Beef with Chillies.

Beef  Chili is the first dish that comes to mind when associating beef with chillies. The second closest is beef curry.  However, there are literally thousands of other ways that the two are combined.   Minced beef, for example, is used in recipes like beef koftas, spicy hamburgers and Indian dry mince Kheema. Another example is where Chillies are used beef to making spicy stews like goulash. And the list goes on......... This page explores how Chillies and beef are used in recipes around the world.

Beef is used to make a wide variety of dishes with Chillies. It works particularly well with tougher cuts where long slow cooking is needed to make the meat tender and infuse flavour. Cuts that lend themselves to this type of cooking include oxtail, ox cheeks,   and short ribs

Some great tasting curries and spicy stews can be made with these cuts; but don’t exclude stewing steak ( chuck and  blade , skirt, leg and flank) from the equation. These  cuts  are  delicious, as long as they  cook slowly and for long enough.  Besides using these cuts in curries, they are  also used to make beef Chili and spicy goulashes

Other  uses of beef with Chillies include making spicy sausages like Boerewors ( South African spicy sausage), Frikadellen ( meatballs  from Germany with Chillies), Biltong (dried meat from South Africa similar to Jerky) and Indian style roast beef with spices and cHillies

One of the most popular uses for tender beef is for steaks.  Creamy chilli sauce made with cream, Chillies and Worcester sauce is fantastic with steaks.

Another great use of  Chillies is to make dishes with minced beef like Babotie, spicy burger patties and koftas. It is also terrific when used to make meatloaf  and to stuff into Bell peppers

A final note

An excellent thing to remember in long and slow cooking with beef is that it is always good to use a cut with some bone in it.  A cut with bone  will add extra flavour to the dish during cooking