The Super Bowl is on Sunday and the Los Angeles Rams will play the Cincinnati Bengals. If you’re watching the game at home, you’ll need something tasty to eat.
And if you’re a Bengals fan, you might want dish up some Cincinnati chili. It’s a style of a chili that’s been served in that city for about 100 years and it’s richly spiced, delicious and so unique some wonder if it’s really chili at all.
According to lore, Macedonian immigrant Tom Kiradjieff created this style of chili in Cincinnati in 1922. His brother John and he had opened a small Greek restaurant called the Empress. Their restaurant, at first, didn’t do well, but things changed when Kiradjieff started offering dishes locals recognized that incorporated flavours from his culture, chili one was of them.
His chili was essentially Greek-style meat sauce, flavoured with such things as cinnamon and allspice. He served it on hot dogs, and also on spaghetti, a combination he called “spaghetti chili.”
That spaghetti chili eventually became known as Cincinnati chili. To please every customer’s tastes, the Kiradjieff’s established the “ways” method of ordering it, which is still used today by the many places now serving Cincinnati chili.
For example, if you ordered one-way chili, which no one did, you just got chili. If you ordered two-way, you got chili and spaghetti. If you ordered three-way, you got chili and spaghetti topped with a mound of shredded cheese. If you selected four-way, those three items were topped with beans or onions. If you selected five-way, you got everything: chili, spaghetti, cheese, beans and onions.
If you’ve never had or made this iconic Cincinnati dish, here’s a recipe. Double it if you are feeding a larger group.
Five-Way Cincinnati-style Chili
Mediterranean/Middle Eastern-spiced chili, set on spaghetti, and topped with tangy cheese, onions and beans. This recipe yields about six cups of chili; enough for four, 1.5-cup servings, or six, 1-cup servings.
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 30-40 minutes
Makes: four to six servings
500 grams lean ground beef
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups finely diced onion (divided)
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 Tbsp chili powder
2 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 cup beef stock
1 cup water
1 (14 oz./398 mL) can tomato sauce
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
• salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 lb. spaghetti, boiled until tender, drained and served hot
1 to 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese, or to taste
1 (14 oz./398 mL) can red kidney beans, rinsed well, drained, and warmed (see Note)
Place beef in a medium to large pot and set over medium, medium-high heat (my pot was eight-inches wide, and six-inches tall). Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat is cooked through and crumbly. Drain away excess liquid in the pot. Look in the pot and if they are still noticeable clumps of meat, use a potato masher to create a smooth meat mixture.
Set beef back over the heat. Add 3/4 cup of the diced onion and garlic and cook and stir three to four minutes. Add the chili powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon, cumin, cayenne pepper, allspice and tomato paste and cook and stir one minute more.
Now add the stock, water, tomato sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, Worcestershire and bay leaves to the pot. Bring the chili to a gently simmer, adjusting the heat as need to maintain that simmer. Loosely cover the pot (don’t completely cover, as steam needs to escape). Simmer chili 30 to 35 minutes, or until it has thickened, but is still fairly fluid.
Remove the bay leaves. Taste chili and season with salt and pepper, as needed. Set some spaghetti in shallow serving bowls. Let diners top their spaghetti, to taste, with chili, cheese, diced onion and beans.
Note: You can warm the drained kidney beans a few minutes in a bit of beef stock or water in a skillet on the stovetop.
Eric’s options: You could also serve the chili with hot pepper sauce, to sprinkle on at the table. For a bit of green colour, you could also top it with some thinly sliced green onions.
Eric Akis is the author of eight cookbooks. His columns appear in the Life section Wednesday and Sunday.
