In order to make this dish you need a few things - in no particular order.
Dried chilies - multiple kinds. Be festive. Make sure they are flexible (mostly) and are not moldy.
masa harina
oregano
cumin
a cinnamon stick
tomato paste
chile in adobo sauce
bouillon paste
cojita cheese
red wine (or beer if you are more authentic)
lemon juice
lime juice
brown sugar
some random condensed syrup made from balsamic you got from Grocery Outlet
butter
beef chunks
garlic
onion
bay leaves
green bell pepper
fresh black pepper
a corner of an old chocolate bar that may or may not have rice bits in it
But really, Texas red starts out in the grocery store. Some grocery stores will carry all the ingredients. But others will carry only a few leaving you to scratch your head wondering if you should substitute crumbled tortilla chips in for the Masa Harina or will just plain corn meal work? Should I use wheat flour?
The Masa Harina is for the thickener. Not every store will have it. Some videos on youtube swear by corn chips as an adequate substitute. Others listed tapioca balls (?). A few listed flour if you can't find anything else. One listed arrow root.
SMDH
I'm going to go with a hard no on the tapioca and the arrow root. With my personal hard no, I include corn starch and gumbo filé powder. Just .... no. I don't put Masa in my gumbo. Likewise I won't put filé in my chile. I know they rhyme. That's not an excuse to mix them up.
It is important to check out the chiles. If you don't know which chiles to buy then buy all the chiles. I bought all the chilis. One time when I bought all the chilis there was just one available which was an amazing huge flat black flexible chili that smelled like a sultry raisin. I highly recommend that one. But the others are all good, too. You can mix them together.
The other place that Texas red starts is in the kitchen. I'm using a slow cooker because I am lazy.
You have to take all the dried chili peppers and then roast them gently until there is a smooth toasty smell of awesome. You don't want anything to burn.
But who am I kidding? Of course chili cooking starts when you open the wine!
You need enough wine set aside to put some in the chili recipe unless you plan to add beer. Which, technically, is more Texas. But actually I think red wine cooks down with the raisiny flavors of the dried chili peppers better (shit, you are all going to think I am potentially sophisticated here).
Really, it all leads down to why you need to throw in the corner of an old chocolate bar at the end.
But, you have to cut those chilis open and scrape out the seeds inside. You can wear gloves for that intimate doctor experience and then you can make your own ASMR videos by tapping the chili peppers with the gloves while rattling the seeds next to powerful microphones and then making wiggly patterns with your fingers into the camera. If making an ASMR video while putting together this chili, definitely wear those periwinkle non latex gloves for the best sounds of finger wiggling. Otherwise any latex glove will do. But these chilis are not that potent. It is not necessary to wear gloves unless you plan to put your fingers anywhere near your eye ducts at all for the rest of the evening.
For those of you who *don't* know what ASMR videos are, they are a kind of creepy game adults have discovered is a substitute for that magical play time ritual little girls (and some boys or non gender binary kids) do when they sneak away to a quiet corner to draw pictures on each other's backs with their fingers and the one being drawn on guesses what it is. But the real reason for the game, which is never discussed, is so they can get that tingly feeling in their head when the picture is being drawn. This is why everyone fights for more time being the person that is being drawn on and serious fights break out about the fairness of who gets how much time being drawn upon and labor unions formed to protect the working rights of those doing the drawing. But the darker side of the childhood girl games is the Rose Garden, where the ASMR tingly feeling morphs into mini top and bottom games of who can tolerate something that starts out gentle and then becomes this horrific torture chain indoor to make neat rows of blood red blotches up and down the receiver's arm. I just tried to show this to my husband who had never heard of it and he couldn't handle it. I suspect most secret girl games are too much for the likes of those who lean towards softer arts, like football.
Anyway ASMR has devolved these little childhood games into remote videos you can watch on youtube of young women wearing a lot of make-up playing doctor (and common, let's face it...mother) on youtube, which is both fascinating and also a little bit sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeG5iTFw_1U
https://youtu.be/3s0I9eClG7Y
https://youtu.be/tmhmKEhnIpA
So, now that your chili peppers have been unstemmed and deseeded, take all those soft and leathery skins and throw them in a bowl of water which will randomly be sitting next to you. We will assume it is clean water set aside for that purpose. You are going to soak those babies until the fruit side is all soft and squishy again and the skin side is flexible with just a little give. Like the way you hope your vagina will be when you are 80.Okay, I actually forgot to roast them. This is a super important step. I admit that I failed here.
Roasting the chilis is a super satisfying experience and one that I put on my list of self soothing tools that I have in my personal self care toolkit along with stepping on a photo of Trump's face out in the yard with muddy horse poop boots on. It just makes one feel so refreshed! I live in the city which makes it just a little challenging to get the horse poop.
Throw out the stems and the seeds. Do not give them to your dog no matter how much he thinks he wants to eat them.
It's like when the dog thought he wanted to see your Grindr Profile and he was really enthusiastic, but later you could feel him being disappointed in you in ways you could not imagine thereafter.
Take the stew meat and then decide if you want to roll it in wheat flour or not. In this case I forgot to. But I can't be sure why it is part of the point. I mean, we are adding masa later, so......
But I did cook the meat in a big chunk of butter on all sides until brown. Then I poured the meat and the juice from the pan into the crock pot.
I took one small onion, a small bell pepper, and all the leftover garlic clove bits which included 7. I had to pick a few from the floor (still in the casings) because my partner made marinara yesterday and thought he used all the garlic.
Haha! No! I am victorious.
I briefly did think about roasting all of them first, but then poured another glass of wine and didn't.
I put the one onion which I had cut into quarters and all the peeled garlic in to the processor. I food processed the hell out of them and added them to the mix.
This is the second best way to cut an onion besides making your partner go out on the deck and do it for you.
I then took the soaked chili skins and ground them up in the food processor with the wine, brown sugar, cumin, oregano, lemon juice, lime juice, soup bouillon, and some cojita cheese (just because, why not?). Then I blended the hell out of them until they were a seriously thick, blood red paste.This was added to the crock pot along with some water, more cheese, a bit of balsamic paste, some tomato paste, and a small corner of slightly old chocolate.
Oh yes, I also added a well stirred smattering of masa into the mix.
And a cinnamon stick which kept emulating a bone bit.
The entire thing was set to hot to make the stew meat tender and left for the entire night.
You can add a ham hock, which .... let's be honest, will make the whole thing 20 percent more AMAZING!!!! But do you really have time to pick all those bones out?
Ground pepper can just be in there or not. Some say you should add hot sauce at this point. I say that is an end of dish addition. And then you silently judge the person who added hot sauce to your chili before they ate it.
I set it to low and cooked it the entire night. If it isn't thick enough by the end, add more masa. I also added a wee bit more brown sugar, a splash more of wine, and some added thickened balsamic at the end to give it heft.
Take out the cinnamon stick and the bay leaves.
Let it cool. Serve with sour cream and chives. Possibly some chopped fresh onion and definitely more cojita cheese.
And definitely don't give any to the dog.
