Instant Pot Traditional Texas Chili | People's Choice Winning Recipe

 Instant Pot Traditional Texas Chili, often referred to as Texas Red Chili is as old as the chuckwagon days. The cowboys on the trails had limited resources but a wide variety of peppers, chilies, and beef, and wild game to chose from.  The key to great Texas Chili is the selection of which peppers and chilies to use and how much of each to use.

⬇️ Table of Contents

• TEXAS Red Chili Rules
• How To Shop For Peppers
• Control The Spice Level Of Peppers
• Ingredients In Texas Chili
• 📖 Recipe Card

I've been fortunate to have won the "Peoples Choice Award" in a Texas Chili competition a few years back here in Austin, Texas. Was a very happy day in my life. People's choice award to me is such an honor.  To have been able to share with so many people and them enjoying.

You can find the original recipe on the website here.

But WAIT 🙂 This recipe is the same Texas Chili recipe but with improvements, I've made over the years. This recipe works spectacularly in the Instant Pot.

TIP: The chili powder measurements listed below are "Texas" sized scoops. If each tablespoon or teaspoon is a little over, I would encourage. ?

Making Chili using a pressure cooker/Instant Pot really improves the overall flavor profile. It speeds up the process of creating a true depth of flavor that will not take hours. The chilies and peppers maximize their potential when cooked under pressure. It's very cool if you think about it. Chili is all about big flavor with a sense of balance of flavor.

 

TEXAS Red Chili Rules

1. ? No Tomatoes - This is the LAW of the land. I personally like tomatoes in chili, but that is never going to count as a True Texas Chili Recipe. Sorry, rules are rules.
2. ⛔ No Beans - Another LAW of the land. I personally like beans in chili. That's more of a Timberland chili and would never count as a Texas Red Chili

How To Shop For Peppers

• CONTROLLING THE HEAT LEVEL

The KEY to picking the perfect pepper, look at the stems first.

Straighter stems are less hot.

Next, look on the pepper skin and look for heat fractures. They look like little bruises. See photo below.

Notice the stem is straight. This pepper will not be as hot as the rest. Heat level would be on the low end.

Control The Spice Level Of Peppers

The actual hot spicy part of the pepper is the capsaicin. Capsaicin is the oil in the pepper.

To offset the burn on your tongue use either something acidic or sweet. They both force osmosis to occur. It's like flushing out the cells in your tongue. Milk works due to the natural sugars.

Osmosis (/ɒzˈmoʊ.sɪs/) is the spontaneous net movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, in the direction that tends to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides.

Ingredients In Texas Chili

 

VIDALIA ONION

NOTE: Use what is local and in season, but if available Vidalia is my pick.

Also known as Texas Sweet 1015 Onions. The name represents the date of October 15th and the suggested date to plant the onions.

The onions are named Vidalia because they were historically grown in the town of Vidalia, Georgia. The cultivation of Vidalia onions started in the early 1930s. The different varieties are unusually sweet compared to other onions due to the low amount of sulfur in the soil in which Vidalia onions are grown.

GARLIC

Traditional Texas Red Chili isn’t the same without the garlic. Garlic is such a personal decision, do you like a little or a lot?

I suggest using around 6 cloves. Just enough to flavor the chili without over powering the dish.

POBLANO PEPPER

The poblano (Capsicum annuum) is a mild chili pepper originating in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Dried, it is called ancho or chile ancho, from the Spanish word ancho ("wide").

While poblanos tend to have a mild flavor, occasionally and unpredictably they can have significant heat. Different peppers from the same plant have been reported to vary substantially in heat intensity. The ripened red poblano is significantly hotter and more flavorful than the less ripe, green poblano.

FRESNO CHILE PEPPER

The Fresno Chili Pepper (/ˈfrɛznoʊ/ FREZ-noh) is a medium-sized cultivar of Capsicum annuum. It should not be confused with the Fresno Bell pepper.  It is often confused with the jalapeño pepper but has thinner walls, often has milder heat, and takes less time to mature. It is however a New Mexico chile, which is genetically distinct from the jalapeño and it grows point up, rather than point down as with the jalapeño. The fruit starts out bright green changing to orange and red as fully matured. A mature Fresno pepper will be conical in shape, 2 inches long, and about 1 inch in diameter at the stem. The plants do well in warm to hot temperatures and dry climates with long sunny summer days and cool nights. They are very cold-sensitive and disease resistant, reaching a height of 24 to 30 inches.

SERRANO PEPPER

The Scoville rating of the Serrano pepper is 10,000 to 23,000. They are typically eaten raw and have a bright and biting flavor that is notably hotter than the jalapeño pepper. Serrano peppers are also commonly used in making pico de gallo and salsa, as the chili is particularly fleshy compared to others, making it ideal for such dishes.

It is the second most used chili pepper in Mexican cuisine and has a fruity flavor profile.

HABANERO PEPPER

The habanero (/ˌ(h)ɑːbəˈnɛəroʊ/; Spanish:  is a hot variety of chili pepper. Unripe habaneros are green, and they color as they mature. The most common color variants are orange and red, but the fruit may also be white, brown, yellow, green, or purple. Typically, a ripe habanero is 2–6 cm (0.8–2.4 in) long. Habanero chilies are very hot, rated 100,000–350,000 on the Scoville scale. The habanero's heat, flavor and floral aroma make it a popular ingredient in hot sauces and other spicy foods.

CHEF TIP: I think they almost have a peachy flavor profile. You can always take a small bite from the tip of the chile pepper to taste without the high heat hitting your tongue.

THAI CHILE

Thai chili plant is a perennial with small, tapering fruits, often two or three, at a node. The fruits are very pungent.

The bird's eye chili is small, but is quite hot (piquant). It measures around 50,000 - 100,000 Scoville units, which is at the lower half of the range for the hotter habanero, but still much hotter than a common jalapeño.

ANAHEIM PEPPER

An Anaheim pepper is a mild variety of the cultivar 'New Mexico No. 9' and commonly grown outside of New Mexico. It is related to the 'New Mexico No. 6 and 9', but when grown out of state they have a higher variability rate. The name 'Anaheim' derives from Emilio Ortega, a farmer who brought the seeds from New Mexico to the Anaheim, California, area in 1894.

The chile "heat" of 'Anaheim' varies from 500 to 2,500 on the Scoville scale.

BELL PEPPER

Sweet and not hot at all, zero. Very nice to use to round of the heat from the chile peppers.

JALAPENO PEPPER

The jalapeño is a medium-sized chili pepper pod type cultivar of the species Capsicum annuum. A mature jalapeño chili is 5–10 cm (2–4 in) long and hangs down with a round, firm, smooth flesh of 25–38 mm (1.0–1.5 in) wide. It can have a range of pungency, with Scoville heat units of 3,500 to 8,000. Commonly picked and consumed while still green, it is occasionally allowed to fully ripen and turn red, orange, or yellow. It is wider and generally milder than the similar Serrano pepper.

📖 Recipe Card

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