My neighbor won a chili competition. We all knew it was Hormel from a can, but we wanted him to feel like he got us. We all preferred the Costco chili the other neighbor brought.
In my fraternity we would add a few beers to the juice (juice being just koolaid and vodka) because otherwise the koolaid covered the vodka too well and people would drink it like water. The beer gave it a note of "hey freshman, there is actually something in this, slow down"
Sounds interesting! I feel like I missed out because I decided to go to trade school instead where weâd just crush beers in the parking lot after class đ
The college kids in my area are now drinking âborg juiceâ - half a gallon of vodka, half a gallon of water, and a shit ton of mio. My husband and I decided to check out the âhouse crawlâ a couple blocks away from us this year (weâre early 20âs) and my hubby got alcohol poisoning bc he didnât realize how strong it was and it tastes good so whenever he got thirsty heâd just drink more đ đ
Itâs not Borg juice just a Borg (Blackout Rage Gallon). Good idea overall, though I tend to do 1/2 gallon of water, 5th of Vodka, 2-3 Liquid IVs, and top off the rest with water.
I usually get Wendy's chili 2-3x a month. I call it the chili lotto. Sometimes it's almost all beans, other times tons of meat. No reason I can tell as I always stop by at the same time.
They are supposed to chop up the patties that are about to expire in the warming trays and put those in the chili, and cook fresh patties to go on burgers.
If you are getting Beefy chili, it means that the crew is doing it right, because the burgers will be fresh.
If you are getting a weak bowl of mostly beans, the crew is either doing a bad job or the Manager is squeezing the margins on food cost. Some/all of the burgers during that time are going to be dried out hockey pucks, too.
At a work Christmas party, someone brought Mac and cheese and everyone was raving about it. Even myself since I make homemade Mac every year for thanksgiving(still trying to perfect after 6 years). Went to the person to compliment them since weâre pretty friendly and they admitted to me it was Costco Mac. Was completely shook lmao.
My sister had a BBQ place do the catering for her wedding and they just got big trays of food. My mom went and got some other stuff from Costco including the mac and cheese and a sheet cake.
Someone at the wedding was very pretentiously saying "wow, you can really tell the quality of a BBQ place based on their sides and this mac and cheese is really good." I was laughing to myself knowing it was from Costco.
I drove to Costco today, not knowing of the reputation of the mac and cheese. I guess I will be driving back to Costco tomorrow...
This is the stuff in the aluminum trays where the meatloaf and stuffed peppers and other freshly prepared items are right?
Tell the ones asking for the recipe that it's an old secret family recipe, and if you give it out your great-great grandmother will haunt you for the rest of your life.
I had a former coworker who did this exact thing except he used Stagg chili and won first place! However, he got his just desserts when our friend pranked him on April Foolâs with a fake cease and desist letter from âHormelâ headquarters. OMG I have the giggles still thinking about it 10+ years later!!
I made a chill the other day. Barely made an effort.
Half pinto/black, wedge of corn bread, basic spices and msg and black bean fermented jajang. Tossed in some old ziplocks filled with frozen bbq from who knows when. Tasted so good at first test I just stopped messing.
Donât know why you were downvoted. Yes OP stands for OverPowered and is used frequently in the gaming community, but has definitely leaked into the common vernacular.
My last chilli I picked up the wrong jar of chopped dried peppers. I keep them in glass jars with a rubber seal in the lid (actually old coffee jars but they work so well) but I had put the label on the lid, and they had got swapped around.
I was aiming for the birds eye. I picked up the carolina reapers. I put like 10g of them in.
I didn't notice until the steam from the pot started acting like tear gas.
My wife wouldn't even try it. I ate two bowls of it over two days before admitting defeat because it started to upset my stomach from the sheer face melting heat of it.
I still keep glass jars of chopped dried chilli peppers, now they are better labelled.
Oh jesus. How... you confused birds eye for reapers?
I did a whole bush of ghost like 5 years ago. Dehydrated, I've still got like 20 left. I did find a good use for them. I dehydrated a pound a habaneros, one ancho and flaked them all up with one ghost. Kinda like a flat iron blend but with a little kick. I've never known anything like ghost.
Has a highly citrus smell.
Just so you know, when I inevitably challenge myself to make chilli with reapers, I will blame you. But donât worry, itâs a love/hate relationship, cos I love spice that melts my face; I just hate what it does to my insides as well.
Might do 50/50 reapers and chiles, so I can use it on my eggs and not die cos I slather that shit on.
My chili won a cook off at work a few years ago. It's a pretty standard beef and bean chili recipe. But, I add cocoa powder, whiskey, and apple cider vinegar at the tail end of it cooking. I'll also sub out some salt for MSG. Gets em every time.
>Costco chili won me 3rd place.
>I always spend a lot of time and money and never place at all.
I see the problem here is people seem to like a mass produced product.
People like *free stuff*.
Iâm a manager, and every Super Bowl Sunday we set up a couple of tables and I buy a bunch of food for my employees. Sandwich trays from the local chain grocery, boxes of individual bags of chips, bulk potato salad, etc. I also make my familyâs chili recipe, and a LOT of it, because everyone likes it. (The secret is not draining the kidney beans, adding Campbellâs condensed tomato soup, and adding green pepper and onion lightly fried in butter.)
This year, I found Costco chili, and said âf it. Donât feel like slaving over a hot stove to make the usual, Iâll just throw this in the crock pot and if anyone doesnât like it, tough tatas.â Totally different recipe / taste, but everyone loved it and complimented it the same way they complimented my family recipe.
Itâs because it was free. Free food is the best, tastiest food ever. Itâs all that mattered.
Yeah chili varies so much based on the cookâs personal taste and commercial recipes are designed to be acceptable for the largest number of people. Itâd be more surprising if Costco chili didnât do decent in a contest. If Iâm making chili for other people, itâs going to be very different from the one I make for myself.
I make and ferment my own chili paste and that's a really great addition to my chili. Last time I made it, I used the last of my chili paste and it still needed something. I had a container of Gochujang, which is a Korean chili paste, so I was like, might as well try it.
It was so good! You can definitely taste the Gochujang in the chili, it adds something that (even growing up in Texas) was completely different from anything I'd had. I seriously considered if I should open a food truck with Korean spins on traditional southern foods.
My dad won 1st place at his work chili cookoff for like a decade.
He did nothing more than make the Carroll Shleby (yes the Cobra & Mustang Carrol Shelby) chili kit that you can buy at the grocery store.
We got a laugh out of it every year.
that's the thing - i want to TRY costco chili but in terms of cost it doesn't seem worth it.
ground beef is cheap and a few bottles of spices will last a while.
bit of a time commitment with chili but it's not hard to make.
Maybe it's because I live in a high cost of living area but I think it's cheap We do add rice but it's $3.49 a pound, about the same as the ground beef, I think it's a great value. You could cite the cost of onions and tomatoes but they cook down.
You really have sticker shock over a fat tub of chili for $15?
Not OP but here's my Chili recipe. Measurements are made with my heart.
Brown a pound of bacon, set aside, drain but keep the grease. Return a couple tablespoons of grease to the pot and toss in a chopped white onion, a chopped bell pepper, and as many chopped jalapenos as you think you'll want. I like spicy chili, so I also do a few habeneros for that extra kick.
I sautee these until the veggies begin to soften, then return the bacon to the pot. Add in a couple cans of rotel, and maybe some extra hatch green chilis. Fire roasted tomatoes also go great here, or otherwise your preferred ratio of crushed tomatoes to puree or what you prefer as your tomato-y base.
For seasoning I liberally use garlic powder, onion powder, cumin to taste, salt of course, also to taste, smoked paprika, some parsley and basil might go in there too. Chipotle chili powder and or cayenne get added to preference. I do fresh ground black pepper and it's very important to me that it's freshly ground. To the point that sometimes I add extra before serving. I've also added a table spoon of cocoa powder - people associate it with sweet stuff like chocolate but the powder itself lends a bitterness that compliments deep and savory dishes like this. Oh, a bay leaf or two here can't hurt, and I've even tossed a shot of espresso or some coffee in at this point, for similar reasons to the cocoa powder.
At this point we need the ground beef, but you can actually use whole chuck, or even brisket and it's phenomenal. But I do what's called "Over-the-top Chili", where we smoke the meat on a grate that sits over top of the pot at 225F for a couple hours till the meat starts to form a bark. My personal preference here is to use fresh ground chuck roast.
Once the meat is heartily smoked, just drop it in and break it up and get everything nice and mixed. If you don't have a smoker then you can just brown the meat in a separate pan before adding it, then deglaze the pan with apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar. Or beer. Make sure to scrape the fond and add it to the chili.
Slow cook it for, say, 8ish hours. The day BEFORE you want to serve it. Letting it sit overnight in the fridge helps all the flavors mingle. Then reheat the day of.
You can also add beans to this chili, I'm not a purist. Purists are silly and self-restrictive. I've had amazing bean, and no-bean chili. I like to serve with cornbread, sour cream, and shredded sharp cheddar. Ideally fresh shredded.
i dunno about others, and its a matter of taste, but my secrete is tamarin sauce. bout a teaspoon per pound of meat. oh, that and using REALLY good tomato paste, sauce or and a can of diced tomatoes. my brand is Muir Glenn.
I'm sure they meant tamarind (that's my chili secret too!); a little tamarind paste or puree goes a long way. That said, tamari is a good additive too!
I was giggling/horrified at the post, imagining someone putting a processed tamarin monkey into his chili as a secret ingredient. I'm very confident that it's actually tamarind paste.
I donât do too many things special just your usual chilli recipe but I add a lot more meat to bean ratio. One thing I do add thatâs not as common is cinnamon. It adds a different profile.
 now Iâve got co-workers asking me for the recipeÂ
Just give them the ingredients list off the costco chili in whatever proportions you think they used. lol
Thatâs freakin awesome.
Everytime I smoke a brisket or ribs and people say how good it is makes me wonder on a scale of 1 to 10 how much they are lieing or just donât know amazing bbq. There is no way Iâve made the â best ribs Iâve ever hadâ đ
I was running very late for a party once and threw a bunch of wendy's chili in a crock pot, topped it with onions and shredded cheese, everyone kept saying how great it was and how log it must have taken to make
Iâve placed using Costco chili before as well - I miss you, white chicken chili! I added some hatch chiles and it was so damn delicious.
I miss regular chili too - late in life tomato allergy really ruined a lot of stuff for me. But I miss the white chicken chili more.
So funny! Years ago, a couple decades even, the Pismo Beach Clam festival clam chowder cookoff was won by a restaurant that used canned clam chowder. This was before the internet, so the proof is lacking unless you want to go to the library in Pismo and hope they have the microfiche, but I remember the outrage quite well :)
Are you me? I've made my "7 Mile Chili" every year. Some years it does well, other years not so well. The crock pot is empty every time though. I sautee a diced up red onion, a head of garlic, peeled and crushed of course, a package of Costco burger meat (1.25 pounds?) then add in two cans of Stagg Classic, 2 cans of Dennison's Dynamite, and 2 cans of Hormel's no bean chilli.
Good Luck
Truth is that for a chili contest, the winner will generally be the most generic and familiar chili. If you make a white chili or a Cincinnati chili or your own special spin on it, it probably won't win. Costco chili is nothing special, and that's why it's palatable to large crowds.
My sister did this with the rice pudding for a family event. Our dad asked her at the last minute to make her famous rice pudding. She went to Costco instead, bought the rice pudding, and put it in her own dish. Everyone wanted the recipe!
I also have a rice pudding fraud story but itâs not from Costco. When my grandma was dying she got to the point where she would only eat very few foods and only if my husband fed her. One of those foods was rice pudding. I cannot make rice pudding but a local coffee shop makes it daily. We would go every day and get her pudding and tell her I made it and she happily would listen as I read to her and my husband fed her. Some days it was the only calories she would eat. It was a lie of love.
Sometimes people just donât need to know where the rice pudding (or chili) comes from.
I 'cheated' at a work event once and won a 150 Walmart gift card. It was summer of 2008 and it was employee appreciation day and there were events set up in the break room with prizes.
One of them was a Wii bowling competition. Due to time constraints we couldn't just bowl and instead we had to do the bonus game with the ever increasing pins. Winner was who ever knocked down the most pins.
Well those who played it know of the glitch to guarantee a strike on the final set. Other people tried it but I was the only one to land it. Thankfully it didn't happen during a break so only me and two other coworkers saw it and neither cried foul. The guy running it knew about the glitch and got a good laugh.
I bet next year you could add a 1/2 cup of quality chili powder and win. I do a chili contest just like this ever year. It's usually between me and the only other person putting the time and effort in. We both use very fresh chili powders and so far I've won ever year with him losing by like 4-5 points (out of 125). Add the chili powder and a packet of sazon goya.
my father-in-law worked for Wendyâs part time and his church had a chili cookoff competition. You know where this is heading⊠He entered some Wendyâs chili into the contest and one first place. I told him he was going to hell for it.đđ
A lady I worked with did that but with Wendyâs chili. And she won. Then she told the manager it came from Wendyâs and everyone was pissed off. And we never had a chili cook off again
Costco chili is great if you can't be bothered to cook a meal for yourself.
If it had a little more heat, that'd be enough to take it to the next level. Maybe first place was Costco chili with a little more chili pepper/jalapenos.
If you ever want to go back to cooking chili for competition this website is super cool. Itâs a Rolodex of wining chili recipes going back to 1967. https://www.chilicookoff.com/
I won third once for a tandoori chicken chili I decided to make so my hindi coworker didn't feel left out. Now I'm gonna have to try the costco brand. Thanks for sharing, I've looked at it a few times but always talked myself out of buying it.
That's awesome, I managed to win a dessert contest at the office when I was fresh out of college. My all time favorite desert hands down is a strawberry cream pie, at least that's what I call it.
Usual recipe in short is to bake up a couple of the frozen deep dish pie shells. The cream is a 50/50 mix of French vanilla pudding(made with half the milk) and homemade whipped cream. Then just layer on strawberries cut up and covered in strawberry glaze.
For the contest I did it all from scratch, pie sell, glaze, and homemade pudding. It was slightly better, but not enough for all the extra work and cost.
Being in my early 20s at the time and a guy I ended up with several women accusing me of cheating saying my mom must have made it. My mom lived 4 hours away back then, though she was the one who always made me that pie for my birthday.
I tried Costco chili once and it was gross. Smelled funny and tasted weird. Iâm actually now thinking maybe it had gone bad. After reading this post Iâm going to try it again.
My dad has won the chili contest at our local festival the last 3 years. All he does is take chili from 4-5 other people at the festival, mix it together, then serve it to the judges. It's the worst kept secret at the festival and just kind of funny at this point.
I've lost to canned Hormel once. I grew the peppers, onions, and tomatoes in my garden, I added the right balance of salt, touch of sugar, and umami. I know my chili rocked. Half ground beef, half spicy Italian for a bit of flare. The fact of the matter is people know what they know. Mine was amazing and some shit Hormel won because that's what people in the community were used to. If the audience would have been a bunch of chefs I am confident the results would have been different
I had a similar experience when visiting my wife's best friend's (wbf) family around Thanksgiving. It was my first time meeting everyone and apparently they have a family tradition of doing a chili cook off.
These people worked their asses off to make the perfect chili, full on Kevin Malone level stuff. As a joke, my wbf's husband and I decided to talk a big game, making a point to play up our entry. Our secret? Wolf's brand canned chili with some fresh cut jalapeños and shredded cheese on top.
Voted best of the night.
If asked for the recipe, write down the ingredients from the side of the "bucket thing" and just say you keep going until it *smells right.* (No need to elaborate: no need to embarrass yourself)
Costco is a good company that usually doesn't sell something with ought extensive testing. I'm not surprised their chili is delicious - If I didn't love making my own I'd just buy theirs.
Quite a few years ago, some friends of mine competed in a chili cook off run by a local organization, ended up taking first place. Their secret? Wendyâs chili.
You want to know a secret? #1 and #2 were also Costco chili.
They're the ones that knew to undercook the onions...
Everyone gets to know one another in the pot, right? đ
They also probably pressed garlic, diced whole tomatoes, and toasted their own ancho chilies!
It's a recipe passed down from generations. It's probably the best thing I do.
Carpet fibers are the secret ingredient, they add a nice texture.
Nice try Kevin.
Keleven herbs and spices
and they add fiber
https://preview.redd.it/pwvzl0nxc1yc1.jpeg?width=319&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=403e292ad42f86aa80b7c4cce8d83302a4e3b950
F*@#! I dropped it
That scene always makes me so sad. Itâs hilarious but I can never laugh đ„ș
I'm serious about this stuff!
That's the trick.
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You get the diced onions from the Hot Dog stand.
Theyâre no longer at my Costco : (
They brought them back to ours. I miss sourkraut though.
It used to be you could ask for sauerkraut at the counter. Did that go away too?
I like the idea of everyone showing up with Costco chili but no one wanting to admit it so they just go on with the contest anyway.
I know a guy that won his neighborhood chili completion using Hormel from a can. So #1 or #2 might have been that.
My neighbor won a chili competition. We all knew it was Hormel from a can, but we wanted him to feel like he got us. We all preferred the Costco chili the other neighbor brought.
Hormel on toast is my guilty hungover pleasure
Chili judges hate this one simple trick.
OP would have gotten number 1 if he hadnât added water
Number 1 added beer.
#1 was Wendyâs chili. #2 was Wendyâs canned chili.
Jokes on you. #1 was Wendyâs
I actually won my office chili cook-off using a Wendy's chili copycat recipe that I found online somewhere lol
For a chili cookoff I had in college, my group literally just bought Wendy's chili in bulk and added a PBR to it and got 2nd place out of 50+ entries
PBR as in a Pabst blue ribbon?
In my fraternity we would add a few beers to the juice (juice being just koolaid and vodka) because otherwise the koolaid covered the vodka too well and people would drink it like water. The beer gave it a note of "hey freshman, there is actually something in this, slow down"
Sounds interesting! I feel like I missed out because I decided to go to trade school instead where weâd just crush beers in the parking lot after class đ
The college kids in my area are now drinking âborg juiceâ - half a gallon of vodka, half a gallon of water, and a shit ton of mio. My husband and I decided to check out the âhouse crawlâ a couple blocks away from us this year (weâre early 20âs) and my hubby got alcohol poisoning bc he didnât realize how strong it was and it tastes good so whenever he got thirsty heâd just drink more đ đ
Itâs not Borg juice just a Borg (Blackout Rage Gallon). Good idea overall, though I tend to do 1/2 gallon of water, 5th of Vodka, 2-3 Liquid IVs, and top off the rest with water.
Borg juice is just what the kids at the college nearby us call it lol
Well it WAS college!
Precisely
Take Costco chili and get some Wendyâs burgers and chop em up and put them in it.
Man I haven't had a piece of meat from wendys chili in so long. I used to love it but stopped buying it because it was all bean and no meat.
I usually get Wendy's chili 2-3x a month. I call it the chili lotto. Sometimes it's almost all beans, other times tons of meat. No reason I can tell as I always stop by at the same time.
They are supposed to chop up the patties that are about to expire in the warming trays and put those in the chili, and cook fresh patties to go on burgers. If you are getting Beefy chili, it means that the crew is doing it right, because the burgers will be fresh. If you are getting a weak bowl of mostly beans, the crew is either doing a bad job or the Manager is squeezing the margins on food cost. Some/all of the burgers during that time are going to be dried out hockey pucks, too.
Or they have their sales forecast dialed in and there are just no patties sitting too long.
The secret ingredient was fingers. (I know it was a scam)
Tell your coworkers that you got all the ingredients from Costco
Costco to table
/r/technicallythetruth
Yeah but which ingredients? They're asking for the recipe.
At a work Christmas party, someone brought Mac and cheese and everyone was raving about it. Even myself since I make homemade Mac every year for thanksgiving(still trying to perfect after 6 years). Went to the person to compliment them since weâre pretty friendly and they admitted to me it was Costco Mac. Was completely shook lmao.
My sister had a BBQ place do the catering for her wedding and they just got big trays of food. My mom went and got some other stuff from Costco including the mac and cheese and a sheet cake. Someone at the wedding was very pretentiously saying "wow, you can really tell the quality of a BBQ place based on their sides and this mac and cheese is really good." I was laughing to myself knowing it was from Costco.
I drove to Costco today, not knowing of the reputation of the mac and cheese. I guess I will be driving back to Costco tomorrow... This is the stuff in the aluminum trays where the meatloaf and stuffed peppers and other freshly prepared items are right?
You got it, itâs pretty decent. Better than anything I could make at home.
Is this whole post a Costco marketing plant?!
Tell the ones asking for the recipe that it's an old secret family recipe, and if you give it out your great-great grandmother will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Great great grandmama C. Oostco
Gramma always made the best cookies too! Gotta love Nes-Leh Too-Lous
Thank you! I was looking for this reference.
And her hot dogs.... From the old country
Kirkklandia
I went to this doctor and all he did was suck blood out of my neck...never go to Dr. Acula.
Are you old enough to remember the sock-puppet singing: N E S T L E S. Nestle's makes the VE-ry best......CHO----klet
You Americans always ruining the French language!
In my family, anything from Costco is "an old family recipe from Grandma Kirkland" đ
Great Great Great Grandma Consuela Orozco
Nah. It was Grandpa Kirk L. Andia
Great great great great grammy Coco Costa.
Costa Compagnie
C. Oâstco of Kirk,
Well they already know that's not true after years of this guy making the shittest chili
Didn't get granny's recipe until this year.
Found it in the Family Bible!
Ohhhhh...didn't think of that. Ooops.
just say it is a Costco chili copycat recipe.
Tell them itâs theirs for $60.
I had a former coworker who did this exact thing except he used Stagg chili and won first place! However, he got his just desserts when our friend pranked him on April Foolâs with a fake cease and desist letter from âHormelâ headquarters. OMG I have the giggles still thinking about it 10+ years later!!
Haha, that's an awesome prank!
TIL Hormel owns the stagg brand
Fat, Salt, Sugar â they win over the masses like crazy
I made a chill the other day. Barely made an effort. Half pinto/black, wedge of corn bread, basic spices and msg and black bean fermented jajang. Tossed in some old ziplocks filled with frozen bbq from who knows when. Tasted so good at first test I just stopped messing.
to me, this is the secrete "black bean fermented jajang". i use tamarin sauce, but same basic idea. you need of source of deep, rich umami flavors.
Yeah no one does this but its OP.
lol is that a gamer reference? like, this grenade launcher is OP?
Donât know why you were downvoted. Yes OP stands for OverPowered and is used frequently in the gaming community, but has definitely leaked into the common vernacular.
Sorry, got a ten year old.
My last chilli I picked up the wrong jar of chopped dried peppers. I keep them in glass jars with a rubber seal in the lid (actually old coffee jars but they work so well) but I had put the label on the lid, and they had got swapped around. I was aiming for the birds eye. I picked up the carolina reapers. I put like 10g of them in. I didn't notice until the steam from the pot started acting like tear gas. My wife wouldn't even try it. I ate two bowls of it over two days before admitting defeat because it started to upset my stomach from the sheer face melting heat of it. I still keep glass jars of chopped dried chilli peppers, now they are better labelled.
Oh jesus. How... you confused birds eye for reapers? I did a whole bush of ghost like 5 years ago. Dehydrated, I've still got like 20 left. I did find a good use for them. I dehydrated a pound a habaneros, one ancho and flaked them all up with one ghost. Kinda like a flat iron blend but with a little kick. I've never known anything like ghost. Has a highly citrus smell.
Turns out when you dry and chop chillis, they look very similar!
Just so you know, when I inevitably challenge myself to make chilli with reapers, I will blame you. But donât worry, itâs a love/hate relationship, cos I love spice that melts my face; I just hate what it does to my insides as well. Might do 50/50 reapers and chiles, so I can use it on my eggs and not die cos I slather that shit on.
My chili won a cook off at work a few years ago. It's a pretty standard beef and bean chili recipe. But, I add cocoa powder, whiskey, and apple cider vinegar at the tail end of it cooking. I'll also sub out some salt for MSG. Gets em every time.
We call that Mama C's Secret Recipe in our house.
>Costco chili won me 3rd place. >I always spend a lot of time and money and never place at all. I see the problem here is people seem to like a mass produced product.
I think the problem is this guys office sucks at cooking
This right here. Chili is not that hard to make absolutely amazing. Costco chili is quite good but it ain't got shit on the stuff wife makes.
People like *free stuff*. Iâm a manager, and every Super Bowl Sunday we set up a couple of tables and I buy a bunch of food for my employees. Sandwich trays from the local chain grocery, boxes of individual bags of chips, bulk potato salad, etc. I also make my familyâs chili recipe, and a LOT of it, because everyone likes it. (The secret is not draining the kidney beans, adding Campbellâs condensed tomato soup, and adding green pepper and onion lightly fried in butter.) This year, I found Costco chili, and said âf it. Donât feel like slaving over a hot stove to make the usual, Iâll just throw this in the crock pot and if anyone doesnât like it, tough tatas.â Totally different recipe / taste, but everyone loved it and complimented it the same way they complimented my family recipe. Itâs because it was free. Free food is the best, tastiest food ever. Itâs all that mattered.
They're going to sell the least offensive, middle of the road chili. No surprises there.
With lots and lots and lots of saltâŠ
Yeah chili varies so much based on the cookâs personal taste and commercial recipes are designed to be acceptable for the largest number of people. Itâd be more surprising if Costco chili didnât do decent in a contest. If Iâm making chili for other people, itâs going to be very different from the one I make for myself.
**"I committed chili cook off fraud - AMA"** hehehehe
One year a guy won with dinty Moore chili. just opened cans and plopped it in and heated it up. I think about that often
I got 3rd place for Hormel chili in the past.... Ill have to try costco next time maybe sneak up to 2nd.
Was the gift card you won for Costco?
The winner just put some MSG in their Costco chili.
I make and ferment my own chili paste and that's a really great addition to my chili. Last time I made it, I used the last of my chili paste and it still needed something. I had a container of Gochujang, which is a Korean chili paste, so I was like, might as well try it. It was so good! You can definitely taste the Gochujang in the chili, it adds something that (even growing up in Texas) was completely different from anything I'd had. I seriously considered if I should open a food truck with Korean spins on traditional southern foods.
You should!! Please do!
Lol I did the same thing one year for my works chili cook off and won 3rd place, but with Wendy's chili.
My dad won 1st place at his work chili cookoff for like a decade. He did nothing more than make the Carroll Shleby (yes the Cobra & Mustang Carrol Shelby) chili kit that you can buy at the grocery store. We got a laugh out of it every year.
Love that little brown bag of Carroll Shelby Chili kit with the masađ So good!
Ever since making my own chilli Iâll never buy it again.
I loveeee making chilli! Itâs one of my favorites and so easy.
Straight up. Cooking is awesome and I love tinkering with chili
that's the thing - i want to TRY costco chili but in terms of cost it doesn't seem worth it. ground beef is cheap and a few bottles of spices will last a while. bit of a time commitment with chili but it's not hard to make.
Maybe it's because I live in a high cost of living area but I think it's cheap We do add rice but it's $3.49 a pound, about the same as the ground beef, I think it's a great value. You could cite the cost of onions and tomatoes but they cook down. You really have sticker shock over a fat tub of chili for $15?
Do you have a recipe for that?
Yeah, you buy it at Costco
Not OP but here's my Chili recipe. Measurements are made with my heart. Brown a pound of bacon, set aside, drain but keep the grease. Return a couple tablespoons of grease to the pot and toss in a chopped white onion, a chopped bell pepper, and as many chopped jalapenos as you think you'll want. I like spicy chili, so I also do a few habeneros for that extra kick. I sautee these until the veggies begin to soften, then return the bacon to the pot. Add in a couple cans of rotel, and maybe some extra hatch green chilis. Fire roasted tomatoes also go great here, or otherwise your preferred ratio of crushed tomatoes to puree or what you prefer as your tomato-y base. For seasoning I liberally use garlic powder, onion powder, cumin to taste, salt of course, also to taste, smoked paprika, some parsley and basil might go in there too. Chipotle chili powder and or cayenne get added to preference. I do fresh ground black pepper and it's very important to me that it's freshly ground. To the point that sometimes I add extra before serving. I've also added a table spoon of cocoa powder - people associate it with sweet stuff like chocolate but the powder itself lends a bitterness that compliments deep and savory dishes like this. Oh, a bay leaf or two here can't hurt, and I've even tossed a shot of espresso or some coffee in at this point, for similar reasons to the cocoa powder. At this point we need the ground beef, but you can actually use whole chuck, or even brisket and it's phenomenal. But I do what's called "Over-the-top Chili", where we smoke the meat on a grate that sits over top of the pot at 225F for a couple hours till the meat starts to form a bark. My personal preference here is to use fresh ground chuck roast. Once the meat is heartily smoked, just drop it in and break it up and get everything nice and mixed. If you don't have a smoker then you can just brown the meat in a separate pan before adding it, then deglaze the pan with apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar. Or beer. Make sure to scrape the fond and add it to the chili. Slow cook it for, say, 8ish hours. The day BEFORE you want to serve it. Letting it sit overnight in the fridge helps all the flavors mingle. Then reheat the day of. You can also add beans to this chili, I'm not a purist. Purists are silly and self-restrictive. I've had amazing bean, and no-bean chili. I like to serve with cornbread, sour cream, and shredded sharp cheddar. Ideally fresh shredded.
i dunno about others, and its a matter of taste, but my secrete is tamarin sauce. bout a teaspoon per pound of meat. oh, that and using REALLY good tomato paste, sauce or and a can of diced tomatoes. my brand is Muir Glenn.
Can you clarify what tamarin is? Could you mean tamari or tamarind?
I'm sure they meant tamarind (that's my chili secret too!); a little tamarind paste or puree goes a long way. That said, tamari is a good additive too!
I was giggling/horrified at the post, imagining someone putting a processed tamarin monkey into his chili as a secret ingredient. I'm very confident that it's actually tamarind paste.
I donât do too many things special just your usual chilli recipe but I add a lot more meat to bean ratio. One thing I do add thatâs not as common is cinnamon. It adds a different profile.
My sister won a soup competition at her job using olive garden's pasta e fagioli lol
I seriously considered doing this for my office chili cookoff in February. This is fantastic.
Just wait until the rotisserie chicken cooking contest.
Isnât this an episode of The Office?
Yes chili was indeed mentioned on that show
[Yes, it was!](https://youtu.be/WcYG-5b7448?si=45xjXT77aWi0Epqn)
Fun story. My favorite is a recipe by Amy and Jacky online for a pressure cooker. Sweet jesus that's good stuff.
A friend once gave me his potato salad recipe: Take one empty bowl. Go to Jacobsonâs Deli âŠ
Are you me? I brought in Costco chili for our work chili cook off too and also won 3rd place đ€Ł
I love how you give a ridiculous amount of detail, so anybody you work with would easily know this is you.
I LOVE the chili from the deli so much..
 now Iâve got co-workers asking me for the recipe Just give them the ingredients list off the costco chili in whatever proportions you think they used. lol
Thatâs freakin awesome. Everytime I smoke a brisket or ribs and people say how good it is makes me wonder on a scale of 1 to 10 how much they are lieing or just donât know amazing bbq. There is no way Iâve made the â best ribs Iâve ever hadâ đ
I was running very late for a party once and threw a bunch of wendy's chili in a crock pot, topped it with onions and shredded cheese, everyone kept saying how great it was and how log it must have taken to make
I ate the chili all winter and contemplated the same thing at my bars cook off. Kudos, and way to go with placing! đ
so did you 'fess up or not? :)
A guy at my work used about 10 cans of Dollar Store off brand Chili for one of our contests. It looked like a big old pot of âNo thank you.â
Familiarity, if it reminds them of something they had with loved 1s, they like it more.
Iâve placed using Costco chili before as well - I miss you, white chicken chili! I added some hatch chiles and it was so damn delicious. I miss regular chili too - late in life tomato allergy really ruined a lot of stuff for me. But I miss the white chicken chili more.
So funny! Years ago, a couple decades even, the Pismo Beach Clam festival clam chowder cookoff was won by a restaurant that used canned clam chowder. This was before the internet, so the proof is lacking unless you want to go to the library in Pismo and hope they have the microfiche, but I remember the outrage quite well :)
Are you me? I've made my "7 Mile Chili" every year. Some years it does well, other years not so well. The crock pot is empty every time though. I sautee a diced up red onion, a head of garlic, peeled and crushed of course, a package of Costco burger meat (1.25 pounds?) then add in two cans of Stagg Classic, 2 cans of Dennison's Dynamite, and 2 cans of Hormel's no bean chilli. Good Luck
Saving this thread, some S tier chili tips in here
Truth is that for a chili contest, the winner will generally be the most generic and familiar chili. If you make a white chili or a Cincinnati chili or your own special spin on it, it probably won't win. Costco chili is nothing special, and that's why it's palatable to large crowds.
My sister did this with the rice pudding for a family event. Our dad asked her at the last minute to make her famous rice pudding. She went to Costco instead, bought the rice pudding, and put it in her own dish. Everyone wanted the recipe!
I also have a rice pudding fraud story but itâs not from Costco. When my grandma was dying she got to the point where she would only eat very few foods and only if my husband fed her. One of those foods was rice pudding. I cannot make rice pudding but a local coffee shop makes it daily. We would go every day and get her pudding and tell her I made it and she happily would listen as I read to her and my husband fed her. Some days it was the only calories she would eat. It was a lie of love. Sometimes people just donât need to know where the rice pudding (or chili) comes from.
Sorry... It's an old family secret.
Tell them it always comes out different when you make it. I know my chili does and I follow the same recipe all the time.
I 'cheated' at a work event once and won a 150 Walmart gift card. It was summer of 2008 and it was employee appreciation day and there were events set up in the break room with prizes. One of them was a Wii bowling competition. Due to time constraints we couldn't just bowl and instead we had to do the bonus game with the ever increasing pins. Winner was who ever knocked down the most pins. Well those who played it know of the glitch to guarantee a strike on the final set. Other people tried it but I was the only one to land it. Thankfully it didn't happen during a break so only me and two other coworkers saw it and neither cried foul. The guy running it knew about the glitch and got a good laugh.
Reminds me of the time I won a salmon cook-off using mango salsa from Costco.
what the f, that is wild. I too bought their chili and it def awesome we ate all of it, our fam of three
I bet next year you could add a 1/2 cup of quality chili powder and win. I do a chili contest just like this ever year. It's usually between me and the only other person putting the time and effort in. We both use very fresh chili powders and so far I've won ever year with him losing by like 4-5 points (out of 125). Add the chili powder and a packet of sazon goya.
Stolen Kirkland honor
my father-in-law worked for Wendyâs part time and his church had a chili cookoff competition. You know where this is heading⊠He entered some Wendyâs chili into the contest and one first place. I told him he was going to hell for it.đđ
A lady I worked with did that but with Wendyâs chili. And she won. Then she told the manager it came from Wendyâs and everyone was pissed off. And we never had a chili cook off again
I won't be fooled by this Costco ad (goes to buy Costco chili)
Rumor has it you wouldâve been 4th if not for Kevinâs unfortunate spillâŠ
Costco chili is great if you can't be bothered to cook a meal for yourself. If it had a little more heat, that'd be enough to take it to the next level. Maybe first place was Costco chili with a little more chili pepper/jalapenos.
Man Costco chili is one of the worst I've ever had. Were there 3 constants?
Do you also work at Costco?
Wait which chili was it?
Did you win a gift card to Costco?
Ugh I loved it but it made me violently ill and now I canât get it again
I love their chili! I think I will go buy some for dinner lol.
If you ever want to go back to cooking chili for competition this website is super cool. Itâs a Rolodex of wining chili recipes going back to 1967. https://www.chilicookoff.com/
I won third once for a tandoori chicken chili I decided to make so my hindi coworker didn't feel left out. Now I'm gonna have to try the costco brand. Thanks for sharing, I've looked at it a few times but always talked myself out of buying it.
That's awesome, I managed to win a dessert contest at the office when I was fresh out of college. My all time favorite desert hands down is a strawberry cream pie, at least that's what I call it. Usual recipe in short is to bake up a couple of the frozen deep dish pie shells. The cream is a 50/50 mix of French vanilla pudding(made with half the milk) and homemade whipped cream. Then just layer on strawberries cut up and covered in strawberry glaze. For the contest I did it all from scratch, pie sell, glaze, and homemade pudding. It was slightly better, but not enough for all the extra work and cost. Being in my early 20s at the time and a guy I ended up with several women accusing me of cheating saying my mom must have made it. My mom lived 4 hours away back then, though she was the one who always made me that pie for my birthday.
Did you ever reveal the "source of your sauce"?Â
Costco has chili???
That's sad, because the Costco chili is pretty mid. I mean, it's alright -- I buy and eat it -- but far from great.
The packaged chili seasoning and 2 color beans won my chili cook off too ( Kroger). Added some canned tomatoes and sautéed chiles, diced onions and love. Best chili ever.
LMFAO this is amazing !
Hilarious
I tried Costco chili once and it was gross. Smelled funny and tasted weird. Iâm actually now thinking maybe it had gone bad. After reading this post Iâm going to try it again.
I make the BEST pumpkin pie. đ
My dad has won the chili contest at our local festival the last 3 years. All he does is take chili from 4-5 other people at the festival, mix it together, then serve it to the judges. It's the worst kept secret at the festival and just kind of funny at this point.
I won #1 with cans of Dennison chili with added cans of tomato. đ
Now you gotta do a social experiment. Let your what work friend in on it, and gave them by the same exact chili, and see if are voted similarly.
I love that Costco chili
This is great. Thank you for the laugh đ€Ł.
âCostco chili bucket thingsâ đ I laugh bc I know
Tell us the gift card was to CostcoâŠ.
This story made my dayđ
#1 was the 7-11 chilli
And now they are out of chili as it's a " seasonal thing" đ„ PS it's even better whit the sticky white rice
I've lost to canned Hormel once. I grew the peppers, onions, and tomatoes in my garden, I added the right balance of salt, touch of sugar, and umami. I know my chili rocked. Half ground beef, half spicy Italian for a bit of flare. The fact of the matter is people know what they know. Mine was amazing and some shit Hormel won because that's what people in the community were used to. If the audience would have been a bunch of chefs I am confident the results would have been different
Hell yeah!!!!!
My friend did the same thing at a Super Bowl party and she got 2nd place!!
I had a similar experience when visiting my wife's best friend's (wbf) family around Thanksgiving. It was my first time meeting everyone and apparently they have a family tradition of doing a chili cook off. These people worked their asses off to make the perfect chili, full on Kevin Malone level stuff. As a joke, my wbf's husband and I decided to talk a big game, making a point to play up our entry. Our secret? Wolf's brand canned chili with some fresh cut jalapeños and shredded cheese on top. Voted best of the night.
Was the gift card to Costco?
If asked for the recipe, write down the ingredients from the side of the "bucket thing" and just say you keep going until it *smells right.* (No need to elaborate: no need to embarrass yourself)
Costco is a good company that usually doesn't sell something with ought extensive testing. I'm not surprised their chili is delicious - If I didn't love making my own I'd just buy theirs.
I took second with Wendyâs chili once
Thanks for making me laugh lmfao :-)
Either you make shit chili, or your coworkers have shit taste buds Costco chili is just alright. Homemade is always better.
Quite a few years ago, some friends of mine competed in a chili cook off run by a local organization, ended up taking first place. Their secret? Wendyâs chili.
Costco chili is so good. I wouldâve voted yours #1.