Ground Beef Chili With Chocolate and Peanut Butter Recipe (2024)

Please use this recipe with care and be mindful of whom you serve it to. When I lived in Providence many years ago, a young squash player at Brown died because she ate chili at a restaurant, never guessing in her wildest dreams that peanut butter--to which she was deadly allergic--would be in her dinner. It was a tragedy and I've been very careful about surprise ingredients ever since when I cook.

I made a version of this last week. Substituted 2 cups of flour for the ground meat, 1 cup of butter (softened) with egg and vanilla for the beans, 1 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips for the tomatoes, some Walnut chips for the peanut butter, brown sugar for the stout beer and stock. Dropped by heading tablespoons into a cookie sheet and baked until done.Delicious!

OMG: I made this tonight spur of the moment with black beans instead of pintos and it was dark and dense and utterly delicious! Definitely a keeper!

Please make the “secret ingredient” peanut butter known to those whom you serve this dish. People with peanut allergy have died from eating chili with the unexpected ingredient peanut butter.

Came out better than expected. I'm a big mole fan and a chili pro. This didn't seem entirely like chili or reminiscent of mole, but it was very good in it's own right. I added a second can of tomatoes and a few extra chipotles. Since it had the extra liquid, I let it cook a little longer to more fully meld the flavors.

If you use 3 of the canned chiles in adobo sauce and the 2 teaspoons ancho chile powder, as directed, this will be extremely hot. Try adding hot spices/ chiles to taste.

I have found that substituting cooked barley in place of ground beef (plus veggie stock) makes a very acceptable vegetarian alternative. The barley has enough body to withstand extended cooking and has a chewy/meaty texture.

This came together very easily. I took the suggestion to use black beans, and it turned out fabulous--absolutrly delicious, and that was even without chipotles. I am heat-adverse, but the flavor of this chili is so mellow and complexly interesting that I think I could afford to throw in a chipotle next time because it would be balanced by the rest of the flavors without being straight heat. I used turkey, but the flavors are so interesting that it did not turn out bland.

Last summer I started making a version of this to freeze before knee replacement surgery, to eat after the surgery. I didn't use peanut butter (I will next time) but I used a chocolate stout, dried guajillo chilies - toasted and rehydrated - chipotle, ancho chile powder, 3 kinds of beans - pinto, black and red - butternut squash, red bell pepper and a big hunk of leftover smoked brisket, diced, instead of ground beef which amplified the smokiness of the chipotles. I call it 333 Chili

It would be extremely helpful to know if the dark chocolate should be sweetened or unsweetened

I'm always on the look out for a new recipe and this one caught my eye. I followed the directions perfectly and once it was done, it was really just to weird. The chocolate in chili mix just didn't compliment each other anyway that I could tell. My wife and I both tried to drown that chocolate chili flavor out with chips, avacado, sour cream and cheese.... But even I, who will eat just about anything placed before me couldn't eat it.

I followed this recipe and even measured out the ingredients for a change. I used an 85% dark chocolate. It was bitter, has a weird mouth feel, and no one in my family liked it. It was bad enough that it made me write my first recipe review.

Would unsweetened baking chocolate be appropriate?

It would work to replace the cocoa powder but add 2 tablespoons of sugar if you use it to replace the dark chocolate

I thought the combination of flavors sounded really interesting, but they were actually just awful. This is the first NYT Cooking recipe we all hated.

In my humble opinion, this was disgusting. The dark chocolate at the end completely and entirely altered the chili, even when I added LESS than what’s dictated in the recipe.

This is terrible. Such a terrible mouth feel. Bitter aftertaste. Expensive ingredients wasted!

Made this as written with semi sweet chocolate chips as the dark chocolate adding 2 oz only and one tbsp of peanut butter.It is a kind of cross over between Mole and Chili and improved with sour cream and salty chips.I liked it and the family commented heavily

We’ve used NYT Cooking recipes several times each week for the past couple years. This is the first time it has let us down. There is a huge gap in the flavor profile of this one. We’re now desperately searching for something to cover the aftertaste. If you want chili, keep on searching.

Absolutely inedible. I love dark chocolate and this was just way too bitter.

Cut the peanut butter in half.

This is atrociously awful. It might have been fine with the cocoa powder, but the addition of chocolate chunks coats your mouth with an earthen chocolate flavor that everything else lives in.Do not make your chili with this recipe. Everyone in my home hated it and it made me - a working dad who cooks weeknight dinners - grumpy that I wasted my time and money on this garbage.

This is my best chili recipe! And whoever I share it with asks me for the recipe. Hard not to love a rich and spicy chili reminiscent of mole and Oaxaca. I am vegetarian so use tofu and vegetable stock. Non-vegetarian friends have also used ground chicken. It makes a big batch so I freeze--tastes great after defrosting and reheating.

First impression was a disaster! Just as I’d finished stirring in the last ingredient, my husband grabbed a spoon to taste, made a face, and spit it out. Uh-oh. I grabbed a spoon and tasted. (Expletive.)As I had doubled the recipe and we had a basem*nt full of teenaged boys I desperately scoured the comments for something I’d missed. One comment was a lightbulb: “this is soup not chili”I brought it back to a boil for another 15 mins and then simmered it a solid hour, and voila! DELICIOUS!!

The chocolate gives this chilli an earthy flavour that I didn’t enjoy. I cooked out some of the bitterness in the pressure cooker for an additional 20 minutes, and added quite a bit more sugar and salt. It won’t be a recipe I repeat.

Seconding other comments that 3 canned chiles in adobo made this inedibly spicy. We couldn't save it with sour cream/yogurt and failed to taste anything beyond the heat. Would recommend 1 can or even none to start

Made this today exactly per the recipe with turkey and it tasted just plain weird. It's nothing like chili, let alone mole. The basic approach of using high flavor ingredients to make a fast chili is sound, but four ounces of chocolate is way too much and so is 2 TB of peanut butter. Maybe cut them both by three quarters and skip the beer, add more stock, tomatoes, cumin and paprika and a lot more salt.

I had high hopes for this as I love cincinnati chili and mole, but it was quite underwhelming in flavor. I made it pretty much exactly as specified. Maybe it’s the lack of tomato paste, or something. Very disappointing

This recipe was different. Good, but different. Cut back on the chilie ancho. The instructions are unclear on what kind of dark chocolate. I used a small amount of bakers chocolate, but I think a sweeter, snacking dark chocolate is what’s intended. Only used 1lb of ground beef, which was still more than enough. The flavor was almost overly intense, but once topped with sour cream, cheese, cilantro, it worked. Worth a try, but it doesn’t beat the Texas Chili recipe IMO.

My family loves this! I like using black beans or a mixture of beans. I added a bit of brown sugar at the end. I double it for freezing.