As far as comfort food goes, it’s hard to compete with a Cincinnati-style chili served over spaghetti with plenty of shredded cheddar cheese! Cincinnati chili is a little different from other chili recipes; instead of focusing on plenty of chili peppers, it focuses more on Mediterranean style spices including cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Other meat sauce recipes usually brown the meat before simmering it and this recipe cooks the meat in the sauce as it simmers, making it as easy to make as throwing everything into a pot and cooking! Cincinnati chili is usually served over spaghetti often with shredded cheese, diced onion, and/or beans.
Two Way: Chili served on spaghetti
Three Way: Chili served on spaghetti with cheese
Four Way Onion: Chili served on spaghetti with cheese, onions
Four Way Bean: Chili served on spaghetti with cheese, beans
Five Way: Chili served on spaghetti with cheese, onions, beans
Cincinnati Chili
A Cincinnati-style chili (a Mediterranean-spiced meat sauce) that’s perfect served over spaghetti or as a hot dog topping!
ingredients
- 1 (5.5 ounce) can tomato paste
- 4 cups beef broth (or water)
- 2 pounds ground beef*
- 1 large onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 3 tablespoons chili powder (such as ancho chili powder)
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (optional) (gluten-free for gluten-free)
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- salt and pepper to taste
directions
- Mix the tomato paste into the broth in a large saucepan, over medium heat, add the ground beef and break it apart.
- Add the onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, bay leaf, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, and brown sugar, mix well, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 2 hours, before skimming off any fat if desired.*
- Remove the bay leaf and season with salt and pepper to taste!
Option: Add 1 teaspoon paprika.
Option: Add 1 tablespoon soy sauce.
Option: Add 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder or 1/2 ounce dark chocolate at the very end.
Option: Add 4 ounces of diced bacon.
Option: Serve over spaghetti!
Option: Serve topped with diced onions!
Option: Serve topped with red kidney beans!
Option: Serve topped with shredded cheddar cheese!
I love five way Cincy chili. Found a recipe very similar to yours 30 years ago in the newspaper. I am from the upper Midwest and there used to be a chili diner in Milwaukee that did a great one. Can’t get anyone here in Texas to even try it. Their loss.
The cheese that goes on the Cincinnati chili should always be finely shredded!
Real Chili in Milwaukee is so good! Just satisfies that craving for this particular style of chili, which is so different than the heavily tomato based soup version most of us here grew up on.
I am originally from the Cincinnati area. The cocoa is a requirement to make it a true Cincinnati chili copycat! 😉
wouldn’t that make the meat boiled?
Yes. I have recipe for Cincinnati Chili that calls for boiling the beef rather than browning. You can use extra-lean ground beef to avoid having to skim the fat, but extra-lean isn’t as flavorful.. It also calls for a small amount of unsweetened chocolate. And if you make it the day before and refrigerate it, it tastes really authentic.
As someone from the area – too much cumin, and a bit of cocoa is a well-known secret ingredient of many chili parlors. But kudos on getting the method right. I rarely see this in online recipes, and the rest of the ingredients are spot on!
Adding cocoa or chocolate isn’t a real thing. I don’t know of a single chili restaurant that uses it. Unsweetened chocolate was included in a recipe published by the Cincinnati Enquirer in the early 80’s and somehow it has become a thing that you HAVE to do.
anyone who knows Cincy chili history knows there is no chocolate in the major chains chili
maybe some fools grandma added it so kids would eat it, but no. not real cincy chili.
“No chocolate. None. Ever.”
“That’s a myth I’m passionate about busting,” says Dann Woellert, a Cincinnati-based culinary historian who literally wrote the book on Cincinnati chili. Woellert knows most of the people behind the city’s favorite chili parlors, and they have assured him that there is no chocolate in their chili. “That was the first question I asked every chili parlor owner who I interviewed for the book: ‘Is there chocolate in your chili recipe?’ Almost all of them laughed at me. And all of them said, ‘No way.’”