Rick Stein’s carne con chilli recipe is inspired by his travels in Mexico, where he learned the authentic home-cooked dish that originated the chilli con carne so widely eaten around the world today.
The classic chilli con carne recipe made with beans and minced beef is more of a Tex-Mex recipe.
However, in Mexico home cooks make carne con chilli for their families, using cubed beef or pork in a rich chilli sauce with or without tomatoes, and with beans and or rice on the side.
Rick recommends serving this with any number of your favourite toppings, such as shredded lettuce, soured cream, crumbled Lancashire cheese, avocado, coriander, chopped onions and radishes.
Enough to make four to six servings, this recipe takes less than 30 minutes to prep and cooks in one to two hours.
Ingredients
50g dried guajillo chillies, seeds removed
Four large ripe tomatoes
Four garlic cloves, skin left on
Three tablespoons vegetable oil
1kg braising steak, cubed
One large onion, roughly chopped
One teaspoon ground cumin
One teaspoon dried oregano
Four allspice berries, bruised
One bay leaf
One teaspoon salt
Two tablespoons chipotles en adobo
12 to 18 corn tortillas
For the topping
Handful of coriander, roughly chopped
200ml soured cream
Lancashire cheese, crumbled
One avocado, stone removed, peeled and sliced
One large onion, finely chopped
Four radishes, finely sliced
Method
Start by placing a frying pan over a medium heat and toasting the chillies for 20 seconds, until fragrant but not burnt.
Then place them into a bowl and pour over 450ml of boiling water to cover them. Leave them to soak for 15 to 20 minutes.
In the same frying pan, dry fry the tomatoes and garlic until softened and charred. Set aside until cool enough to handle, then peel off and discard the garlic skins and quarter the tomatoes.
Next, heat a tablespoon of lard or oil in a large flameproof casserole dish and brown one-third of the beef. Transfer to a plate and then repeat until all the beef has browned, adding another tablespoon of lard or oil as needed.
Add the remaining lard or oil to the pan and fry the onion for three to four minutes until softened. Add the cumin, oregano, allspice and bay leaf – cook for two minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Place the soaked chillies and roughly 150ml of their soaking liquid into a food processor. Add the garlic, tomatoes, salt and chipotles en adobo and blend until as smooth as possible.
Tip the paste into the casserole dish, add the browned beef and stir in the rest of the chilli-soaking water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer on a low heat.
Cover and cook in the oven for one and a half to two hours until the beef is tender. Check the water level a couple of times during cooking to make sure the meat doesn’t dry out. Add a little more liquid if necessary.
For the last step, warm the tortillas and serve the chilli with the toppings on the side. You can add rice or beans if you want to.
