Texas. Take your beans and scram.

Texas’s name comes from the Native American word “tejas”, meaning “friendship” or “allies”. The name makes sense, especially because Texas was the only state to enter the union by treaty. And if you know your history, this is interesting considering how long it took for one country to take possession. This struggle is also the reason there is a single star on Texas’ flag, earning it the nickname The Lone Star State. Some of Texas’s primary industries are farming, and they are very well-known for their green chiles, and chili.

We had several different meal options for this one. Brisket, country fried steak, enchilada, queso were all choices for this state’s meal. But, after a while of debate, chili emerged as our favorite and the next meal on the list.

But wait. There is a debate about what chili really is. My idea of chili is tomato sauce, ground beef, and some beans. Texas doesn't use any of that. Huh.

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Chili with not-quite-right chilis.

We started our chili with our not-quite-right chiles. By that, I mean we couldn’t find the proper New Mexican guajillo (waa-hee-lo) chilies that we were supposed to be using, so we needed to find hatch chiles, which we didn’t have either. We then found on the internet the substitution of hatch chiles, which was poblano (puh-blaa-no) chilies. And we couldn’t find those chiles at our local grocery store, either, so, to make a long story short, we ended up with Jalapeño chilis and green bell peppers.

We sauteed the chiles for around 3 minutes per side. Then we let the chiles sit in hot water for 20 minutes so they would soften, and the skin would be easier to remove. Once that was done, we peeled the chilies’ skin off, then put the chiles, as well as a cup of water, into our blender. The blender did a very poor job of cutting up the chiles, which is when mom decided we should go get the food processor which gave us the nice chile paste that we were looking for.

We then started the beef by cutting our beef into square-inch cubes, which took less time than expected. We took about half the beef and browned all the sides, but didn’t really cook it all the way through. After that, we browned the other half. Then we simmered butter, onions, garlic, and beef broth until it was well mixed. Then we mixed in the chili paste, which tasted awesome just by itself, into the broth. After the chili paste was incorporated, we put all of the beef into the pan and let it simmer on low heat for the next two hours, stirring occasionally.

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Not quite Texas, but it had to be cinnamon rolls.

The cinnamon rolls got started off just like any good dessert, with flour, sugar, an egg, butter, milk and yeast. We mixed all the ingredients together, then dumped the dough out of the bowl and onto the counter, which is when the kneading started. I’ve honestly come to enjoy the kneading process. Kneading is kind of like playing with not-so-sticky slime. After it was kneaded together, we put the dough into a bowl, covered the bowl, and let the yeast take it from there.

By the time the dough doubles in size, an hour and a half had elapsed. We took our dough, beat it down to release any trapped air bubbles, and rolled it out. Then we buttered it and cinnamon it, leaving around an inch around the edges un-buttered so the dough would stick together. Then we rolled up the dough into a foot-long tube of cinnamony goodness, cut the roll into nine equally sized pieces, and put it into a nine-by-nine pan and put them into the oven the bake.

At about the 1 hours 50 minute mark, we came back to check in on the beef and add some seasonings. I noticed that a) the liquid level in the pan had dropped to almost a third of what it originally was, and b) that the chili wasn’t really the green that I was expecting, which probably had something to do with the fact that we used the wrong chilis. We added various seasonings and mixed those in. We let the beef sit for another 10-15 minutes. After that time had elapsed, we served the beef, put a dollop of sour cream in each bowl, and brought the chili to the table.

Before we dug into the meal, though, we needed to add in the best part: the cinnamon rolls. We pulled out the pan, and we had several unicorn-horn rolls. Those ones are the best, in my opinion. We quickly whipped together an icing, poured it onto the rolls, and put one onto each plate along with a delicious-smelling bowl of Texas chili.

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Texas meets Iowa.

The Texas chili was awesome! It was very soft and easy to bite into, very similar to smoked meat, and it was very obvious that it had been over heat for a while. This wasn’t really the kind of chili I was used to though. It was more of a stew, rather than a soup. If it gives you any idea, I ate the chili with a fork. The cinnamon rolls were an amazing touch to add to the chili, especially when eaten together. All in all, this was a pretty easy SoMP, and I can’t wait to make it again sometime.

Wanna try some Texas chili? Here's the recipe we used: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/true-texas-chili-355049