Slow-Cooked Brisket Chilli for Long Winter Nights
Five hours, one heavy pot and a finishing spoonful of butter that pulls the whole thing together. Worth clearing an afternoon for.
This is a cold-weather dish in the truest sense: it needs an afternoon, it fills the house with a smell that makes people wander into the kitchen asking questions, and it is better on the second day than the first. Brisket rather than mince, whole dried chillies rather than powder, and — the bit people find surprising — butter at both ends of the cooking.
Serves six generously, with leftovers.
What you'll need
1.4kg beef brisket, trimmed and cut into 4cm cubes. 60g Kerrygold Pure Irish Salted Butter. 3 dried ancho chillies and 2 dried chipotle chillies, stems and seeds removed. 2 large onions, diced. 4 cloves garlic, sliced. 1 tablespoon ground cumin. 2 teaspoons smoked paprika. 1 teaspoon dried oregano. 1 tablespoon tomato purée. 400g tin chopped tomatoes. 500ml beef stock. 200ml strong black coffee. 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar. 2 tins kidney beans, drained. 1 square dark chocolate. Salt and pepper.
Step one: wake up the chillies
Tear the dried chillies into rough pieces and toast them in a dry heavy pan over a medium heat for about 45 seconds a side, until they smell faintly of raisins and smoke. Watch them like a hawk — burnt chilli is bitter and there's no rescuing it.
Tip them into a bowl, cover with boiling water and leave to soften for 20 minutes. Then blitz them with a ladleful of their soaking liquid into a smooth, dark paste. This paste is the backbone of the dish and it is why the finished chilli tastes of something more interesting than heat.
Step two: brown the beef properly
Pat the brisket cubes dry and season them well. Melt half the Kerrygold in a large casserole over a medium-high heat.
Butter gives you better browning than oil here because the milk solids caramelise alongside the meat, and because Kerrygold's high butterfat means less water spitting out of the pan. Brown the beef in three or four small batches, giving each piece room and leaving it alone long enough to form a proper dark crust. Rushing this stage is the single biggest thing that separates a decent chilli from a great one. Set the beef aside as it's done.
Step three: build the base
Turn the heat down, add the rest of the butter and the onions with a pinch of salt. Cook them slowly for a good 12 minutes until soft and golden, scraping up the brown fond from the beef as they release their moisture. Add the garlic, cumin, smoked paprika and oregano and cook for another minute until fragrant.
Stir in the tomato purée and cook it out for two minutes, then add the chilli paste and let it sizzle briefly. Pour in the tomatoes, stock, coffee and brown sugar, and stir well.
Step four: the long, quiet part
Return the beef and any resting juices to the pot. Bring it to a bare simmer, put the lid on, and slide it into the oven at 150C fan 130C, gas mark 2.
Now leave it alone for four hours. Check once at the two-hour mark to make sure it's still just gently bubbling rather than boiling, and add a splash of stock if it looks tight. At four hours the brisket should collapse under the back of a spoon. If it doesn't, give it another 30 to 45 minutes — brisket is forgiving and it will get there.
Stir in the kidney beans and the square of dark chocolate, then return it to the oven uncovered for a final 30 minutes to thicken and darken.
Step five: the finishing butter
Off the heat, stir a final generous knob of Kerrygold Pure Irish Salted Butter through the pot and let it melt in. This isn't decoration. The butterfat emulsifies into the sauce, giving it a glossy body and rounding off the sharp edges of the chilli heat, the way a good sauce should feel rather than just taste.
Taste it properly now. It will probably want more salt than you expect and a squeeze of lime.
To serve
Rice, soured cream, coriander and pickled red onion is the full set-up. But our honest preference is a bowl of it with a hunk of soda bread thickly spread with cold butter, eaten in front of the fire while the weather does its worst outside.
Make it the day before if you can. Everything settles overnight and the chilli finds a depth it simply doesn't have straight out of the oven.
Written by
Niamh Brennan
Food Editor, Kerrygold Kitchen
Niamh Brennan grew up on a small dairy farm outside Nenagh, County Tipperary, where the day started with milking and ended with a loaf of soda bread on the range. She trained as a chef in Dublin, spent six years in restaurant kitchens in Cork and London, and now leads the Kerrygold Kitchen — the small test kitchen where every recipe we publish is cooked, tasted, argued over and cooked again.
Niamh writes about butter the way other people write about wine: seasonally, and with a great deal of feeling. She is happiest developing scone recipes, visiting the farming families who supply our co-operative, and reminding anyone who will listen that good baking begins with good butter at the right temperature.
