When it comes to comfort food, for me personally, chili is right up there near the top of the list. To prepare an even tastier chili, if you have the means, I would strongly encourage you to smoke the protein you’re going to add to your chili for additional flavor. For this recipe, smoked sausages and chicken were first smoked before being added to the chili.
Tap/Click above to watch the recipe or scroll below for the steps: Video – Recteq.com
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Step 1: To make a good chili, you’re obviously going to need all the ingredients, such as tins of Kidney, Pinto, and Black beans, some Tomato Paste, as well as some Olive Oil, Sea Salt, and Chili Powder. You’ll also want some Galic Paste along with a tin of Crushed Tomatoes and Chicken Stock.
Step 2: For this chili recipe, it also used four chicken thighs and two sausages.
Step 3: First, get the sausage and cut it in half. The reason for this is so that when it’s being smoked, the smoke can penetrate more into the sausage meat due to the larger surface area.
Step 4: Place the cut-in-half sausage into your pellet smoker/offset smoker etc, with a temperature of between 180 to 225 degrees for the best smoke production.
Step 5: Next, it’s time to prepare the chicken thighs. First, peel back the sink so the seasoning can be applied directly to the meat itself.
Step 6: First, the chicken thighs were seasoned with Ray’s Loco Gringo rub, which is a mixture of Oregano, Chili Powder, Smoked Paprika, Rosemary, Salt, Pepper, Garlic, Cumin and Sage.
Step 7: Then the chicken thighs were seasoned with Chef Greg’s 4 Letter Rub, which is Table Salt, White Sugar, Granulated Garlic, MSG, Butter Powder, Onion Powder, Pepper, and Apple Cider Vinegar Powder.
Step 8: The chicken thighs were then placed in the pellet smoker (skin side down) on the rack above the sausage to cook through and to get some tasty smoke flavor into them. You’ll want to smoke the chicken up to an internal temperature of 145 degrees.
Step 9: To prepare the Chili you’ll ideally have a cast-iron pot that will hold heat the best to properly cook the chili through. In this case, the pot was used on the direct-heat side of the Recteq DualFire 1200 and pre-heated ready for the chili ingredients.
Step 10: First off, get all the beans in the pot. Don’t worry about draining off the beans. Just tip the tins straight into the pot.
Step 11: Next, you’ll add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
Step 12: You’ll then add the salt and chili powder.
Step 13: Finally, squeeze in some garlic paste, roughly the amount seen above.
Step 14: Then stir all those ingredients together and bring it up to a simmer.
Step 15: While the chili was coming up to simmer, a light dusting of Chef Greg’s Four Letter Rub was added and stirred through as the chili continued to cook.
Step 16: After two hours, this is how the sausage and chicken were looking. As you can see, they both had taken on a lot of color from the smoke.
Step 17: Once the chicken reached 145 degrees it was taken out of the pellet smoker, and the skin was removed.
Step 18: Next, the chicken thighs were roughly chopped up to produce bite-sized chunks ready for the chili.
Step 19: The same was done with the sausage. There is no need to be too precise with this; rough cutting is fine.
Step 20: Then simply add all that chopped-up smoked sausage/chicken into the chili pot.
Step 21: You’ll then want to add some chicken stock to thin down the chili again, as well as adding some additional flavor.
Step 22: Stir through and continue to simmer the chili for another 20 to 30 minutes as all the ingredients work together.
Step 23: This was the end result, and it looks fantastic.
Step 24: In terms of serving, this recipe recommends placing some crushed corn chips in the base of a bowl and placing the chili on the top.
Step 25: Finally, place some grated cheese over the top and finish off with a little sour cream. Delicious!
Hi, I’m Chris Scott. I started PelHeat.com back in 2007 and I have a background in pellet manufacturing. PelHeat.com is an educational resource on BBQ pellets, pellet grills & smokers. Check out our Pellet Grill & Smoker Database.
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