Chili base:
Grab a mixture of peppers to taste. I intentionally went low spice this time, but this is where you can dial in your spice level. I chose 1 Anaheim pepper and a mixture of 4 bell peppers. Slice them up and smoke them at 250 for about 2 hours (until they get some color and are shriveled up). Then put the smoked peppers into the blender with ~6 tomatillos and blend. Dice up an onion and cook in a pan with salt, oil, and some tomato paste until you get some color on the onions. Mix with the pepper/tomatillo base.

Meat:
Beef short rib- get a grill ripping hot, and while it’s heating up, salt and pepper the short ribs. Then sear the short ribs to get some good color on them. Youre not cooking them, just get some flavor from the sear. Dice it up and remove the bones.

Bacon: diced up a pound of bacon and cooked it in a pan until it was done. Added a little bit of the bacon grease into the chili base.

Tri-tip- I had smoked a USDA prime tri tip earlier this week and had leftovers. It was on the rare end so I diced some up and put it in the pan with the bacon grease and got some more color on it.

Then add all of that to a crockpot with 2 cans of fire roasted tomatoes, 3 cans of beans, a handful of dark chocolate chips, and then I eyeballed some chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt, and black pepper. As it cooked, I tasted it for spice level as it went and m I ended up adding more chili powder and salt and pepper. I also added maybe a teaspoon of corn starch to thicken it up.

Let it braise in the crockpot on high for 4-5 hours.