Cold weather and chili go hand-in-hand.
Hot and hearty, and eminently customizable, it’s an American classic and a perfect winter meal.
But what is chili? There are many recipes that vary by region, including a Kansas City loose-meat assemble-it-yourself style of chili.
“I think it’s chili if you think it’s chili,” Food Critic Jill Silva told guest host Sylvia Maria Gross Friday on KCUR's Central Standard.
However you order (or make) your chili, don’t forget the add-ons: Crackers, cornbread, cheese, raw onion, Fritos, jalapenos, avocados, cinnamon rolls, sour cream and more.
RELATED: Independence Diner Serves Up Chili From Century-Old Recipe
On Friday’s Central Standard, our Food Critics uncovered the best chili dishes in and around Kansas City.
Here are their recommendations:
Mary Bloch, Around the Block:
Most restaurants haven't switched over to their winter menus yet, but here are a few I always enjoy:
- Woodyard Bar-B-Que serves chili topped with burnt ends. It’s got a lot of beans and chunks of burnt ends. It’s been featured in the book 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late.
- Danny Edward’s BBQ makes an authentic Mexican chili on a seasonal basis. It has beans and instead of the more typical beef ingredient, it's filled with their tender pork.
- Port Fonda serves an awesome pozole verde, which is essentially a Mexican stew with hominy. One could argue that it's not chili, but it's made with chiles and it has meat, so in my view it qualifies! It’s made with pork shoulder and a spicy tomatillo poblano broth.
- The lamb chili at Novel is not your traditional chili red. In addition to lamb, it's made with lentils, sheep’s milk cheese and cauliflower. It’s kind of deconstructed and served on a plate.
Jill Silva, The Kansas City Star:
- I think of chili as THE food of football and fundraisers. Nine times out of 10, if I’m writing a story for the Super Bowl, there’s at least one chili recipe involved! Slow cookers (the Rival brand was invented in Kansas City!) provide home cooks with the perfect appliance to create stellar chili.
- One of my favorite recipes came directly from the pamphlet that came with my Rival Crock-Pot. It’s tomato-based, two types of beans and starts with ground beef. I have substituted types of beans (it calls for light and dark kidney beans) and meats (including ground turkey, pork or bison) as the mood strikes me.
- The tomato-based chili at The Brick is pretty traditional. It’s made with a brick-red broth, red and black beans, toppings and it has a slight heat. It’s just a nice, well-done dish.
- There’s a really nice, if expensive ($7 a pint) rendition at Genessee Royalecalled Danny’s Chili that has pinto and black beans and a well-rounded, cumin-spiked broth that is exactly what I think chili should be. It was well-blended and well-seasoned. You can tell it had slow-simmered all together, and had become a whole, which is what I like one-pot dishes to be.
- I polled numerous colleagues, and Wendy’s chili is a unanimous favorite, perhaps because it has a bright tomato juice broth with just the hint of acidity.
- I also found a tasty lentil chili at Pickleman’s Deli. Surprisingly, it had a quite a bit of spice on it. I thought it was a very nice — not a bland take on chili.
Charles Ferruzza, The Pitch:
- Steak ‘n Shake. This Texas-based steakburger chain dates back to 1934. It’s sort of the reverse story of KC’s Stroud’s (which sold barbecue until Prohibition when it switched to fried chicken); the founder Gus Belt served fried chicken, but realized good hamburgers would sell better. This restaurant’s chili is loaded with meat and beans, it isn’t oppressively spiced (but it's not bland) and it's a rib-sticking meal on a cold day. It was New York restaurateur Danny Meyers’ favorite childhood restaurant.
- Hawg Jaws Fritz BBQ. When professional firefighter Nick Silvio and brother Sam — they co-own Em Chamas Brazilian Grill — and sister Gina took over the Riverside barbecue restaurant formerly called Hawg Jaw Fritz, they made slight changes to the menu. But the most popular addition was Nick’s meaty chili, richly flavored with trimmings from burnt ends and smoked brisket. “It’s not a spicy, hot chili,” he says. “It’s just a perfect cold-weather chili. But it’s so popular, we now offer it all year.”
- I think the spiciest chili I’ve ever tasted was at The Court House Exchange. It was so spicy I think I had four glasses of iced tea before I got halfway through it. It was a cold day; the colder the weather, the spicier I like the chili.
Listener recommendations:
- Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que has an excellent chili during the winter months. If there’s a forecast of snow, I like to get a quart of it to take home and eat it after shoveling snow.
- Sasha Baking Co. is doing a really good seasonal chili now.
- I like the chili at The Peanut. They have chili dogs there, too.
- The seasonal winter chili at Danny Edward’s. It’s kind of soupy with large pieces of pork and chunks of carrot in it, which is really unusual to me. I like the spice and the kind of crispy carrot and the pork.
Recipe tips:
- Charles Ferruzza: My favorite ingredient to add is cup of good strong coffee. In a pot of chili, it does something magical. I think it makes chili more robust.
Listener Recommendations:
- Chili with cocoa and cinnamon. So good!
- When it comes to chili, I like mushrooms and corn with multiple kinds of beans. Personally, I add Saltines and cottage cheese.
Sides:
- Charles Ferruzza: My favorite side: A hot dog.
- Mary Bloch: If you’re going for a green chile stew or pozole, they’re often served with warm flour tortillas.
- Jill Silva: Fritos. At the 23rd Street Brewery in Lawrence, they have The Withey, which is a bratwurst on a bun with chili and Fritos. And you can get a side of potato chips. It’s definitely a college sort of meal, with a lot of beer.
- Mary Bloch: Corn muffins. Char Bar has really good corn muffins that they serve with jalapeno jam. That would be a good addition.
- Jill Silva: I also like any of the breads with cheese on top with a little bit of chile in them; I think that makes a nice accompaniment. Farm to Market has one, and I know Ibis Bread has a really nice one.
Listener recommendations:
- The perfect chili cracker: Cheez-Its. The cheese goes very well with the chili, it’s a nice crunchy cracker, it’s the right size, it retains both its texture and flavor, it can’t be overwhelmed, it won’t go soggy.
- There's a Nabisco Cornbread Cracker that is great with chili.
- In Hawaii, it’s common to add rice to chili.
Jen Chen is associate producer for KCUR's Central Standard. Reach out to her at jen@kcur.org.