Forget Ground Beef: Throw This Tender Meat In Your Chili Instead

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A bowl of hot chili, eaten straight out of the slow cooker or pot, topped with some sour cream or crushed saltines, is the sort of meal that warms the heart, whether it's cold outside or you're in the mood for a hit of soothing nostalgia. No matter how many times you make it, there are, quite possibly, some mistakes ruining your homemade chili. If you're looking for a way to change up your standard chili approach, try something that has a little extra, and maybe unexpected, flavor with beer chili. For even more incredible flavor you just can't get with "regular" chili, skip the ground beef altogether and try a new meat base: brisket.

Chili cooked with brisket is often associated with Texas. It's even called Texas chili, or sometimes chili con carne (chili with meat) or simply "a bowl of red." Using brisket to make your chili imbues it with more beefy flavor, and you have some amazingly tender chunks or strips of brisket that can be much more satisfying for a beef lover than simple ground-and-browned chuck. Even better, you can pretty much substitute browned cubes of brisket for ground beef in your regular recipe.

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For those only somewhat familiar with brisket, it's a slow-smoked, sliced, tender item on the local barbecue menu (or something Nana cooked up with onions). This cut of beef is also incredibly versatile, and can do wonders to your homemade chili in place of ground beef. To make what's considered a traditional chili (outside of Texas), simply cut your brisket into ½-inch cubes, brown them, and add them to your usual recipe as you would ground beef. That said, the combined components may need to cook a little extra to get the beef nice and tender.

For more smoky flavor that gets you closer to a real Texas chili experience, brown the cubes with bacon and add some canned chipotle chiles, dried ancho chiles, and a hefty tap of smoked paprika. If you like your brisket even more tender, make it in the slow cooker the night before for super-juicy shredded strips that melt in your mouth. You can even use leftover smoked brisket as your meat base, which ups the smoke quotient to a solid unforgettable. But, to impress a true Texan, you definitely need to leave out the beans, and maybe go a little heavier on the chili powder for that extra kick. No matter what other ingredients you use — beans or no — brisket adds an incredible amount of texture and more beef flavor.