Big-Batch Chili for Twelve, Finished in the Oven

Quick answer: Brown 4 pounds of meat in four separate batches, then let the chili simmer in a 300°F oven instead of on the burner. The oven heats the pot from every side, so twenty cups of chili can't weld itself to the bottom while you're watching the kickoff.

The first time I fed twelve people chili, I tripled a recipe written for four and dumped it all in one pot. By the second quarter I was scraping a black crust off the bottom with a wooden spoon while my brother-in-law called it "smoky." It wasn't smoky. It was burnt, and everybody was being polite.

A big pot of thick chili on a stovetop burner has one hot spot, right in the middle of the bottom, and a lot of heavy food sitting on top of it. Stirring every ten minutes doesn't save you. The oven does. It also frees up the burner and your attention, which you'll want for everything else going on that night.

The numbers

Servings: 12 (about 1¾ cups each) Prep time: 30 minutes Cook time: 2 hours 45 minutes Total time: 3 hours 15 minutes Pot: a 7-quart Dutch oven at minimum. Eight is better. If yours is smaller, split everything between two pots.

Ingredients

Meat and aromatics

• 3 pounds 80/20 ground beef
• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 large yellow onions, diced (about 3 cups)
• 1 large green bell pepper, diced
• 2 jalapeños, seeded and minced
• 8 cloves garlic, minced

Spices

• 6 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• ¼ to ½ teaspoon cayenne (optional)

Liquids and the rest

• 1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
• 2 cups low-sodium beef broth
• 1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
• 2 cans (10 ounces each) diced tomatoes with green chiles
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 cans (15.5 ounces each) dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 cans (15.5 ounces each) pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• ¼ cup masa harina
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

The steps

1. Heat the oven to 300°F with a rack in the lower third.
2. Brown the meat in four batches. Heat the oil in the Dutch oven over medium-high. Add 1 pound of meat, break it into big chunks and leave it alone for 3 minutes. Then break it up and cook until it's deep brown in spots, 6 to 8 minutes total. Move it to a sheet pan with a slotted spoon. Repeat with the remaining meat. Ground beef and pork are safe at 160°F, and two hours in a simmering pot will take them well past that.
3. Pour off all but about 3 tablespoons of fat. Don't scrape out the brown film on the bottom. That's flavor.
4. Cook the vegetables. Add the onions, bell pepper and 1 teaspoon of the salt. Cook over medium, stirring, until the onions are soft and golden at the edges, 8 to 10 minutes. The moisture they release will loosen the browned bits.
5. Add the garlic and jalapeños and cook 1 minute, until you can smell the garlic from across the kitchen.
6. Toast the tomato paste. Stir it in and cook 3 minutes, until it turns from bright red to brick red and starts sticking.
7. Bloom the spices. Add the chili powder, cumin, paprika, oregano, black pepper and cayenne. Stir constantly for 60 seconds. Any longer and the chili powder turns bitter.
8. Deglaze. Pour in the broth and scrape the bottom hard until it's clean.
9. Build the pot. Add the crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes with chiles, brown sugar, the remaining 2 teaspoons salt and all the meat with its juices. Bring to a simmer over medium-high, about 10 minutes.
10. Into the oven. Set the lid on slightly ajar and bake 90 minutes, stirring every 30. You're looking for the fat to pool in little orange puddles on top and the meat to go tender.
11. Add the beans and bake 30 minutes more, uncovered. They go in late so they hold their shape instead of dissolving into paste.
12. Thicken and finish on the stove. Whisk the masa harina with ½ cup water until smooth. Stir it into the chili and simmer over medium-low for 5 minutes, stirring. It'll tighten up and pick up a faint corn-tortilla flavor. Stir in the vinegar.
13. Taste it properly. Use a full spoonful, not a drip. If it tastes flat, it needs salt, usually another teaspoon. If it tastes heavy, add another splash of vinegar.

Make it the day before

This is the best advice in the whole recipe. Chili tastes better on day two because the spices settle down and the flavors run together. You also get to spend game night hosting instead of browning meat in shifts.

The catch is cooling. Twenty cups in one heavy pot will stay warm in the middle of your fridge for most of the night, and warm is where bacteria do their best work. Food-safety guidance says to get cooked food from 135°F down to 70°F within two hours, then to 40°F within four more. So divide the chili into shallow containers, no more than 2 inches deep, and leave the lids off until it stops steaming.

• Fridge: 3 to 4 days.
• Freezer: up to 3 months for best quality. Freeze in 4-cup portions and you've got weeknight dinners.
• Reheat: in the Dutch oven over medium-low with ½ cup water or broth, stirring often, until it's steaming throughout and reaches 165°F.
• Holding during the game: move it to a slow cooker on warm, or keep it on the stove's lowest setting. Don't let it sit on the counter for more than 2 hours.

Feeding the room on a budget

The toppings bar makes the pot go further. People who pile on cheese and chips take smaller ladles of chili.

• A 2-pound block of cheddar, grated yourself. It melts better than the bagged kind, which is coated to stop it clumping.
• A 24-ounce tub of sour cream
• A bunch of sliced green onions and a diced white onion
• Pickled jalapeños
• A big bag of corn chips, and white rice for anyone who wants a bowl that fills them up

If half your crowd runs mild, make a pot of slow cooker white chicken chili alongside this one. It feeds a lot of people without much work.

Swaps

• Ground turkey: Use it for all or half the meat. Add a second tablespoon of oil and brown it harder than feels right, because turkey has less fat and less flavor to start with.
• No beans: Leave them out and add another pound of beef. You'll get about 16 servings' worth of meat and a pot that's closer to Texas style.
• Chuck roast instead of ground: It really is better. Cubes of chuck braised for three hours beat ground beef on texture, and some of your guests will notice. It also costs noticeably more and adds an hour. For a crowd of twelve on a Sunday, ground meat wins.
• Kid-friendly heat: Skip the cayenne, seed the jalapeños carefully and put hot sauce on the table. Heat is easy to add to a bowl and impossible to take out of a pot.

What usually goes wrong

Gray, steamed meat. That's what happens when you put 4 pounds in the pot at once. The pan cools, the meat releases its water, and it boils instead of browning. Four batches take longer, and there's no way around it.

Too spicy. Chili gets hotter as it reduces, and there's no undo. If it's already too hot, stir in another can of crushed tomatoes and another can of beans, then add salt to rebalance.

Too thin. Some brands of canned tomatoes are watery. Simmer uncovered on the stove for 10 extra minutes before you add the masa, or crush a big handful of corn chips into the pot.

Bland despite all those spices. It's almost always salt, and sometimes acid. A pot this size carries a lot more salt than you'd expect.

Scorched bottom. You skipped the oven. Next time, don't.

For the cornbread to serve with it, sister site delicious.com has thousands more recipes. And if the same twelve people are coming back next week, Sunday meatballs and marinara feeds a full table just as well.

One last thing. When the game's over, send people home with a quart container of leftovers. A good host fills the guests first and then fills their fridges too.