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We asked for readers, LAist staff and professional chefs for their top tricks for making chili magic. We got a whole lotta responses — check out the hotly contested debates between beans and no beans, whole or powder chili, and jump into a whole bar of chocolate suggestions
What are the outliers? Chicory coffee. Bone marrow. Brown sugar. Miso. Fish sauce. We could go on.
What if I don’t feel like making my own? Fret not. We’ve got you covered with our favorite takeout options.
It’s Super Bowl weekend and we’ve got chili on the brain! But it’s easy to get lost in the sauce when trying to make a memorable bowl.
We asked you (our readers), LAist staff, and professional chefs for their best hacks to make the hefty crowd-pleaser.
Ranging from beans to no beans (shout out to Texas), ground beef to prime cuts, and wild card ingredients such as chocolate, beer, and miso, it seems anything goes when it comes to flavor.
Here is what you had to say:
Caryl Chinn, Mid-City
I’m a Texas chili fan, so no beans allowed 😉 Plenty of spice, and all the fixin’s (cheese, onion, scallions, jalapeños, sour cream, etc) but especially Fritos! I follow a recipe from Elizabeth Karmel (former chef of Hill Country BBQ) Also — and this is not in the recipe — to get the consistency I prefer, I use an immersion blender to blend the finished product and break up big chunks of ground beef
Ale Gomez Tanner, Bellflower
I make a mash-up between chili and frijoles charros (Mexican-style stewed pinto beans) with chorizo and cilantro 😁
Matthew McIvor, Redondo Beach, owner of Proudly Serving
I make Texas-style chili, as we do at the restaurant and guests can make their Frito pie.
Gail Chabran, (mom of Gab Chabran, associate food editor), Whittier
I like to make it with black beans and ground turkey. Then I have the usual stuff like onion, various sauces or chiles, maybe canned tomatoes. I have been known to make it with garbanzo beans.
Nick Roman, host of LAist 89.3’s All Things Considered
My mom was a fabulous cook and taught me how to make chili in college, along with spaghetti sauce and Texas hash. She said you'll get by if you know how to make these things.
I’ve used Lawry’s seasoning, but I also use cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic cloves. I prefer to use ground beef at an 80/20 ratio for more crumble. I’ll add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, green bell peppers, Ortega green chilies, corn, red kidneys, and pinto beans, and for Sunday's Superbowl, I'll start it in a crockpot in the morning.
Oakley Boren, Los Alamitos
I use Gochujang for heat. It sneaks up on you, that one. 😉
Robert Haleblian, Pasadena
Whole dried chilis > powders
Josh Hernadez, Los Angeles
A little mustard in the chili gives it a good zing 🔥
Monica Bushman, Producer, How To LA
My mom often uses the Chilean spice merkén / merquen in place of chili powder. And usually whatever the recipe calls for, she cuts it by half, because at least the Chileans in my family are not big on anything spicy.
Jonathan Burton, Long Beach
It’s the early and the late steps that matter most to me. Early on it’s blooming spices in the rendered fat and then throwing in minced chipotles in adobo. Later, add a malty beer and some dark chocolate for the simmer.
Aiddee Robles Tellez, Montebello
Adding fresh ingredients like diced onions, cilantro, and jalapenos will level up chili. (Even canned chili) The new burst of flavor will add great texture and crunch.
Nate Perez, LAist Associate Producer
A tiny bit of liquid smoke! I would use a smoker if I could.
Ron Reeder, Whittier
I use stew meat instead of ground round.
Rod Chrolon, Los Angeles
Use a li'l chorizo.
Chef Teresa Montaño, Chef and Owner of Otoño in Highland, Park
My grandma used to make a green chili with ground pork, onion, garlic and beans. It was stewed like Texas-style but all New Mexico green chile. It was like crack. I like to put a little dark cocoa powder in Texas-style chili.
Malina Syvoravong, food stylist and recipe developer, L.A.
Someone told me to put in cocoa powder and chicory coffee! It feels very cowboy-y to make it that way.
Matthew Cisneros, La Mirada
I used some bone marrow once and it was 😋 🤤 … roast the bone with marrow then add to chili. Wasn’t for the Super Bowl but should have been!
Laura Dux, LAist events intern
My dad only knew how to cook chili when I was a kid. He would add brown sugar and a whole stick of butter.
Tiffany Luong, owner of Vegan Bánh Mì Thảo, Long Beach
Miso!!
Neal Hirtzel, El Segundo
Fish sauce.
Brian Hidalgo, Whittier
I once sliced up tamales and put them in a chili. Wasn’t that bad.
Sionnan Wood, Burbank
My tip is to sit in the back and crack feminist jokes, and giggle to myself over a cool beer and chips.
Kevin Ferguson, Highland Park
Always add masa harina. Ground-up Fritos works great as a substitute in a pinch.
Nicole Martin, Compton
Going through the Louis Burger drive-thru for them chili cheese fries or buying the enormous ‘homemade’ Costco container and putting it atop a baked potato.
Jairo Bogarin, owner of Hamburgers Nice
My best friend Tony used to LOVE chili cheese fries at Tom’s/Tommy’s/Tams/Jims/ etc. He would eat all of it! The bottom of the styrofoam plate resembled a Japanese garden after he was done forking it🍴
Khristian Diane, Long Beach
Chili John’s in Burbank is one of the oldest — The Hat in Alhambra is so good — and Louis Burger here in Long Beach is top-notch! I love chili cheese fries. One alternative is the chana masala fries from Badmaash. They are a vegetarian Indian version of chili cheese fries.
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An onslaught of Trump administration directives targeting international students are leaving some of them feeling worried and lost. And experts warn these could have adverse effects on U.S. industry and global growth.
What happened: The Department of Homeland Security says they have put some colleges and universities “on notice” after a memo sent out in August warned that they have “observed a rise in Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorizations that appear to violate regulatory requirements which permit CPT only where the training is an integral part of an established curriculum.”
CPT is unpaid or paid work, like internships, international students do to gain real world experiences.
Why it matters: Following the memo from the department, several universities including the University of Southern California, UCLA and UC Berkeley have paused or required additional information to determine if work experience is a requirement for a particular degree program.
Students react: For students, this is causing uncertainty: “ It came as a surprise to all the international students. We were not aware of it and there is a lot of tension among the international students,” said one USC student.
The Department of Homeland Security says they have put some colleges and universities “on notice” that they could be in violation of federal rules that dictate work opportunities for international students.
The directive has left some of those students feeling worried, as their schools pause opportunities to work in the United States.
And experts warn that it could have adverse effects on U.S. industry and global growth.
In late August, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, part of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a statement stating that they have “observed a rise" in violations related to Curricular Practical Training.
CPT is paid or unpaid work that students do as part of their degree program, like an internship. The administration says regulatory requirements permit CPT only where the training is “an integral part of an established curriculum.”
In a written statement, an unnamed DHS spokesperson told LAist, “Nothing about these regulations has changed. However, schools and employers should consider themselves on notice: under President Trump, abuse of this generous system will no longer be tolerated.”
LAist reached out to DHS for the percentage increase in CPT violations and specifically asked for data related to Southern California schools. We have not received an answer.
Following the memo from the department, several universities including the University of Southern California, UCLA and UC Berkeley have paused or required additional information to determine if work experience is a requirement for a particular degree program.
In a written statement to LAist, a spokesperson for the UCLA Dashew Center said, “UCLA has paused certain Curricular Practical Training authorizations while the university reviews recent federal guidance and determines next steps. UCLA is communicating directly with students who have affected CPT applications and remains committed to supporting our international students as we navigate these changes.”
For students, this is causing uncertainty.
“It came as a surprise to all the international students. We were not aware of it and there is a lot of tension among the international students,” said Nitesh, a student from India at USC. He asked that we only use his first name for fear of repercussions from speaking to the media.
Those who applied for CPT authorizations after Aug. 23 at USC now are in limbo waiting to see if their applications will be approved.
”It is a real industry exposure to us when it comes to learning,” Nithesh said about the CPT component. “We definitely get lots of learnings and value from classes and by doing projects, but CPT is a way for us to understand what happens in the industry and keep us up to date.”
Nitesh, who took out an $85,000 loan to come to the U.S. for his degree program, said he would have reconsidered coming here had he known about these regulations ahead of time.
”Because there is a lot happening and nobody has clarity, so there is a lot of ambiguity, and we are just waiting for the right information to come in,” he said.
The memo is the latest in a string of directives targeting international students. Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced new rules limiting how long international students can remain in the country, as opposed to remaining in the U.S. for as long as it takes to complete their degree program.
Santa Monica College has seen a drastic drop in international student enrollments: In fall 2016, the community college had more than 3,500 international students enrolled; that number has dropped to less than 1,600 this year.
Grace Smith, a spokesperson for Santa Monica College said, “In recent years, several interconnected federal restrictions continue to exert pressure on international enrollment and are likely to impact future enrollment cycles.”
Declining international student enrollment has a “significant impact on the college’s fiscal outlook,” Smith said as international student enrollment accounts for about 8% of the college’s unrestricted revenue.
Caltech’s president Ray Jayawardhana told LAist’s AirTalk program that he came to the U.S. as an international student from Sri Lanka.
“ Growing up in Sri Lanka, I thought of universities like Caltech in the United States as beacons on a hill,” he said. “They really were beckoning the best and the brightest from around the world, and I think it behooves us to preserve that attraction, preserve that draw, so that this country and the world at large benefits from students, from researchers, from scholars.”
While the uncertainties are “discouraging,” Jayawardhana said, Caltech is seeing “continued interest that's as strong as ever.”
Rachel Banks, senior director for public policy and legislative strategy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said the current climate for international students is the “most difficult and most challenging” it has been since World War II.
“Having gone through the first [Trump administration], there were certain expectations of what we might see coming,” she said. “What I think was unexpected was the severity and degree to which we saw the Trump administration make moves specifically with respect to international students.”
Banks says her organization projects that the loss of around 111,000 international student enrollments could cost the U.S. economy $3.4 billion and nearly 4,000 jobs. California’s economy could see a hit of about $500 million because of declining enrollment.
The volume of visa revocations, particularly for students involved in campus protests for Palestinian rights, was “unprecedented,” she said. The State Department’s move to pause on interviews for visa applications and renewals was also something that hadn’t happened at this scale before, Banks said. And the new visa limits for international students, she said, is “incredibly disruptive” and takes the decision making away from students and universities.
The new memo about CPT authorizations adds to the uncertainty, she said.
Following World War II, the government put a lot of emphasis into fostering and developing our higher education system, Banks said, which allowed universities “to attract the best and brightest talent and that has led to the numerous innovations and achievements that we've been able to see come out of the United States.”
That talent, she said, will now look to go to other countries more favorable to international students.
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In less than two years, the Olympics and Paralympics will take over Los Angeles for the summer of 2028, temporarily transforming the city and the region around it. To answer what that will mean for everyday Angelenos, LAist is launching our Olympics Monday to spotlight our ongoing coverage of the Games.
The backstory: Hosting the world’s largest sporting event will mean commandeering a fleet of nearly 2,000 public buses, reserving stretches of freeway lanes just for Olympics traffic flow, deploying thousands of law enforcement officers across venues, taking over UCLA and USC to make way for athletes and journalists, and flooding Southern California with millions of fans.
Why it matters: Los Angeles residents have more at stake than just inconvenience, ticket prices and traffic. The city of L.A. is the financial backstop for the Olympics, meaning taxpayers will pick up the tab if LA28, the private organization planning the Games, runs a deficit.
In less than two years, the Olympics and Paralympics will take over Los Angeles for the summer of 2028, temporarily transforming the city and the region around it.
Hosting the world’s largest sporting event will mean commandeering a fleet of nearly 2,000 public buses, reserving stretches of freeway lanes just for Olympics traffic flow, deploying thousands of law enforcement officers across venues, taking over UCLA and USC to make way for athletes and journalists, and flooding Southern California with millions of fans.
What will everyday Angelenos get out of all this? That depends. And it’s the question LAist is dedicated to answering every Monday as we spotlight our ongoing reporting on the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Los Angeles residents have more at stake than just inconvenience, ticket prices and traffic. The city of L.A. is the financial backstop for the Olympics, meaning taxpayers will pick up the tab if LA28, the private organization planning the Games, runs a deficit.
That makes every plan for the execution of the 2028 Games hugely important for the city — from how L.A. pens agreements with LA28 on reimbursement for city services to whether or not the federal government will pay for the enormous cost of policing the mega-event.
L.A. has hosted the Olympics before — first in 1932 and again in 1984. Both times the Games turned a profit — a rarity for a global event that has gained a reputation over the decades for leaving cities with debt and empty stadiums.
Local officials say they’re confident L.A. can pull off a third Olympic Games (and its first-ever Paralympics), pointing out that hosting will not require building any new sports venues.
Still, there’s plenty to watch, including how temporary construction will turn existing venues into Olympic competition sites, where billions in contracts for things like cleaning and construction will go and whether that money will stay local, and how the expansion of the L.A. Convention Center could affect its role as an Olympic venue.
And there are the ways the Olympics and Paralympics could influence the lives of L.A.’s most vulnerable. Researchers estimate that close to 6,000 unhoused people live within a mile of Olympic venues in L.A. County, and could be removed due to security requirements tied to the Games. Others worry about the enhanced police presence that is guaranteed to accompany Olympic and Paralympic competitions, and what the Trump administration’s involvement in planning could mean for the city.
We’ll be following all this and more. Every Monday, you can listen to the latest on how Los Angeles is preparing for the 2028 Olympics on The L.A. Report and on our homepage.
Topline:
Ballots are going out in less than a month, and California remains locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the president’s push to rein in universal mail-in voting.
Why it matters: The back-and-forth has some California voters likely wondering whether they’ll be able to vote by mail in this upcoming election. And if so, should they?
Read on for the state of play.
Ballots are going out in less than a month, and California remains locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the president’s push to rein in universal mail-in voting.
The back-and-forth has some California voters likely wondering whether they’ll be able to vote by mail in this upcoming election. And if so, should they?
In short — yes, mail-in voting will still be an option this year. And yes, it’s still safe and generally reliable, although county election officials are urging voters to send in their ballots as early as possible ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
In case you missed it, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling that will determine, at least for now, whether President Donald Trump can force the U.S. Postal Service to restrict vote-by-mail ballots in time for the midterm election. Trump wants to create a federal database of registered voters that the postal service would then cross-reference to ensure mail-in ballots are only delivered to eligible voters — in other words, U.S. citizens. His plan would have the postal service refuse to deliver ballots in states that withhold the data.
The dizzying, monthslong legal saga has baffled voters and even some election officials, which some voting rights advocates argue is probably the point.
But California election officials say the state is well-equipped to administer the election, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules. Although county registrars are monitoring the court rulings, they’re also preparing to mail ballots as usual by the state’s Oct. 5 deadline. Local and state officials are urging voters to make a plan to vote early and to use the state’s various non-mail voting options, such as drop-boxes and in-person voting sites, if they’re worried about the postal service.
“Like we do for all of our elections, we have contingency plans or disaster plans put into place,” said Tricia Webber, clerk and registrar of voters for Santa Cruz County and president of the California Association of County Election Officials.
Some counties, including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, are exploring options for pop-up stations where voters could request and submit ballots. In Santa Cruz County, Webber said her team is strategizing how to deploy their votemobile around the county to add yet another option for voters.
“Until there’s an answer,” Webber said, speaking of the pending court ruling, “California counties are doing business as usual.”
Trump issued an executive order in March that sought to give the federal government control over who receives mail-in ballots. Almost immediately, more than 20 Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, sued the Trump administration on the grounds that the Constitution allows only Congress and state governments to administer elections.
Federal district and appellate courts sided with the Democratic states and upheld a temporary injunction preventing the postal service from implementing any part of its plan while litigation continues.
The central questions in the case remain unresolved. The Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to continue planning for how it would implement the president’s order. Democratic states promptly sued again to contest the postal service’s plans.
The postal service’s proposal, the final version of which was published in August, would create a system to track each voter’s ballot with a unique barcode and cross-reference it with a database of eligible registered voters.
While some states fear they’ll need to reprint envelopes if the postal service’s rule is upheld, the vast majority of California counties already use compliant ballot envelopes, Webber said.
The federal government does not have a comprehensive list of every eligible registered voter and would need to rely on states to submit voter information to a “federal ballot mail portal” that does not yet exist.
It seems unlikely that the postal service’s portal would even be functional in time for the 2026 midterm elections. A postal service whistleblower asserted that the process to develop and deploy the portal was “rushed,” “risky and haphazard” due to the “impossible timeframe,” according to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office, which received the whistleblower complaint.
“In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,’” wrote Blumenthal, of Connecticut, in a late August letter to Postmaster General David Steiner.
The postmaster in June told a congressional committee that the postal service would withhold ballots in states that refuse to share basic voter information, including name, address and the unique ballot barcode.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber, California’s chief elections administrator, has not said whether California would comply with the proposed voter information requirement.
“California’s elections officials will continue to do everything within our power to ensure that every eligible California voter has the right to cast a mail ballot and have that vote count.”
Last year, the U.S. Justice Department sued Weber and five other Democratic secretaries of state for refusing to turn over their unredacted voter files, which contain far more sensitive personal information than the postal service rule would require. A federal judge in Southern California dismissed that case in January.
Ironically, concerns about the postal service’s reliability could facilitate what election officials and voting advocates have struggled to do for years — get people to vote earlier.
Unlike the lead-up to the June primary, where nervous Democrats urged fellow voters to wait until the last minute to pick a candidate for governor, social media is now awash with posts urging people to vote early and use ballot drop-boxes rather than rely on the mail.
“This whole play may backfire,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “What you’re seeing now on social media in response to this court drama and this confusion are lots of people urging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly what we’ve been saying.”
Voting earlier helps county election officials tabulate results more quickly on election night, which helps race callers like The Associated Press declare winners faster. And since ballots in envelopes take the longest to process, dropping them off several days before the deadline is the best way to help election officials count faster, since they can remove ballots from envelopes and prepare them for counting before Election Day.
“Fortunately, we give voters lots of options, and that’s really going to work to California’s benefit,” Alexander said. “Other states do not have the kind of robust process that creates lots of redundancies and avenues for voters to vote.”
Topline:
It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. For many Jews around the world, a highlight of the holiday will be hearing the shofar: an animal's horn blown like a trumpet.
What is a shofar? It can be the small, curved horn of a ram or the dramatic spiral of an African antelope. The sound it creates is unmistakable.
Read on to find out how this instrument became a holiday's spiritual soundtrack.
It can be the small, curved horn of a ram or the dramatic spiral of an African antelope. The sound it creates is unmistakable.
Creating that sound is not difficult, but it does take some practice, said Rabbi Alicia Jo Rabins, a musician based in Portland, Oregon.
You take a deep breath and purse your lips, like you are playing a brass instrument.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, begins at sunset Friday. Across the world, Jews will spend the two-day holiday in prayer, reflection and celebration. And for many, a highlight will be hearing the shofar: an animal's horn blown like a trumpet.
How did this primal instrument become a holiday's spiritual soundtrack?
" The most basic answer is that it makes noise, right? It calls people to attention," said Daniel Picus, an associate professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham who researches religious practices and rituals. "All of the instances in which a shofar is used in the Hebrew Bible, that is what it's doing."
Shofar blasts marked the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and the start of the Jubilee year, Picus said. Priests blew shofars when they circled the walls of Jericho to bring down the walls. The shofar marks moments of heightened experience and emotion — and Rosh Hashanah.
"In the Hebrew Bible, Rosh Hashanah is the day of trumpeting and the day of remembrance," Picus said. "The association of the shofar with Rosh Hashanah is right there in the Biblical text."
Centuries later, the Mishnah, the earliest rabbinic codification of law, drilled down into greater detail in the tractate Rosh Hashanah, laying out exactly how a shofar should be prepared (hollowed out), repaired (it depends), blown (a complex series of blasts at several times during the service, thanks to debate over linguistic interpretation), and whether or not it can be blown when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat (no, although some modern synagogues have changed course).
And within the Talmud and for centuries thereafter, people have debated the meaning of the shofar.
Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg, who teaches at the Hadar Institute, a center for Jewish learning based in New York City, pointed to several sources that compare the sound of the shofar to the cry of a mother in pain — the mother of the slain biblical military commander Sisera, and the cries of a woman in labor.
Rosenberg said you can hear that in the sound — especially the broken staccato blasts, known as "teruah."
"You can really imagine someone so caught up that they can't get the full sound out even, that they're gasping with their cries," he said.
Another interpretation comes from Maimonides, the medieval Jewish rabbi and scholar known as the Rambam, who wrote "The Laws of Repentance." He describes the blast of the shofar as a sort of spiritual wake-up call to become your best self.
"In Jewish law, we have this expression of daled amos, my four cubits: I focus on the 6 feet around me, as it were," he said. "It's easy to do that — and there's value in doing that sometimes. But the shofar, per the Rambam, wakes us up and says, 'No, there's more beyond what I can immediately see around me.'"
Rosenberg also pointed to Hasidic theories that the blowing of the shofar reenacts the breathing of life into the world. But he said one of the most powerful things about the shofar is that it doesn't say anything at all. "It transcends my words, it transcends my rational thoughts, and it really is just a feeling that I can hope to hold onto," he said.
Rabins, the Portland rabbi and musician, said the shofar can call across time to speak to those wordless places inside us. "It really brings you into the moment, and you also feel connected to your ancestors, who have been hearing this sound and making this sound for thousands of years," she said.
It's a sound, Rabin said, that can wake you up to all the joy and sadness of life, whether it be a birthday horn or a mother's cry. And it makes you pay attention — both to this moment, and to the year to come.
This story was created through a partnership between NPR and Religion News Service.
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