Start early. Around nine a.m. run to the store and buy your stuff. This is what you need:

• 1 sweet onion
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• 1 can whole peeled tomatoes
• 1 can crushed tomatoes
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 green bell pepper
• Soy sauce
• Oregano
• Basil
• 2 Bay leaves
• Sugar
• Salt
• Sriracha

First: take about three-quarters of a sweet onion (depending on size) and 3-5 garlic cloves. Take them apart with a knife like you were a serial killer. Cast iron: dump in some olive oil and then start a sautee going.

Next: find a big-ish pot. Into it dump the crushed tomatoes and then the peeled tomatoes.

Next: wash your fucking hands. I’m super serious now because you’re going to get into it.

Now dive your hands into that pot of tomato goop and tear apart those peeled tomatoes like you were a rabid dog in a room full of babies. Now clean up the tomato mess that got out of the pot so that your wife doesn’t get mad at you.

Put the pot on low heat. Don’t deviate from the low heat. That’s essential. Add in a whole mess of oregano and basil. Add in two bay leaves (I actually own a bay laurel tree, so mine are always fresh). Add: 2 teaspoons sugar and salt. Pour in about a half cup of soy sauce. Give it a three to five second squirt from the bottle of sriracha.

The onions should be done sauteeing now. Add them to the pot.

Brown the ground beef. Drain it and add it to the pot.

Now it’s gonna sit for like, five hours. Stir this pot every now and then, of course. But mostly: play video games and let the smell permeate the household.

Five hours is about right. Three is barely acceptable. Longer is better: the acid in the tomatoes is taking apart the other ingredients. It needs time to work.

Freeze leftover sauce. It actually gets better the older it is. Heat up on the stove, not the microwave.

So I did the math and figured that Saturday would be the best day for it, and since it’s my “birthday weekend” I figured what the hell, people could come over. So I made a pot of chili.

I don’t want to toot my own horn too much (actually, I do), but I make a seriously bad-ass chili. I have modified and played with the recipe for about fifteen years now, and each batch is unique.

Now I’m going to tell you how I (currently) make it. I’m not good with writing recipes, so bear with me. I’ll write for those who don’t know from cooking.

The first lesson of Chili Club is that real chili does not contain beans. Beans are a filler. Use hamburger for filler.

I call this my “Vegetarian Chili” because it’s made of vegetarians.

Here’s what you need:

• A stock pot. If you don’t have one, modify the ingredients to size.
• A cast iron pan. Mine is over 150 years old, but if you don’t have that, you don’t have that.
• A chef’s knife
• A metal spatula
• A cutting board
• A whisk
• 3 cans tomato paste
• 3 (large) cans crushed tomatoes
• 3 pounds of stew meat.
• 3 pounds of hamburger.
• 2 onions.
• 2 to 3 green bell peppers
• 2 to 3 yellow bell peppers
• 2 to 3 red bell peppers
• A batch of green onion
• Powdered habanero. WARNING: handle with extreme care
• Cayanne pepper
• Ancho chilis
• Various other chili powders, seriously, just use to taste
• Sriracha (rooster sauce)
• Brown sugar
• A jar of powdered sipping chocolate (I use Theo’s spicy chocolate)
• Soy sauce

Okay. Open the tomato paste cans and spoon them out into the pot. For each can of tomato paste, add three cans of water. Whisk the shit out of this until it’s a smooth slurry. Dump in the cans of crushed tomatoes.

Put this bad boy on the stove and turn the heat on. Just go right to simmer; you don’t need to start it boiling immediately.

Now, open your packs of stew meat. Usually this stuff isn’t very high quality, so you’re better off going directly to a butcher. Either way, you’ll probably have to slice up the meat into more bite-sized chunks.

Once you’ve done that, you need to brown the meat. So heat up the frying pan to about medium heat and dump a handful of meat into it. Keep turning it over until it’s “browned” on all sides (there’s no red left). Then dump the batch into the pot and stir.

Do this until there’s no more stew meat.

Now, you’re going to do the same to your hamburger. Brown it in the skillet. Keep chopping at it with your spatula so that it gets grainy and exactly the opposite of a hamburger patty. Dump that in the pot, too, and repeat until no more hamburger.

Now you’re going to add in a bunch of flavors all in a group:

• Chili powders, especially cayenne. Do this sparingly; you keep adding them over time.
• A half-cup of soy sauce.
• A handful of chili peppers. They’ll simmer out.
• A couple solid squirts of rooster sauce.

The pot should be “popping” now. This is cool. Just stir it.

Now go back to your cutting board and chop up those bell peppers and onions (make sure to peel the onions first; you might want to just chop off the ends of everything, too).

Chop the peppers up until the parts are about the size of your fingernails. Do this by slicing each pepper in half, and then taking each half and cutting it several times horizontally. Then chop the horizontal slices, etc.

The onions – you can sort of cleaver them. Onions naturally fall apart; I like to have the individual “leafs” be about the size of my last thumb joint.

Dump all this into the pot. Stir it.

Okay. Now, go play a video game for an hour. Stir the pot every fifteen minutes.

After an hour, come back. Now you’re going to enter the SERIOUSLY I AM NOT KIDDING THIS IS DANGEROUS part of the operation: powdered habanero. You may have difficulty obtaining this ingredient. I keep mine in a jar, hidden where no one can accidentally open it.

I’m not kidding. This stuff will seriously mess you up if you breathe it, or it gets on things, or pretty much anything. If you have latex gloves you may want to use them. Put your shirt over your mouth while you goof with this stuff.

One – and I mean one teaspoon of the stuff. Gently drop it in, stir it up.

Let the pot simmer for another hour, stirring every fifteen minutes or so.

Now for the sweet: about a quarter cup of brown sugar and a quarter cup of the chocolate. Stir it in. Let simmer for ten minutes.

(From now on you’ll absolutely have to keep stirring it every 10 to 15 minutes. If you don’t, the sugar will burn on the bottom of the pot. This is bad; you don’t want it to happen.)

Taste the chili. Get a chunk of stew meat, some tomatoes, etc. Eat a couple spoonfuls. It should not be noticeably spicy until about the third bite, and even then not too serious (the sugar and chocolate changes the flavors). If it’s too tame, add more cayenne. Too hot? A bit more chocolate or sugar.

Do this over and over again for the next three hours. This entire dish takes about four to five hours to be “good”. The longer it simmers, the better it is.

When it comes time to serve, take those green onions (you didn’t add them already, did you?) and chop them up. Fill a bowl with the chili and sprinkle the chopped green onions on top.

Enjoy.

What, exactly, is a Hellbent Grilled Cheese, and where does it get its name from?

Clearly, it is a grilled cheese sandwich. However, it is a satanic grilled cheese sandwich.

The first bite fills your skull with a blessed radiance reminiscent of a beautiful deity. You will not see god; you will instead feel the presence of the almighty in your sinus cavity as The Sandwich devours the walls therein.

30 seconds later, you will understand that your brief vision of the Lord is just that: God is waving goodbye to you!

You are on your way to Hell.

Because sin is enjoyable.

Here are the things you will need to make Hellbent Grilled Cheese:

1. Rye bread. (I’m certain you could do this with white bread, but seriously? Why you gotta get all racial about this shit? It’s grilled fucking cheese. Do it right, or go the fuck home. Don’t bring that weak ass, no-taste bread up in here.)
2. A block of sharp cheddar cheese. (That’s right. I said “a block”. Block. Single chunk of cheese that you will have to cut yourself. If you buy sliced cheese, you’re a fuck up. If, $deity forbid, you buy some sort of American cheese instead of cheddar, then stop reading this now and go back to playing Pokemon games.)
3. Horseradish sauce. I guess a really good wasabi would work, but since 99% of all wasabi is really just horseradish with green food coloring. . . well.
4. Diced jalapeno peppers. You heard me. Diced. A single jalepeno per sandwich. Don’t dice them with the seeds unless you really want to spend time in Hell.
5. Olive oil. Spend as much money on this as you want; it’s all getting fried away.
6. A cast-iron pan of some sort. The older and dirtier the better. The cast iron skillet I use is around 150 years old and soap has never touched its surface. (You heard me. One hundred and fifty years old, motherfuckers. It was my great-great-grandmother’s.)

FBI WARNING:

Doing any of the following without having thoroughly washed your hands first will quickly turn you into a Sad Panda:

1. Rubbing your eyes – or even the area around your eyes.
2. Touching your junk (e.g., taking a leak and/or masturbating and/or both at the same time don’t you judge me).
3. Touching someone else’s junk, male or female.

So, steps for preparation, written out as if you are a dumbass:

1. Pull two slices of bread out from the bag. Per sandwich.
2. Slather the horseradish on both slices. Like mayonnaise.
3. Sprinkle a bits of diced jalapeno on both slices. A single jalepeno will be enough for a single sandwich.
4. Slice enough cheese from your cheddar block to cover a slice of bread. Depending on the shape of your cheddar block, this may be three slices, or five, or whatever. You may have to break parts into chunks or whatever. No matter how you do it, there should be about 1/8th to a 1/4 thickness of cheese.
5. Your sandwich is now approaching awesome.
6. Drop a tablespoon’s worth of olive oil into your cast iron. Let it heat up.
7. Once it’s warm, drop the sandwich into the pan. Fry that motherfucker up for about three-to-five minutes per side, depending. You’ll know to turn it when the cheese bubbles out. If you can cover the skillet, do so.
   (If you have an ancient skillet like I do, you can obtain a cover for it by purchasing a piece of crap modern skillet of the same size. These often come with covers. You’ll never cook with the new skillet, so you can give it away to someone or use it as a murder weapon; your choice.)
   
8. Slice into halves diagonally.
9. Nom on that shit.
10. Pray for death.
11. Nom some more.

When you’re finished with your sandwiches, you’ll want to eat some ice cream. Here’s why: the next day, when you’re sitting on the toilet suffering from a burning, intestinal agony, you’ll be saying to yourself, “Come on, ice cream. Come on, ice cream.”