Brett's (Wendy's) Chili

Brett will usually eat chili when I make it, and we've both enjoyed Sharon's chili, but he says I recently got him hooked on Wendy's chili. I don't know what specific event he's referring to, but it's gotten quite entertaining. He's hooked. He's a Wendy's chili junkie. I'll find out he needed a quick fix of food and picked up some more chili. If we're going out to run errands and the topic of lunch comes up, he'll definitely be mentioning Wendy's chili. I love the stuff, so I'm not knocking ...but you have admit his love for it is fast and furious!

Anyhow, the idea came up that maybe Brett would make some Wendy's chili. We tracked down the recipe over at TopSecretRecipes.com, picked up the ingredients, and put him to work.

I took pictures to document the special occasion.

Simon just waited eagerly:


Brett doesn't like the idea of chopping onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc. He doesn't mind measuring ingredients and opening cans, but chopping?


No matter how much he hit me with the pouty face, I was letting this be his project!


Brett says he's never chopped/dices veggies before, and had me walk him through it. Sure, I was nervous he could lose a finger, but I have faith in him!


Oh, did I mention he's NEVER chopped an onion before? Heh heh...


Things got quite fun...





Lots of washing of the hands (hey, they show this all the time on Food Network nowadays!)


Dry your hands after washing so you don't slip and cut yourself with a freshly sharpened santoku knife!


Brett's nemesis (nemesii?) - the onions!






More washing of the hands!


This cooking show brought to you by...


Once it came to dicing the tomatoes, he asked me to help out. (Next time we'll probably just used canned tomatoes - but we really wanted to follow the recipe the first time - that even included using all the liquid/slime from the cans of beans - ODD! I've ALWAYS rinsed canned beans...)


Showing Brett's handiwork on the back of my hair...


Browning the beef...


We opted to swap in a bell pepper (which we KNOW Wendy's uses, but it wasn't in the recipe from the 90's) for the hot peppers called for in the recipe.


Now it's all assembled and ready for the hours long simmer!


Turned out pretty good!!! Brett loved it! The only thing I didn't care for was the recipe called for adding heat with black pepper (A LOT of black pepper) in addition to some cayenne and the chili peppers. I think Brett freshly grated a couple tablespoonfuls into the recipe? It was a little too strong of a black pepper taste/burn for me - a touch of bitterness near the back of the throat? But otherwise, REALLY good! We had it over white rice with crackers - yum!