Jewish friends. To complete the holy trinity of monotheistic religions present at the meal, I picked up some Halal ground beef to make burger patties.

After a few minutes of grilling, the tasting was ready to begin. I opened up a bottle and poured it onto my plate. It was runnier than the average BBQ sauce, but had a higher viscosity than your typical steak sauce. I dipped my burger in it for the first taste, slightly fearful that the presence of Christ would burn my Jewish mouth. Fortunately for Country Bob, Christ and myself, the sauce did not burn. In fact, it was pretty tasty. I found it to be a bit on the sweet side, to the point where it probably would have been better on some chicken. But I still opened up my burger and dumped it on as my condiment du jour.

As my companions around the table tried out the sauce, I gathered some insightful comments.

Alyson, a 27-year old Jew working in the insurance business said, “I like Bob, it makes me think twice about Christ.”

Danny, a 24-year old Jew working in talent management said, “Tangy. Maybe too tangy.”

Sarah, a 29-year old Jew working in catering was overheard saying, “Can you please pass the Christ sauce? It’s really good.”

Overall, that’s a pretty positive judgment. Usually BBQ sauce is my top condiment for a cook-out, but Country Bob’s is not a shabby substitute if I’m in the mood for something sweeter.I know Country Bob would have been especially proud to know he had been paired up with the friendly monk on the Franziskaner Beer label.