How to make burnt chili taste less gross

February 4, 2024 2:10 PM

I made a very large batch of vegetarian chili and left it on low heat with the lid on...then proceeded to walk away and get distracted. When I took the lid off, smoke had filled the pot. The chili did not look burnt, even at the very bottom but it smells and tastes burnt.

I will eat it anyway because I'm too mad to throw away the ingredients/money, but any ideas about how to make it less gross? I found this old question where someone had burnt tomatoes and were recommended to add peanut butter. I love peanut butter but it seems odd to put in chili so please let me know if you have any experience using peanut butter to cover burn before. I was also thinking about trying a bit of brown sugar, but I won't be able to add much.

posted by Eyelash to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

I might try adding lemon to a spoonful and see if that helps.
posted by slidell at 2:47 PM on February 4, 2024

I'd try cooking some potatoes slowly in the chili - they should absorb some of the bad taste from the liquid.
posted by pipeski at 2:50 PM on February 4, 2024

I have never tried it, but this article recommends using cucumber to remove the burnt taste from scorched soup. I mean, you don’t have a lot to lose here, so I’d give it a try.

[Fabrizio] Schenardi, the executive chef of Four Seasons Resort Orlando, says you can rescue your burned soup with [English] cucumber. 

Start by pouring the soup into a new pot, but do not scrape the burned portions on the bottom. You want to leave those behind! Then, wrap the cucumber in cheesecloth and crush it with the back of a knife or a wooden spoon. After it has split open, drop the cucumber into the soup. Leave it there for around 15 minutes, then remove the cucumber. It will act like a sponge and suck up all of the burnt flavor! Once you have the cucumber out of your soup, you can adjust your seasonings to get your flavor back to where you want it.

posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:01 PM on February 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

I have done this before and nothing I tried made it salvageable, I’m sorry to report. I did not try the above cucumber trick, which seems alchemically mystical to me and I have no idea why it would work, but it might be worth a try with a mediocre winter cuke. If it’s not got full on flakes of carbon mixed into it, you might lean into the “blackened” flavor profile by frying smoked paprika in butter until it browns and mixing that in? Might help trick the tongue into thinking it’s supposed to taste like that. I also like to have lots of lime and avocado on my veggie chili, which I’ve been told is weird? But I think the creaminess of the avocado and the sour of the lime might help balance the burnt bitterness. But if you try it and it’s no good, please just enjoy avocado with lime and don’t ruin the rest of it with burnt bulgar.
posted by Mizu at 4:29 PM on February 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

Came here to say to try to embrace the smoky flavor. Think chipotle chilis or maybe a nod to BBQ sauce.
posted by grateful at 6:08 PM on February 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

Peanut butter is something of a "secret ingredient" in some people's chili recipes. However I would definitely try the treatment in a small bowl first before wasting a lot of peanut butter only to find out that you just don't like the taste and/or it didn't really help the burnt flavor.
posted by flug at 7:43 PM on February 4, 2024

Contrarian take: Let it be gross. Or rescue what you can and try it with peanut butter, but suffer the burnt bits so that the next next time you cook chili, you'll remember to take it off the heat. I wish it were otherwise, but often a visceral memory is the antidote to future inattention.
posted by dws at 8:53 PM on February 4, 2024

Add pickle juice, which makes chili delicious anyway and should help to mask some of the burnt flavor.
posted by mezzanayne at 11:05 PM on February 4, 2024

When this happens to me, I just remind myself that I like toast. That almost always gets rid of almost all the grossness almost instantly.
posted by flabdablet at 11:12 PM on February 4, 2024

My mom used transfer the food to another pot (don't scrape the bottom). Then lay a few of pieces of bread on top and heat up on very low. The bread will absorb the burnt taste.
posted by jraz at 5:41 AM on February 5, 2024

I literally just did this last week. Transferred the non burn stuff to a new pan, added some chipotle with adobo as is usual, the burnt flavor was not even noticeable.
posted by Sublimity at 12:44 PM on February 5, 2024 [1 favorite]