Smoked Over the Top Chili

30 Oct, 2024

Smoking Over the Top Chili is a fun recipe method that packs a ton of smoky flavor into our most popular Texas Chili recipe. This method imparts smoky flavor into the chili by simmering a pot of chili in the smoker and also by smoking a ball of ground meat on a rack over the pot. While that ball of seasoned meat smokes, it drips flavorful fat into the pot of chili below. After the smoked ground meat reaches 165 internal temperature, the ball is broken up to to simmer in the pot of chili for the rest of the day.

We used ground venison in this recipe to make it deer chili, but you can use ground beef. Venison is lean and packed with flavor and a favorite in my home as we are an avid outdoors family.

As always, this recipe includes our award winning Texas Chili Seasoning. This recipe does not include beans, but it is a great base recipe, so you can add any fillers that you want to add to make the recipe our own.

Even though the chili is ready as soon as the ground meat is cooked, my preference is to simmer chili all day to impart a lot of smoke into the chili and to let the flavors really meld together. And remember, chili always tastes even better the 2nd day!

Meat Church How To YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/xgzliVfSvMs

Other Meat Church chili recipes:
Texas Chili: https://www.meatchurch.com/blogs/recipes/texas-chili
Brisket Chili: https://www.meatchurch.com/blogs/recipes/brisket-chili
Texas Red Chili: https://www.meatchurch.com/blogs/recipes/texas-red-chili
White Chicken Chili: https://www.meatchurch.com/blogs/recipes/white-chicken-chili

Ingredients

2 lbs ground venison (sub ground beef)
1 lb venison breakfast sausage (sub standard pork breakfast sausage or more ground beef)
3 medium red onions, diced
3 T garlic, minced
5 , 14.5 can tomatoes with juice (we use fire roasted)
1, 15 oz tomato sauce

1 7oz can Chipotles in Adobo with the juice.
2 cinnamon sticks
2 oz dark or semi sweet chocolate
1 whole jalapeño
1 beer
5 T Meat Church Texas Chili Seasoning (This is a moderate heat level, but back it down to 3 T for mild.)

Optional

Cayenne pepper to taste if you want to bring the heat.

Garnish

Shredded cheese
Sliced fresh jalapeños
Diced white onions

Tools

Dutch oven
Large cast iron skillet (to sauté the veg)
2 T, olive oil

Prepare your smoker
Prepare your smoker to a temperature of 225. In this video we used a Traeger Ironwood at 225 with "super smoke" with Meat Church pellets which are oak\hickory. Mesquite or pecan would also be good choices.

Prepare the chili
Combine and roll up the ground meat including the sausage into a large, packed ball. Optionally you can season the meat with additional chili seasoning prior to rolling it into a ball. Set aside.

Add the olive oil to a very large skillet. I prefer cast iron. Sauté the onions, garlic and adobo peppers (including all the liquid from the can).

Cook for about 10 minutes until the onions are translucent. Remove from skillet and place the mixture in the dutch oven.

Mix the chili:
Add the tomatoes with the juice, 1 beer and 5 T of Meat Church Texas Chili Seasoning to the dutch oven and stir to combine.

Add the chocolate, cinnamon sticks and jalapeño to the pot.

Cook the chili:
Place the dutch oven into the smoker. Place the ball of ground meat on the rack above it. Or simply place the ball on a cooling\baking rack that is placed directly on top of the pot.

Cook the chili at 225 until the ball of ground meat reaches at 165.

That took about 3 hours in this video. When the ball of ground meat reaches 165, break it up and drop it into the chili to simmer the rest of the day.