Chili Competition at Work

Today was the chili competition at work. Before Saturday, I had never before made a batch of chili, but Saturday's batch turned out so well it gave me confidence...

No pics for this post... I'll list the recipe first, then go into details...

Multi-Cultural Chili
1 lb ground turkey
1 cup dried navy beans, picked over and rinsed
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
3 poblano chile, finely diced, seeds excluded
6 serrano chile, finely diced, seeds included
1 habanero chile, finely diced, seeds included
1 can peeled tomatoes, with juice
3 tbsp chili powder
3 heaping tbsp (probably more... way more...) Korean gochujang fermented chile paste
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
ground black pepper to taste

I browned the turkey in the Instant Pot using the saute function. While that was going on, I built the spicy slurry using the gochujang and tomato juice from the can of tomatoes by mixing the juice and gochujang in a beaker and pureeing it with my stick blender.  Gochujang is pretty resilient, so it might take a minute to get started, but it is water-soluble/juice-soluble and makes a nice way to incorporate the sticky gochujang into the chile.

When the turkey was browned, I dumped in the beans, chiles, chile powder, tomatoes, and the slurry.  The contents looked a little "dry", so I added maybe a half-cup of water, clamped on the lid, and set for "Chili/Beans" - 30 minutes at high pressure.

When done, and after venting the pressure, I once again used the saute function to help thicken the chili, stirring and scraping the bottom for all the tasty browned bits. In about 20 minutes the chili was bubbling like lava, so I went to taste... and just like Saturday, it needed "something".

First off, about a teaspoon of salt really helped...  then another tablespoon of chili powder... and some freshly ground black pepper...  Then I thought about giving it another dimension by including about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, commonly used in Middle Eastern cuisines in stews and in ground meat kebabs.  A couple minutes more and it was really coming together, taste and texture...

I packed it away in the fridge in a couple quart containers, brought them to work in the morning. Thankfully some people brought extra crock pots (so I didn't have to schlep one in on the train), and we started warming it up around 9am, for an anticipated 11:30am serving.

Eight competitors, and all were excellent, after voting results were tabulated, I ranked fifth out of the eight!  I think it was an awesome showing, considering my lack of experience... and definitely got some ideas for next year...