An "Almost Perfect" Cincinnati Chili Recipe
I made sure to add enough cheese this time.
Like so many millennials, my first kitchen role model was Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats. I interned with Serious Eats while I was in college, and I still remember how embarrassed I was when I didn’t put nearly enough Velveeta in the mac-and-cheese Kenji asked me to make—though he was cool about it, quietly dumping in another handful of “cheese” cubes while thanking me for the effort.
The team at Serious Eats still sets the standard for rigorously tested recipes, alongside my friends at America’s Test Kitchen. So, when culinary director Daniel Gritzer asked me to share a recipe for Cincinnati chili last year, I knew I had to do better than the cobbled-together formula I’d been using since college.
Twenty-four test batches, a monthlong deadline extension, half a dozen phone calls with Cincinnati food experts, a dozen cans of Skyline chili (for comparison), and heaps of finely grated cheddar cheese later, I have what I think is an almost perfect Skyline clone, closer than any of the recipes I’ve tried over the years.
Fortunately, Serious Eats readers agree. “Made this last night, and it was almost perfect,” Ryan Q. Nelson commented. “The addition of the active dry yeast along with the leaving-the-fat-in created the perfect flavor and mouthfeel that rivals every chain that I've been to.” (His critique: Too much cayenne. He suggests halving it—an easy fix, if you want less heat.) While I admire Serious Eats’ pursuit of perfection, I’m happy with almost perfect.
I had help from the right people, including Queen City culinary historian Dann Woellert, who busted some Cincinnati chili myths for Midwesterner in 2022, and chef and former Cincinnatian Ryan Santos, who convinced me to add the active dry yeast, a secret ingredient that’s essential to the Skyline Chili flavor profile.
Click here to upgrade your at-home Cincinnati chili.
Whether you make this recipe or not, will you do me a favor? Tell your friends and family that there is no chocolate of any kind in real-deal Cincinnati chili. While you’re at it, please point out that even Texans add cinnamon to their bowls of red. (As I mention in the piece, Kenji’s Texas-style chili con carne recipe calls for it. And ironically, Texas Monthly’s “Only Texas Chili Recipe You’ll Ever Need,” an authoritative source from a state full of chili scolds, does contain cocoa powder. So, maybe chili rules are silly and pointless.)
To the skeptics: If you like noodles with meat sauce and cheese, and you can tolerate Mediterranean flavors, you’re probably giving Cincinnati too hard a time. Here’s your chance to find out.
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