Colorado chili: slow-cooked beef with hot peppers

Ingredients

• 9 dried hot peppers from New Mexico, washed, stemmed, and de-seeded
• 70 cl of water
• 2.3 kg of boneless, trimmed beef chuck
• 60 g of flour
• 1 tablespoon of coarse salt
• 1 tablespoon of black pepper
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 50 cl of beef broth or water

Bring the hot peppers and 70 cl of water to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and let steep for 30 minutes. Strain, keeping the liquid.

Combine the hot peppers with a small amount of liquid until you have a smooth sauce, adding more liquid as needed. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve to remove seeds and skins, and set aside.

Cut the beef into 2 to 5 cm pieces. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper, and coat the meat with this mixture.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and sauté the onions for 5 minutes. Add the meat in batches and brown on all sides. Remove the cooked meat and continue with the remaining ingredients.

Return all the meat to the pot, add the hot pepper sauce and broth until the meat is just covered, then bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to very low and simmer for 3 hours, or until the meat is tender, adding more broth as needed.