Kickoff was at 6:00 tonight. At 5:12 Nora was in the kitchen in a school-colors T-shirt with a stripe of face paint on each cheek, holding two empty thermoses and asking if the chili was ready. It had been ready for four minutes.
Nora's middle school played at home, and in our house that means supper has to be eaten, packed and out the door by 5:35. I get home from Columbia around 4:30 on Fridays. Ryan is working Saturdays again this month, so a Friday game is his whole weekend, and he wanted to sit in the bleachers with a full stomach and a thermos. That leaves me about thirty-five minutes, a rotisserie chicken I bought on Thursday and a pantry shelf of beans.
This is the pot I make for those nights. It's mild enough for Nora, who does not do heat, and Ryan fixes his own bowl with pickled jalapeños.
Ingredients
- 1 rotisserie chicken, skin and bones removed, meat shredded (about 4 cups)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 large onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 cans (4 ounces each) chopped mild green chiles, with their liquid
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 3 cans (15 ounces each) great northern beans, drained and rinsed
- 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 4 ounces cream cheese, cut into cubes and left on the counter to soften
- Juice of 1 lime
- For the table: shredded Monterey Jack, sour cream, cilantro, crushed tortilla chips and pickled jalapeños
How I make it
- Cube the cream cheese first and leave it out. Then melt the butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat and cook the onion about 6 minutes, until soft and see-through.
- Stir in the garlic, cumin, oregano and chili powder and cook 1 minute, until it smells toasty.
- Add the green chiles, broth, salt and pepper. Put one can of the beans in a bowl and mash it with a fork or potato masher until mostly smooth. Stir the mashed beans and the two cans of whole beans into the pot.
- Bring it to a boil, then turn it down to a steady simmer for 15 minutes, uncovered, stirring every few minutes so the beans don't catch on the bottom.
- Add the chicken and corn and simmer 5 minutes more, until the chicken is hot all the way through. My instant-read says 165°F in the middle of a ladleful.
- Turn the heat to low. Stir in the softened cream cheese a few cubes at a time until it disappears. Squeeze in the lime and taste for salt.
- It's ready when it coats the back of a spoon and there are no white flecks left.
Why mash a can of beans? Beans are full of starch, and when you break some of them open, that starch thickens the broth the same way flour would. You get a chili with body, not a soup with beans floating in it, and you don't have to make a roux on a Friday at five o'clock.
The first time I made this, I dropped the whole cold brick of cream cheese into a pot at a hard boil. It broke into a hundred tiny white bits that never melted, no matter how long I stirred. Ryan looked in the pot and said, "Is it snowing in there?" It tasted fine. It looked like a snow globe. Softened cubes, low heat and a little patience fix it every time.
How far one pot goes
This makes about 12 cups. Tonight it went like this: four bowls at 5:15, with chips crushed on top for Jack. Two 16-ounce thermoses for the bleachers, because sitting on cold aluminum makes everybody hungry again by halftime. And two containers left for Monday lunches, one for me and one for Ryan. Jack gave it a 9 and asked why we don't eat chili out of thermoses every night.
The game was the first night all fall that felt like a hoodie by the fourth quarter. Jack ended up wearing mine. I sat there with my hands around a thermos lid of chili and decided I didn't mind.
Make-ahead and swaps: you can make it Thursday night and reheat it gently on Friday; it gets a little thicker overnight, so add a splash of broth. If you want to freeze some, freeze it before the cream cheese goes in and stir the cream cheese in when you reheat, because it can turn grainy in the freezer. Leftover smoked chicken from the pellet grill works beautifully in place of the rotisserie bird, and 2 pounds of poached chicken breast works too.
The whole pot, toppings and all, cost about $22. The rotisserie chicken was the biggest line at $6.99 from Kroger, and three cans of beans were about $3.30.
