A Fly Fisherman’s Award Winning Pork Chop Chili

Our neighborhood has held a chili cook off the past few years. This year’s was last Friday in one of the neighborhood cul-de-sacs. This is the first year I have entered the contest, although I have attended the past 3 or 4 events.

From these chili cook offs, I have taken note what I like in a chili and what others seem to like. The main thing people like is lots of meat; in fact, the more meat the better.  Some like their chili real spicy but a lot of people don’t.

To appeal to the most people therefore, mild is usually best. Cheese is also something everyone seems to love. A little sour cream also helps. Usually cheese and sour cream are provided as toppings, but not always. My family used to live in Cincinnati and we found out that there is a secret ingredient in the famous Cincinnati chili. There are several different brands of Cincinnati flavoring as well; for example, Skyline chili.

This year I set out to create the best chili that would appeal to the most people. Several times during the year I would experiment with a batch, invite family over and seek everyone’s input. Here is what I have come up with so far and what I used last week for the neighborhood cook off.

By the way, this chili took second place out of 12 entries. It missed first place by one point. The winner was a white chicken chili which was quite unique. It had large chunks of chicken and did not have tomatoes or the usual chili sort of spicy flavor. It was good, I have to admit. In fact, I even voted for it.

In a large crock pot, cook 2 or 3 pork chops. You can season these with Chili spice, Johnny’s or whatever you like best. On low temperature setting this takes about 4 hours to cook. After it’s cooked, trim any fat off the pork and cut the pork into small pieces or Shred. Remove the juices from the crock pot and clean the crock pot if necessary. Add the meat back to the crock pot.

Dump the contents of one large can (64 oz) of Cattle Drive Gold Chili, or similar, to the crock pot.

Add one small can (15 oz) of chili without beans, Skyline or similar. Add ½ package of cooked bacon, cut into small pieces. Cook this mixture 2 to 3 hours on low or until boiling, stirring occasionally.

Next add about 4 ounces of cream cheese, 4 ounces of sour cream , a couple of slices each of Swiss and Cheddar cheese. Stir well, especially making sure to stir in the cheeses as they melt. Allow to cook another hour or so, again stirring occasionally.

By now the flavors will be well blended together leaving everyone to wonder about the wonderful flavors. And, what is that secret ingredient?

A Day with Karen at Strawberry Reservoir

Before leaving for Strawberry, I replaced the tip top of Karen’s pink fishing pole. It had broken on her previous trip to Strawberry. Since only two or three inches had broken off, I just glued on a new tip top with Ferrule Cement. This is the same glue used to glue the tips on arrows. You melt a bit onto the tip of the rod and twist the tip top on over the glue, making sure it is aligned properly with the other guides before allowing it to harden.

The next step was to get Karen a fishing license. The internet makes this especially easy. You don’t even need to go to the fly shop. You can go to the site: http://wildlife.utah.gov/dwr/licenses/ and buy a license on line. You then print out a temporary license and the real, waterproof one is mailed to you.

The next step is to pull the ice packs out of the freezer and put them in the cooler along with drinks, lunch and snacks. After loading the truck and hooking up the boat the first stop is …to the candy store. I usually stop by the 7-11 when I take my kids fishing. This time we went to Smith’s. We were bummed out there weren’t any Chick O’ Stix. After getting our other favorite travel goodies we were on the road.

Strawberry Reservoir is 80 miles from Salt Lake. There is a ramp at Renegade Point which is 13 miles past the visitor’s center. This ramp is not nearly as crowed as the Strawberry Bay and is near a couple of good fishing bays and points like Haw’s point where Karen and I fished.

After launching, we crossed the bay and started fishing around the point on the opposite shore making our way toward Haw’s point. Immediately Karen caught a nice Cutthroat, the first fish of the day. Way to go Karen! It was about 16 inches long.

We then continued around the point and I caught a rainbow about the same size as Karen's cutthroat.

We released these and continued fishing, keeping just further than casting distance from the shore.

We saw a few large, black, crawdads and a few fish follow our lures but weren’t able to hook anything else. It was a gorgeous sunny day and a very enjoyable time spent with my daughter.