Beef chili, topped with melted cheese, and baked inside flaky, tender biscuits is what you’ve got going on here. The chili cheese cups are going to be a major hit at your next tailgating party, holiday party, or for your average Monday night dinner that needs to be easy and ready in under 30 minutes.
I made beef chili in under 10 minutes by quickly browning ground beef, adding beans, tomato paste, and liberally seasoning with dried onion, chili powder, cumin, and smoked paprika. The chili is very thick by design. A thinner chili would create soggy biscuit dough and that wouldn’t be good. Transfer the chili into biscuit dough that you press into two standard 12-cup muffin pans. I tested two refrigerated biscuit doughs for the recipe – Trader Joe’s Buttermilk Biscuit Dough and Pillsbury Grands Flaky Layers. In terms of final taste, there wasn’t a ton of difference.
In working with the raw dough however TJ’s must have more yeast because it was stretchier and also wanted to ‘spring back’ to it’s original shape. Pillsbury dough wasn’t nearly as stretchy and it was easier to mold in the muffin pan and stayed put but was easier to rip since it wasn’t as springy. Use whatever is most convenient for you to grab from the refrigerated case at your grocery store. Don’t overfill the raw dough with chili or cheese because the biscuits rise like crazy in the oven and you don’t want a chili cheese overflow. Midway through baking smash everything down with the back of a spoon because everything will have risen dramatically and while you’re at it, add more cheese. The more cheese the merrier is my life motto.
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