I recently developed the following buffalo chili recipe for a chili cook-off. It's very good and rather unusual, and the recipe wasn't in the other thread. With apologies for any ingredients you might not have local access to wherever you are (I'm in California, where we're big on hispanic and Asian ingredients), here goes:


Claire's Buffalo Chili
(makes about 2 gallons)


4 c. dried kidney beans, soaked and simmered until tender in 16 cups water seasoned with marjoram, onion, and one (two?) hot New Mexico pepper(s)
2 lb bulk pork sausage
3 lb ground buffalo
6 onions, chopped
1/8 c.?        New Leaf Fiesta blend bulk chili powder (this is a very flavorful and aromatic but not very hot chili powder blend; the hotness comes from the chile/garlic sauce later on)
1 BIG (23 oz?) bottle of Samuel Adams beer
3 1-lb cans diced fire-roasted tomatoes
Ground cumin to taste
Chipotle powder to taste
Salt to taste
5 Anaheim chiles, lightly charred and chopped
1 Poblano chile, lightly charred and chopped
The New Mexico pepper the beans cooked with, chopped
Grated peel of one orange
1 disk         Mexican chocolate, grated
Brown sugar to taste
8+ finely chopped corn tortillas
2 teaspoonsful Szechuan garlic-chile sauce (or more)
2 1-lb pkgs frozen corn (one yellow, one white)

Cook kidney beans; cool. Reserve the chile(s) that cooked with them.

Brown the pork sausage in a skillet in two batches, pouring off and reserving the pork fat. (Move the browned ingredients into a stew pot.) Since the buffalo is lean, brown that next in two batches, using some of the reserved pork fat if needed to keep the buffalo from sticking. Finally brown the onions. When they are lightly browned, mix the chili powder into them, then move to stew pot.

Deglaze the skillet with beer and dump that, the rest of the beer, and the tomatoes into the stew pot as well. Simmer for a half-hour or so, then add cumin, chipotle powder and salt to taste.

Let it go an hour or so more, then add the various chopped chiles, the orange peel, the chocolate, and the brown sugar. 15 minutes later, add the corn tortillas and simmer another 15 minutes or so while those dissolve (they will thicken the chile). Adjust the hotness with the garlic-chile sauce. (Remember the corn will tone it down a bit.) Finally add corn and heat only until the corn is hot. Adjust seasonings, adding salt, cumin, brown sugar, or chili powder if needed.