The Secret Smoky Ingredient For An Award-Worthy Bowl Of Chili

A good bowl of chili hits the spot, but a great bowl of chili? Well, that's an art form in itself. Whether you're deep in the trenches of prepping your perfect grass-fed beef chili for the local cookoff, making a delicious pumpkin and turkey chili, a hopped up 90-minute chili in a pinch, or already working on creating the most epic Super Bowl snack table around, an award-worthy bowl of chili just so happens to include one secret ingredient that you may not have thought of: liquid smoke. Yes, you read that right. It sometimes goes by other names, like smoke flavor or even wood vinegar, and yes, it's all natural.

Liquid smoke is an easy and convenient way to add that signature smoked-for-hours flavor to your dish with minimal effort. Since it's a highly concentrated liquid form of actual smoke, you don't need to use much of it when adding it to recipes — a small dash will pack a powerful punch, so one bottle will last and last.

Created in 1895 by a Kansas City (Missouri) pharmacist named Ernest H. Wright, liquid smoke is made by taking the smoke from burning hickory wood, running it through a condenser, and then capturing the infused droplets that come out of it. Originally, liquid smoke was used more as a preservative for meat rather than as a flavor enhancer, with farmers using it to help preserve salt-cured hunks of ham and pork bellies. Over time, they realized that it gave the meat a wonderful smoky essence without the need to actually smoke it.

While you can add it as an ingredient to meals like a pot of chili, baked beans, or slow-cooked pulled pork, you can also use it as a unique cocktail ingredient to bring some woody depth to some of your favorite alcoholic concoctions (like smoked old fashioned or even infused into ice cubes). Sure, liquid smoke is its own standalone ingredient that you can buy at the supermarket, but it's also often used in any "smoked" products you see already cooked — like hot dogs, smoked cold cuts, or even canned smoked barbecue beans.

Generally speaking, since liquid smoke is so concentrated, you don't need to dump a ton of it into your chili — in fact, doing so will probably ruin the dish entirely. Instead, use approximately ¼ to ½ teaspoon of liquid smoke per pound of meat in your recipe, depending on how smoky you want it to be. If you're browning some larger cuts of meat to chop up and add to your dish, you can even dilute the liquid smoke a bit with some water, oil, or vinegar, and brush it on the meat before putting it in the pan or on the grill. Just make sure you're conservative with how much you use — and don't measure it on top of the dish you'll be adding it to, so you avoid mistakenly getting more in than you were hoping for. 

Want to keep adding more complexity to your chili? Another trick you can do is to play with unique ingredients, like beer, chocolate, or even coffee (instant coffee can also be used to wake up spaghetti sauce). Using these can infuse layers of flavor that will have your guests wondering what your secret ingredient is while asking for seconds.