Champs Cowboy Chili

Managing Partner, Christian Ockels

We’re good. Alright, well hello everybody. Welcome back to Champs demo time. I’m Christian Ockels and it’s been a little bit since I’ve been with you. And so before I begin, I’d like to thank Chef Matt, who last time did a great presentation on the braised beef short ribs. And before that we’ve had the Montray ‘The Man’ Johnson. Now I think he’s worked here long enough that we can graduate him to now be the ‘Meat Man’ Johnson. And I wanted to stick as the ‘meat man’ Johnson guys, you can come see him. He’s here every day. He can’t stay away, so you shouldn’t either. So come see him right here at 4750 SPID. Montray the ‘Meat Man’ Johnson and he’ll get you taken care of this week. I’m flying solo though. It’s really a one man job. It’s our Champs chili. It’s so simple even I can do it. And so I want to start by telling you a little bit about it.

We use our always premium dean and peeler beef and we grind it into a chili grind. So it’s a little bit coarser. Two-pound pack is $11. Okay, so that’s the number one ingredient now, Chorizo de San Luis and San Manuel. Well, these are the secret two ingredients. Now when we started the meat market and Calallen, I have a friend, you guys probably know him. His name is Dr. Tobin Pennington and he knew the guys down at Chorizo de San Manuel well and Luis and Marco Flores. Anyways, so I didn’t want to open a meat market in South Texas without having their product on our shelves. So I went down there and met with them. They’ve got tons of great products. They’re a great family. Now you’ll see their brand in other places, so patronize them. They’re good guys. They’re local, they’re special to us down here in South Texas. We need these and then our Champs KISS. And without going any further, I think it’s time to start. I’d like to let y’all know the Chorizo de San Miguel here and the San Luis is $2.51. And why do I use two different kinds? Well, it’s because the San Luis is a little bit fattier and I like the blend. So come over and let me show you how I do it. So I’m going to start off with my chili meat.Just going to open that up guys. I don’t brown it or nothing, I just put it in the pan. Now this recipe calls for two pounds of chili meat. I use four cups of water. I already measured the water out, so I’ve already got it sitting in the pan. I don’t want to bore you guys with that. So I’m just going to open this package now, this is in a hog casing here, so we’re just going to cut it just like that. We’re going to take it right over here, dump it in, get all that out of that casing. Now I didn’t come up with this recipe. Somebody told me about it and I’ve used it and I’ve been using it ever since. The San Luis looks a little different wherever you pull it out, but you want to make sure and get it out of that casing.

So for a guy like me who isn’t a very good cook at the best I can grill a steak pretty good. I mean, the thing about that is you start off with really good meat and so even I can’t mess that up. And that’s what we sell here. Nothing but the best. But I like this recipe because the chorizo already has all the spices that you need so you’re not having to come up with all that stuff. So I just take it, mix it well already in the water. I like to go ahead and mix it because I’m going to cook it on high here once we get it all mixed for just a little bit. And if you don’t mix it, it’ll have the clumps of either the chili meat or the chorizo that kind of cook together. I like to go ahead and break it up so it will evenly disperse all that good fat and well the spices. That’s really what we’re after and cook evenly. So I’m just going to keep playing and mashing here a little bit. It doesn’t take a lot of work. Now, usually at home I’ll use a crockpot, but being we have all this nice equipment here, I figured using a crockpot would be a little bit silly. So I am just going to get it mixed up. Good. And even you’ll see most of that water is kind of dispersed,But I do recommend gloves because it’s just too easy to take ’em off. Okay, so the last touch before we turn this baby up is we’re going to add a little bit of our seasoning to it. Champs KISS. Now we talk about it a lot because we use it a lot. We use it on almost everything. It’s just salt, pepper, garlic. Guys, listen, shout out to my mom out there. That’s the reason I call it kiss. Our marketing team. They thought it would be better to say keep it simple, sweetheart. But my mom used to say, keep it simple, stupid. It’s simple. It’s salt, pepper, garlic. We don’t have any MSG in there. We don’t have any free flow age like silicon dioxide, none of that kind of stuff. Now we live in a high humid environment, so there’s times it can kind of clump together. That’s not that big a deal. I just shake it up, break it up. I would rather do that than put that other stuff into this temple. Alright, so we’re going to turn that up and we’re just going to stir it around there, get it good and mixed up.And again, I’m cooking it on high here for a little bit. I don’t grind any of this meat or anything before I get started. The reason I don’t, I don’t want to cook the fat off of it. I want the fat in there. Every bit of it that gives it flavor, makes my hair shiny, makes me run fast, makes me jump high and I need the energy. So I’m going to let that cook like that for just a minute. I don’t know how hot your stove gets at home, so I can’t say exactly how long to cook it on high, but I cook it on high until the meat looks like it’s done. And then when it is, I turn it down, I let it simmer steep if you will, for about two hours. And that seems to get it just about right. Now some people say chili needs beans. Listen where I grew up, it’s chili and beans, not chili with beans to eat his own. Now if you like chili and beans, we got something great for you. We have our cowboy beans that we always have ready to go. They may be working on some right now in the back, but they’re ready to go seasoned perfectly. You can have chili and beans, but if you want beans in your chili, just put some beans in there. It’s not that big a deal. Alright, let’s talk about the best way to eat it.

Prefer an old family recipe here, prefer chili on a bit of Fritos. Always get the name brand Fritos though. Don’t get the Hill Country Fare or nothing. Get the name brand. Alright, so here a couple hours ago I cooked some chili. So you see that pretty color in there. I’m just going to get a little of that water off of there. Put the meat right on the top. The fall is my favorite time of the year, man. We got football, chili goes great with football. We got cooler weather. Chili goes great with cooler weather. You take that chorizo, both of those is about six bucks. The meat chili meat’s about 11 bucks. So say 17 bucks, you’re going to feed seven, eight people. So quite a bit of value there.

Alright, now I’m going to do it. I like it. Put quite a bit of cheese on there and then some green onions. So not quite the presentation that chef Matt would have, but definitely not bad. Not bad for a cowboy, right? Anyways, it’s awesome. I’m going to go back here and check on this that I got going. She can see, I mean it’s cooking pretty well. Just going to stir it a little bit, make sure I don’t have any of it sticking to the bottom or burning or anything. It is not going to take much longer, probably about 10 minutes more. And then I’m going to cover it up, turn it down, either real low or just let the pilot light do the work and walk away from it for a couple hours. And that is Champ’s Cowboy Chili. That’s the way I do it.

Now I want to let everybody know this Friday, come see us. We’re going to have chili. We’re also going to have beer and wine like we always do. We’ll also have Bria Stone, our local singer guitar player and our, Somalia, Corey Zamora, by far the smartest wine guy I know in Corpus Christi. He’ll be here with us. He has recommended a Sean Miner cab retails for about 16 bucks, so you can come try that with the chili. We’ll also have some beer. We’ve got the cheapest beer and wine prices in town. Come see us. Come getting a drawing. We’re going to fix you up with all the ingredients, your chili, and then maybe whatever special we’re doing, we’ll fix you up with that too if you win the drawing. But even better than that, just come listen to some music, have a drink, have some chili, some Frito Pie. We’ll probably have some cornbread and stuff too. Hey, we’ll have beans. If you want to put ’em in there and your chili, we’ll have that too. Anyways, thank you Corpus Christi. Thank you Calallen. It’s where we started. You’re always in our hearts. We’ll never forget that. And for all you people who haven’t come and seen us, we’re here to serve. So if there’s something we can help you with, let us know. Thank you.