Cooking The Simpsons: Chief Wiggum’s Chili

Do you like onions, chili powder and juicy ground chuck? Can you handle peppers so spicy they’ll make you insane? Are you the “pope of Chilitown?”

Then grab your wooden spoon carved out of a bigger spoon, it’s time for us to take a trip to Springfield’s Annual Chili Cook-Off. Featured in the season 8 episode “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer),” the cook-off features lots of supporting characters and lots of chili. Marge uses various means to try and keep Homer away from the competition (cuts up the newspaper, vacuums up the phone cord, smokes in the house), but as soon as he gets a whiff he dons his chili boots and heads for the door. Marge makes Homer promise not to have any beer this year, since he’s embarrassed her at past cook-offs with his drunk antics (“Everything looks bad if you remember it”).

The Simpson family arrives at the cook-off and we discover that Homer is a much-feared chili connoisseur. He tries each entry, including Ned’s chili, who “just wanted to be a big man in front of his kids,” and declares them all unworthy. Then he comes to Chief Wiggum’s chili, which is glowing bright red in a giant black cauldron. The Chief dons protective gear and serves Homer a “merciless pepper of Quetzalacatenango,” a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper grown deep in the jungle by inmates of an insane asylum. You know, typical chili cook-off stuff. One touch of the pepper to Homer’s tongue and he runs screaming, pouring beer all over himself just in time for Marge to see him breaking his no-beer promise. Humiliated, he decides to drink hot wax to coat his mouth and goes back to try again. Mmm… hot wax. To everyone’s surprise, he swallows pepper after pepper and tells Chief Wiggum “don’t quit your day job. Whatever that is.”

Homer’s stomach revolts, and he stumbles around the cook-off hallucinating. A real trippy trip follows, and Homer takes a psychedelic journey through the imaginary desert with a space coyote voiced by Johnny Cash. He is sent on a voyage to find his soul mate, and with Marge mad at him, he decides that maybe she isn’t the one. But after no luck with Moe’s, personal ads or a lighthouse robot named E.A.R.L., he smashes the lighthouse beacon in despair. Marge finds him, and he realizes that she does in fact understand him and that they are in fact soul mates (duh). And even though they change the giant light bulb, the ship still crashes, leaking hot pants for all of Springfield (“we like short shorts!“).

Back to the chili. I know you can’t believe this, but I couldn’t find Guatemalan Insanity Peppers. It made me wonder if they even exist. But no need to lose faith, there are plenty of hot peppers that you can find at a local market or grocery store. This recipe sports whole, charred peppers just like in the cartoon (grill them if you have that capability). If you’re nuts and are willing to risk a literal hole in your esophagus, use ghost peppers in this recipe (please don’t do that). If you love hot burning spice but like your throat in one piece, try habanero. If you like spicy but don’t like to feel like dying while you’re eating, try serrano, pasilla and/or jalapeño. If you just can’t handle any of this, leave out the whole peppers altogether and that should put you in Flanders’ 2 alarm chili territory. If you’re not into spicy stuff at all, you can also reduce the jalapeños to one or none and you’ll be closer to Moe’s “bland, timid entry, suitable perhaps for patients recovering from surgery.” Boring, but at least you won’t go on any hallucinatory, life-changing trips.