It’s been a while since I’ve put together a meal for the family. Tonight I made a pot of chili. After assembling and adding all the spices I ended up with something that tasted really awesome. I could have left it there, but I decided to add a little bit of heat to the mix. Since I had sriracha on hand I decided to use that instead of chili powder. I unscrewed the cap and squeezed. Thing is, I ended up squeezing too much. In a bit of panic, I mixed it all in and then gave it a taste. HOOOHAH. God, the heat was a little bit strong.

I knew that it would be way too much for my parents. Also, the taste of the sriracha was overpowering everything. I had to respice the mix: salt, pepper, MSG, cumin, turmeric. I even tossed in a little brown sugar. The chili tasted like chili again, but the heat was still potent. We didn’t have any sour cream, so I resorted to adding a big dash of 18% table cream. Yeah, it made the chili a bit thick and loaded, but I was hoping the cream would tone down the spiciness. I was a bit leery over how it would taste with the cream, but after mixing it all together it still came out great. This was one heck of a rich chili. Was it mild enough though? My parents ate it, but they agreed that the spiciness was still a bit strong.

Damn! Failure! Actually, no…it’s not like the thing tasted bad at all. In fact I ate a lot of it. It’s just that one dimension of the chili was overshadowing the rest. They agreed that they’d eat it again tomorrow, probably with some bread or rice to mellow out the heat. Still, I’m sort of disappointed in myself. I have to work on knowing my audience! Next time will be better.