One of the interesting thing about attending ZestFest was trying a fair amount of chili mixes. As people who regularly host chili cookoffs, we have generally spurned chili mixes because we have wanted our ‘contestants’ to make their chilis from scratch. It just seems that you can take a lot more pride in your creation if it’s your own mad scientist brew, right?

With this preconcieved notion in mind, we ran into Cindy Reed and her crockpots full of chili made with her Cin Chili mix. It was a lot of people dressed in cowboy hats holding two-ounce servings of chili, so we cautiously approached ready to be polite if we didn’t like it all that much. Chugging that shot of chili, we were pleasantly surprised at how good the taste was…and promptly laid $5 on the counter to take a bag home so we could try some ourselves. We didn’t have an upcoming chili cookoff or anything, but we were sure that we could make do in our own humble kitchen.

After reading the directions, we had to decide exactly what sort of meat we wanted to use. That’s not the most obvious choice. If you have ever been shopping for meat in the supermarket, you know that there’s lots of different cuts of beef…in different percentages of fat vs. actual meat. The directions say to use two pounds of ground meat (or your favorite meat)…and our favorite meat to cook with is ground beef, so we chose some 90/10 ground beef (that was somewhat coarsely ground) for our chili concoction. Purchasing the other ingredients, the tomato sauce and beef broth, we hastily headed home to begin our plans for our own Cin Chili supper.

All in all, it was pretty darn easy to make…which makes it an ideal mix for people who don’t have an entire afternoon (or other block of time) to whip up their own chili mix. Joe made the chili in about 30 minutes time, and most of that was cutting the meat a little finer and browning it on the stove. The directions say to let the chili simmer for 30 minutes after everything has been brought to a boil, but we opted to let it simmer for an entire hour. After that, we spooned out a couple of bowls and started dinner.

The taste was much like we remembered from ZestFest…smooth, chili pepper-laden Texas-style chili with a very mild heat level (probably about 3.5/10 to us). It certainly brought back memories of the few ICS & CASI chili cookoffs we’ve attended in the past. A few things else to say about it, though. Choice of meat plays a big role with this mix. We could have done better with either more finely ground meat, or even a different choice of meat such as beef tri-tips or other kind of meat altogether. The final product is not too spicy, so you can always spice it to taste if you just have to have that burst of capsaicin with your chili. Linda’s mother tried it (with her delicate palate), and she had no trouble downing a bowl with nary a complaint about its heat. This chili also seemed a little bare without accompaniments, such as cheese, onions, crackers, or whatever else you might want to put on your chili. These critiques aside, it was good chili and we’d make it again to see if we could do it better. You can’t argue with the taste, which is Texas-style chili at its finest.

Ingredients: chili powders, onion, garlic, salt, cumin, silicon dioxide (anticaking agent), less than 1% monosodium glutamate

Overall Recommendation: You want Texas-style chili at your house in short order, then Cin Chili would be right up your alley. Mildy spiced but with rich flavor, it’s likely to have broad taste appeal to anyone who likes chili. Sure you could make your own chili from scratch, but if you mess it up you’d have to save money to order out pizza for dinner. Cin Chili is nearly fool-proof to make, and it beats most other commercially-available chili mixes by a wide margin. Enjoy!