The recipe
A 20-Pound Chili Recipe Written to Feed a Crowd
Large-Batch Chili with Chili Bricks comes from printed page 39 of Our Favorites, and the quantities immediately reveal what kind of recipe it is. Twenty pounds of hamburger, four onions and ten 27-ounce cans of chili beans make this a crowd-feeding formula rather than an ordinary family pot of chili.
Its other defining ingredient is five R. B. Rice chili bricks. The source browns the hamburger with onions, drains it, then combines everything in one large pot with fresh garlic, mild chili beans and salt before simmering. There is no attempt to scale it down or translate the branded ingredients into something more contemporary.
Why it matters
Why This One Is Worth Bringing Back
Large-Batch Chili with Chili Bricks preserves something that smaller household recipes often erase: scale. Twenty pounds of hamburger and ten large cans of chili beans put this firmly in the world of community meals, fundraisers, gatherings and kitchens equipped to feed far more than a single table.
The five R. B. Rice chili bricks are equally important to the recipe’s identity. Rather than building the chili from tomato sauce, chili powder and other separate seasonings, the source relies on a prepared chili-brick product to supply much of that flavor and structure.
The method is only three short moves—fry the hamburger with the onions, drain, then put everything in a large pot and simmer. The cookbook gives no simmering time, no garnish and no serving suggestion. Preserving that brevity is part of preserving the recipe itself; it reads like directions written for a cook who already understood the scale of the job.
Modern kitchen notes
If You're Making It Today
These are modern editorial suggestions, not changes to the archived recipe. When a variation comes directly from the original source, we will say so.
This is intentionally a very large recipe
The 20 pounds of hamburger and ten 27-ounce cans of beans are not transcription errors. The archive keeps the community-scale proportions intact rather than silently shrinking them into a household batch.
Keep the chili bricks visible in the historical recipe
R. B. Rice chili bricks are specifically named in the source. A modern cook may need to adapt if that product is unavailable, but any substitute should be treated as an adaptation rather than a correction.
The source does not give a simmering time
After the browned meat is drained and everything is combined, the only instruction is to simmer. That missing time cue is preserved rather than filled in with an invented number.
Recipe card
The Preserved Recipe
Large-Batch Chili with Chili Bricks
Ingredients
- 20 lbs. hamburger
- 5 chili bricks, R. B. Rice
- 4 large/medium cloves fresh garlic minced
- 4 medium/large onions chopped
- 10 27 oz. cans chili beans Bush, mild
- 4 Tbsp. salt
Instructions
- Fry hamburger with onions. Drain. Put all in a large pot and simmer.
From the archive
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