Super bowls: recipes for the game

ASSHOLE CHILI.

For years, a housemate of mine had a Super Bowl tradition. He would prepare a huge cauldron of chili and host quite the blowout party.

Days before the game, he would marinate chopped sirloin steak in tequila. The next day, he would toss in jalapenos and other peppers, Tabasco, onions, garlic, and other spices, several types of beans and ground chuck beef, and then cook it all with a few bottles of a North American lager of some sort. Enduring this long process, things would char, suffusing the goop with little specks of burnt black matter.

It was a big pot, a big production, and an all-day affair. He called it —excuse my his language— Asshole Chili, after its feared, and attested to, after-burn. The party flowed with plenty of beer, but large quantities of the chili would invariably remain uneaten.

Now that sufficient time has passed, the true story can be told of the one year when the chili, suffering a grisly demise, accidentally became a culinary hit.

My housemate had done the ritual, cooking a particularly large quantity. Saturday, he moved the pot to the basement to cool overnight.

The next morning, Superbowl Sunday morning, we went down to the basement to bring the pot back up to the kitchen stove to be re-warmed. It was not a good sight. The pot's handle rivets, all aluminum, had reacted with the steel of the pot. The entire batch of chili was foaming over the top, the color a grayish brown. We had to dispose of it, all of it. My roommate was not pleased, to say the least (and he said a lot more, loudly).

Guests would be arriving in six hours. So, I suggested an emergency plan of action. Why not go to the local supermarket, buy some cheap chili seasoning packets, some cheap ground beef, a couple cans of beans and tomato sauce, and then toss it all together, and simmer it until the guests arrived? The key would be not to tell anyone that anything was amiss or different.

And, it worked —but maybe too well.

Folks helped themselves to several bowls. Over and over, they told him, "This is the best batch of Asshole Chili you've ever made." He could only grin and bear it. If they only knew.

The Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl that day, but the game would be Asshole Chili's swan song. My housemate retired the recipe.

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Recipes

For tomorrow's Super Bowl, here are a few other, less scatalogical, recipes:

• My recipe for a vegetarian Super bowl of chili.
• Bobby Flay's recipe (carnivore) for chili (paired with Small Craft Warning Uber Pils)
• Beer historian Bob Skilnik has 2 meat-full chili recipes.
• Clipper City Brewing has a recipe for barleywine chili (Below Decks) on its website.
• Beer cookbooker Lucy Saunders offers her suggestions.
• and Bryce Eddings, our friend-in-beer at About.com, has posted a slew of recipes for gameday.

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• This post has been edited since its original upload. It then included a story about a beef, beer, wine, and jazz recipe that has now been given its own post. Read it: here.


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