How to be a red hot chili star, from the Chili Cook-off 2015.

Chili can be tinkered with to the point of being rendered unrecognizable. I get it. Cooks want to add their own touch, their own flair for originality’s sake, their own challenge to the status quo.

I’ve done precisely that with five consecutive entries into Carmel Valley Chamber’s annual Great Bowls of Fire Chili Cook-off. I’ve used goat, pork, beef and every kind of chili pepper on the planet, including guajillo, arbol, California, habanero, Thai and – always – jalapeño. I’ve used barley, celery, carrots and tomato. I’ve paired it with white cheddar-cornbread muffins. I’ve involved wine, beer and tequila. I’ve added more beans, less beans, no beans. But at least I was not behind the chilis I’ve seen with pineapple, tofu or raisins.

Our team has come close a few times searching for that transcendent chili experience and cook-off bragging rights. In past cook-offs we used goat, for our semi-famous Oh My Goat (OMG) Chili from God, while wearing nuns’ habits. (Sorry Pope Francis, but the chili was heavenly.) Some were squeamish about the goat meat; most people loved it. But it never won us the first-place crown. Instead we became the chili equivalent of golf’s Greg Norman, perennial runners-up.

So this Sept. 17 it was time to go back to chili basics. And do it well.

We made it the way they do in Texas, where reverence for chili ranks up there with guns and God. Texans are so serious about their chili cook-offs that cooking has to happen on the premises and judges are held in higher esteem than those sitting on the Supreme Court. Also: no filler. Just gravy and meat.

So that was the plan: a few basic things done with precision. It’s not about cramming in loads of ingredients but how you choose and prep the fundamentals. Here’s how we did ours. (Get the full recipe – along with one of the professional winner’s – on the food blog, www.mcweekly.com/edible.)

A few basic ingredients go into traditional Texas style chili: meat, dried chili peppers, cumin and a liquid to simmer it all in. It’s like a song. Same chord structure, but you can play it a million different ways.

IN TEXAS, REVERENCE FOR CHILI RANKS UP THERE WITH GUNS AND GOD.

You can use ground beef instead of chunks of beef chuck. (But it won’t be as good, so we went for the latter.) Pre-prepped chili powder instead of toasted, handground peppers. (But it won’t be as good, so I did ours personally.) Already-ground cumin or… do I need to say it again?

Once the meat and everything is prepped, it’s time for the two-hour simmer. Two hours is just enough time for the meat to become tender while keeping its desired chunkiness. Any more simmering makes the meat shred. Some does anyway, which isn’t a bad thing. A two-hour simmer gives it an ideal chunk to shred ratio, which is what I was going for.

After hours of prep work (due to huge amounts made in a non-industrial kitchen) simmering didn’t start until midnight. I set the alarm for 2am to tend to the finished product.

One daring decision: We served our chili in Tostitos scoops. We wanted to avoid waste, and found homemade tortilla bowls were way to time-consuming, so, voila, what we called “edibowls” – less waste, more taste – were a hit.

The chips also added a crunchy texture and corn flavor that goes so well with spicy meats. We topped it off with minced onions, grated mild cheddar and two sauces by food-and-drink editor Mark C. Anderson – one created by accident.

His avocado crème was intentional. Avocado scooped into a blender along with judicious amounts of lime juice and cilantro, a little Mexican-style crema and homemade hot sauce, then loaded into plastic squeeze bottles. It added freshness, a burst of flavor and balance.

The other topping was made from a batch of assorted heirloom tomatoes, garlic and olive oil that was forgotten in a low heat oven for 28 hours. Meant to be a soup, a whole day went by before Anderson discovered the oven wasn’t turned off as thought and was instead on lowest heat. Out came a baking dish full of tarry blackened tomatoes.

He had a taste of it. Not bad at all. In fact, it was so good he took the trouble adding backyard chiles de gallo and getting it into another squeeze bottle.

It wound up adding still another dimension to our chili creation. A dot of it on top of the squiggle of avocado crème and… wow. A nice color contrast as well as smoky savory note. We still haven’t decided on a name for the black sauce. Maybe Accidental Greatness sauce.

A couple of minor setbacks: a cut middle left finger while mincing onions just before the event started. A small fire caused by a hand towel placed too close to our camp stove. But the margaritas flowed, lots of good chili was eaten, much fun was had.

The people voted us second best, a familiar feeling. But our food-writing peers who served as judges recognized something in the simplicity done with precision, aided along by accents and accidents, and awarded us the Amateur Golden Ladle. There’s a flavorful lesson in there somewhere.