Made some Over the Top Chili last weekend. Started by smoking a small chuck roast around 9PM its 30° (and dropping) even with the double walled smoker I figured it was time to pull out the blanket and give it a try. 

 The chuck was done around 5AM, so started the prep on the chili. Started off as a Texas Chili, so no beans.  Just onions, a bell pepper, diced tomato's and tomato sauce.  Added some Meat Church Chili seasoning and a few oddities to the mix that the recipe called for; a whole Jalapeño, Cinnamon sticks and dark chocolate... oh, and a can of beer.  Since I have Canadian billet hockey boys, Moosehead seemed appropriate. 

The meatball was made up of a mixture 1 lbs. each of ground beef, ground venison and ground sausage. It took about 3 1/2 hours for the meat to hit 165° Once it did I broke it up and stirred into in the pot.  The pot stayed on the for couple more hours. 

At that point I gave it a test, it was good but I quickly knew it would be to spicy for my wife.  So I grabbed three cans of beans; Kidney, Pinto & Great Northern.  Tossed them in crock pot and blended in some of my Chili. Added some beef broth and left on the smoker. 

Got home after our hockey game and dug in.  The hockey boys had never had Texas Chili and seemed to enjoy it though tad hot for them too.  Nothing a bit of sour cream couldn’t help.  My wife had a tough time though, sensitive mouth didn’t due to some medications, but she did enjoy it.  I did like it though didn’t get the smoke flavor I had thought might come through. 

I’m not sure I’d go to the effort of the meatball to be honest, and I’ll cut down on the Meat Church chili season, it’s recommended at 5tbs, I uses 3 but for my wife might just do 1tbs.  All in all it was good but long cook and didn’t hit the home run I’d hoped for, but still fun.  

Oh I think the blanket helped with the over night portion of the cook, temps got down to 16° and my temp in the smoker stayed steady at 225° and only with through about 1/3 of the pellets. 