This recipe comes courtesy of a now-extinct food blog, secret-sauce.net. They managed to find two different versions of Dave Thomas's original chili recipe (printed in a local newspaper and a charity cookbook) and work out the restaurant version with a little help from the ingredients statement. See below for scans of those two articles.
(archive.org backup of source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220105190355/https://secret-sauce.net/wendys-chili/)
Ingredients:
- 2 pounds fresh ground beef (80/20 is a good mixture) -1 quart (4 cups) of tomato juice
- One 29 ounce can of tomato puree
- One 15 ounce can of dark red kidney beans, drained
- One 15 ounce can of small red beans, pinto beans, or pink beans, drained (I used small red beans)
- One medium onion, chopped (about 1½ cups)
- ½ cup celery, diced (about one large stalk)
- ¼ cup green bell pepper diced (one medium sized pepper, with seeds/ribs/stem removed)
- ¼ cup (4 tablespoons) chili powder
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1½ teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon oregano
- ½ teaspoon sugar
- ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Preparation:
Preheat a large pan to medium heat with a light layer of oil
Chop onion, celery, and green pepper. Each piece should be about the size of one your small beans.
Drain cans of beans in a colander and rinse.
Spread ground beef thinly across the whole pan, making a single giant hamburger. Press firmly and season with salt.
When the meat sizzles, quickly flip and press down into pan. When red juices appear at the top of the meat, flip again and press into the pan once more. Again, when you see red juiced flip a final time to complete cooking. Turn off heat, and drain the giant burger by lifting it from the pan moving to a large pot.
Break up the meat in the pot with a spatula into bean-sized pieces.
Add the beans, chopped vegetables, and all remaining ingredients to the pot with the beef.
Bring the pot a simmer and cover. Stir every 15 minutes for 1½ hours.
To serve, stir the pot in a figure-eight shape and scoop out a large portion.
