Cincinnati Chili Three-Way

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

The Ohio Valley's strangest, most addictive bowl: ground beef simmered — never browned — in water until the grains break down to a fine, almost velvety sauce, seasoned with cinnamon, allspice, clove and unsweetened cocoa. Ladled over spaghetti and buried under a haystack of finely shredded mild cheddar, that's a three-way. Long simmer, cheap ingredients, deeply weird in the best possible way.

Ingredients

• 2 lb ground beef, 80/20
• 4 cups cold water
• 1 cup beef broth
• 1 large yellow onion, grated on a box grater
• 4 cloves garlic, finely grated
• 1 8-oz can tomato sauce
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 bay leaves

• 3 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• 1 lb thin spaghetti
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 lb mild yellow cheddar, in a block
• oyster crackers, for the table
• hot sauce, for the table

Instructions

1. Put the ground beef in a large Dutch oven or heavy pot and pour the 4 cups of cold water over it. Do NOT turn on the heat yet. Using your hands or a sturdy whisk, mash and squeeze the raw beef into the water for 2 to 3 minutes until it is completely broken up and the liquid looks like cloudy, gritty gray slurry with no lumps larger than a pea. This is the whole trick: the meat never browns, so it never forms crusty clumps. Instead it poaches into fine grains that give the sauce its signature smooth, almost silty texture.
2. Set the pot over medium-high heat and bring to a bare simmer, whisking every couple of minutes and breaking up any clumps that surface. This takes about 10 minutes. Skim off any heavy gray foam that rises.
3. Stir in the beef broth, grated onion, garlic, tomato sauce, tomato paste, vinegar, Worcestershire and bay leaves.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together all of the spice blend ingredients: chili powder, cocoa, cinnamon, cumin, allspice, cloves, coriander, cayenne, salt and pepper. Stir the blend into the pot until no dry pockets remain. It will smell more like mulled cider than chili for the first hour — that is correct.
5. Reduce the heat to low so the surface barely shivers, with a bubble breaking every second or two. Simmer uncovered for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, stirring every 20 to 30 minutes and scraping the bottom. The sauce should reduce until it coats a spoon and a stripe drawn across the bottom of the pot holds for about a second — thinner than Texas chili, thicker than a soup. If it tightens too fast, add water 1/2 cup at a time.
6. Fish out the bay leaves. Taste and adjust: it should read savory and warmly spiced with a faint sweet-bitter cocoa edge in the back. Add salt in 1/2-teaspoon increments, another splash of vinegar if it tastes flat, and a pinch more cinnamon if the spice reads shy. Skim the orange fat off the surface with a wide spoon (or see the tips for the chill-and-skim method).
7. While the chili finishes, shred the cheddar on the smallest holes of a box grater — the fine, fluffy shreds, not the fat ones from a bag. You want about 5 packed cups, and it should look like a pile of orange snow that melts on contact. Keep it cold until the second you serve.
8. Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil and cook the thin spaghetti to just past al dente, about 1 minute longer than the package says — Cincinnati spaghetti is soft, not toothsome. Drain, return to the pot and toss with the butter.
9. Build each three-way: a nest of about 1 1/2 cups spaghetti on a warm oval plate or in a shallow bowl, a generous 3/4 to 1 cup of chili ladled over the middle, then a tall mound of shredded cheddar over the top, covering the chili completely. Do not stir it in — the heat should just soften the bottom layer of cheese while the top stays cool and fluffy.
10. Serve immediately with oyster crackers and hot sauce on the side.

Chef's tips

Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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