Is this worth the HYPE? Over the Top Chili — No Bean Texas Style Chili

Over the top chili is a new way to make your favorite chili recipe, by creating a large meatloaf or meatball of sorts and smoking it on a wire rack set on top of a Dutch oven or pot. As the meat smokes, the fats drip down into the pot of chili and supposedly add extra flavor. And since so many viewers have requested a video on how to make over the top chili, I decided to give it a try!

You can definitely use this chili preparation method with your favorite chili recipe – just smoke the ground beef “over the top” of the pot with your other ingredients. For this recipe, we tried a no-bean chili for something different, but to be honest, my family prefers our chili with beans (cue the bad comments!). This homemade over the top chili was fantastic, but we were all missing our canned kidney and chili beans.

But our homemade chili seasoning is great! Get the recipe here: https://pelletsandpits.com/homemade-chili-seasoning/
@TraegerGrills @meat2936 #pelletgrill #bbq #chili
For Smoker Recipes visit: https://pelletsandpits.com/
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– [x] Seasonings:
SMASH THAT, SHAKE THAT, QUE THAT

The Flat Top King

Sure Shot Sid’s Gunpowder Seasoning
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Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning
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Pit Boss Southwest BBQ
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– [x] KNIVES I USE:
HENCKELS Four Star Chef Knife
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HENCKELS Four Star Santoku Knife
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HENCKELS Four Star 7in Filet Knife
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VICTORINOX 6in BONING KNIFE
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– [x] Things Needed for the GRILL:
ThermoPro Digital Probe Meat Thermometer
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ThermPro Wireless TP27 
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Butcher Paper Roll 
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Black Latex Gloves
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Weber Burger Press
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Weber Charcoal Chimney
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HD 10’ Tortilla Press
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– [x] APPLIANCES
Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro
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KitchenAid Artisan Series 5 Quart
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It is good it is all right over the toop chili so I’ve done a little research kind of watch a couple videos out there and it kind of surprised me how people decided to do it um not really sure about the I’m not really on board okay I’m going to make

This because we’ve been asked several times now even on the flat top King what your thoughts are have you made over thee top chili because we have done different versions of smoking the meat and gring the meat and making chili sauce for hot dogs we’ve done a members

Only chili then we replicated that and did um brisket style chili so the idea of over the toop chili kind of once I see it done I’m just kind of perplexed is that a word I think so I think you used it right did I use it right too

Thank you getting better and the reason is is because if we make a ground beef and we put it into a ball like a meatloaf and then smoke it over top of it I can understand the fat drippings and all that stuff but you’re not maximizing in the smoke flavor so you’re

Almost like hindering yourself so my initial thought was why wouldn’t we just put on a sheet tray wind the ground beef out completely cuz you’re going to smash it up get all that more smoke flavor and then those juices would pile up in it you can just dump all that in

There so it just kind of just kind of weird but we’re going to play along with the system today over the top chili I’m going throw my twist in it and see if it comes out as good as what people say it is I do have hesitation of reservations

But other than that we’re going to have a fun day today I got the Trager it’s on I think it’s on like 225 only because I want to hit that smoke mode for about an hour just to see if we can incorporate a little bit more

Flavor to the meat but let me show you what I got I’m done rambling all right I got brisket trimmings left over from that pastrami that we did the smoked pastrami that’s left over from that I’ve got a uh what is this chuck roast yep I

Got a chuck roast from Les I got some Bano pepper some bell pepper some jalapenos some onion I got my chili blend right here this is homemade if you guys want this exact recipe you can look it up on pellets and pits we will have it there

Available uh and then Tomatoes of choice I don’t know if it’s a really a big deal but we got sauce we got paste we got beef broth um crushed tomatoes diced tomatoes Little W sauce all right let’s get some prep work done and then we’ll start grinding our meat and then we’ll put

Everything on that smoker and see what happens first things first I need to take this truck roast out cut it in manageable pieces for our grinder and then put it in the freezer while we prep our vegetables it’s going to help it go through the a little bit more

Easier and then this brisket right here is already cut up so that’s what I’m going to try to mirror just manageable pieces all the fat and everything that’s where you’re going to get a lot of the flavor and if people don’t have a grinder what meat can they use any

Store-bought uh ground beef chuck roast sirloin I mean whatever ground beef you want to you can go lean you can go fatty you’re the one eating it so you need to make that choice all righty so we have our beef prepped our vegetables prepped I have no

Idea if this is going to matter or not I just thought like I said I’ll would try to incorporate a little bit more flavor if I could so this is the idea while we’re grinding the beef we’re going to add a little bit of the vegetables a

Little bit of the seasoning to the ground mix mixture so that way it smokes maybe incorporates a little bit more flavor honestly I don’t know I’m not going to make it 40 times to try out that was just my thought process we have our meat grinder uh let’s

See it’s not plugged in got to plug it in there we go cooking with gas now so first thing I want to do just guessing here it’s not a big deal it’s all going to end up in the chili anyway and then I’m definitely going to use that whole

Jalapeno that’s why I kept it to the side maybe just a little bit more something like that that looks good right there okay so as this grinds I’m just going to add this a little bit add a time and just let it grind [Applause] together all right I’m going to start working on

That but before I do I just got my Dutch oven right here uh mentioned before like especially on the Santa Maria and other things I like I like to protect the bottom of my pots just helps all that soot and stuff like that not get on

There um so I’m just going to add a little avocado oil for sautéing honestly you’re not really worried about like a traditional sauté right we’re just going to soften the vegetables try to get some smoke flavor on there so all these we going to go on there start wilting down and stuff like

That you’re only at 225° so it’s not like you’re Fly baying and stuff so this is going to go in here woo I need to get that top rack out of there all right on there it goes we’re going to let it warm up as much as we

Can I want to start messing with that meat all right we have roughly 3 lbs of meat you can see that’s all ground up I did the coar gr because I felt like it might just give the chill a little bit more chew um so this is the idea I’m

Just going to add the about half of the seasonings in there I honestly don’t know if it no matter I’m just guessing so roughly half and then Little W sauce one we’re just guessing today it’s a lot of chili and to that we’re just going to bind it

Up good thing about doing like this is once you put your gloves in in there your hands it actually starts creating like a a tackiness to the chili to the beef and it’ll hold together a little bit better warming up that fat smells good I can tell you

That I know what you’re thinking why not add add the vegetables now I don’t know like I said I just put it in the grinder hell who knows if it matters all right so my idea is this here’s my rack to go to the chili it fits almost perfectly

With these little notches this sticks out on the corners a little bit there’s no reason to go a little bit long larger um than your pot you can maybe it shrink a little bit so there’s more meat that’s exposed to the Smoke yeah and that’s why I honestly try to put some the

Vegetables in there too cuz I just felt like you know I don’t know maybe it help it I don’t know if we ever really know you’re going to tell them how you got that small sheet took a regular cookie sheet and then just uh used my little grinder and grind it

Down cut it in half yep that looks good right there and this is for all my bean haters and bean lovers out there today we decided not to use beans so we’ve added more beef if you’re going to use beans you can definitely cut the amount of

Beef that you’re using back a little bit but since we decided to go with more beef no beans today all right on the smoker it goes and then I’m going to hit that smoke mode at 225 and we’re going to do that for an hour all right we’ve hit that hour mark

I’m just going to adjust it about 275 let’s start and get that temperature up there heck weol be warnery today and do 285 in between 3 275 just cuz we can well it’s definitely looking good that’s for sure definitely gets a lot of smoke on

There as I imagine like I said I’m sure those vegetables aren’t even hot enough to sauté so what we’re going to do now is just start adding ingredients so diced tomatoes a little bit of garlic I held the garlic back just in case it did get hot enough I

Didn’t think it would but better safe than sorry tomato sauce tomato paste I’m going to start with half of a can we’ll see what kind of consistency we get we can always add a little bit more later crushed tomatoes can of beef broth and the rest of that chili Seasoning now that everything’s mixed we got our temperature raised I’m going to put back on there we’ll check it in another hour still looking good still looking good just out of curiosity I’m going to check the temperature of this right here I don’t know if it really matters

Considering you’re going to be crumbling it up anyway so about 170° we know that’s uh not cooked enough because we know that medium rare is about 125 so I’m actually just going to keep it at 275 a little bit lower all right it’s been about 3 and 1/2 hours

Total absolute beautiful color I’ve been sneaking a little pieces here and there it’s definitely got some smoke flavor to it take this off let me show you what the inside looks like really quick this is why I held off on that tomato paste cuz I didn’t want to add

Too much cuz I didn’t know how much reduction would be there and I didn’t want it too thick so looking good so now’s the fun part I guess this is why you call it over the toop chili I’m going to use our strainer as a helper cuz then we’ll take this

All right let’s give it a good mix all right for my personal opinion I want a little bit more liquid in there it’s a little thick for me so I’m looking about a cup cup and a half of water moisture you can add beer you can

Add more beef stock I thought it was plenty flavorful enough not to really add a lot more flavor um I don’t think adding water is going to lud it I think it’s pretty stout now listen since this is one of the tricks I can give you I

Know for a fact when you’re cooking on a smoker it takes a long time for this heat to penetrate and to build up it’s not like being on the stove I warmed up my water so I didn’t use cold water so if you’re want to use a beer or stock or

Anything like that I’d highly advise you to warm it up if you’re going to add it in the later stages cuz it’ll cool this down it’ll just take forever to cook so now that we got it there it looks pretty good to me see the consistency we’re

Working with I like that right there we put the Trager up to 325 330 something like that 335 you want to open it for me yep so now we’ll put it on there we’ll cook it another hour and a half something like that and show you like when it’s done all righty in

Full transparency this is what we did about an hour remaining instead of that 2-hour Mark I just took it inside the stove and just finished it I felt like the vegetables we still had a little B more crisp on there than what I wanted my kids got back home from school I

Showed her what we had she’s a chili fiend she loves chili but she did not like the idea of seeing the vegetables she don’t mind eating the vegetables she do like seeing the vegetables so as a dad I picked out quite a few vegetables and put them in here Blended them up now

This was a little bit more chunkier than what we like um I’m trying to keep my opinion it’s open it’s I don’t think it is the world’s greatest chili I think it’s a different chili even she said it’s good it’s just not your chili right I think each family has the same the

Flavor is really good I really like the homemade chili seasoning yeah I do too I think it’s you know we didn’t add beans we’re a beans family we do like beans what did she say she said that’s not chili because it doesn’t have beans boom you guys can argue with my sixth grader

But um but really and truly I think you know chil just come back to like each household you have your own unique way of doing it we’ve had ours I don’t think it’s bad matter of fact I think it’s actually pretty good it’s just uniquely different yeah it is it’s very good it’s

Just different than your normal chili it’s more tomatoey but we let it reduce as long as we could and you can see there’s still vegetables in there I told her she was going to have to deal with it something simple like that then obviously the toppings you know or

However you want to do it so we’ll just do some green onion little shredded cheese we’ve got some tamales that are warming up on the stove as we speak some homemade tamales oh I didn’t know you were doing that it’s nice nice little surprise all out so are we

Tasting yep it’s not like we haven’t been tasting I’ve already been tasting all day hot it’s tomatoey I think the pepper out a sweetness um I think in general it it is tomato heavy like I said we typically don’t go that route a little tomato goes

A long way for us um I would eat in a restaurant and like it I would think I would sit across from you and say I like mine better but that’s a personal preference somebody might eat this and be like this is the best I’ve ever had so it’s extremely close it’s just

It’s so different so I think it’s the difference honestly of like a Smash Burger or a juicy burger people swear about one people swear about the other and they’re both Burgers right they’re both uniquely different they’re both uniquely good so do I think it’s worth

It to go the extra mile and do a over-the-top chili on the smoker not really I mean I really don’t see the benefit I mean I’m not saying it’s not a great chili doing it that way there’s just many other methods I didn’t really feel like this was I think you could

Actually just take the meatloaf smoke it on there and then once it’s done in like 3 hours take it out and put it in your pot inside and be just as happy I don’t think you’ll ever notice a flavored dep difference so hot blowing it for me it is blowing look at the

Wind for you guys that follow me on the Flatt top King last year we uh filmed our doves quite a bit and they’re back this year it’s pretty cool so you’ll be hearing those in the video transition to National Geographic yeah we have some crazy things happening so there you go

That’s over the top chili I’m glad we did it um it’s because of you guys that we were able to um be creative you guys kind of push us and show us hey do this do that and do this and that’s what we do thanks for watching don’t forget to press that

Subscribe button pound the notification Point share with your friends anytime Chili’s on the table is a pretty good day yeah it is good