Front Burner: Hot for chili
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Remember that old Pace Picante sauce commercial where the cowboys discover the other brand is made in New York City?
“Get a rope,” one guy growled.
Well, I’m nervously rubbing my throat right now, because I’m about to declare what some might consider another hanging offense: I believe beans belong in chili.
Whoa, some of you are thinking. Rein up. That’s not real chili!
Actually, as I’ve discovered while talking about any contentious food subject (barbecue, pizza, Coke versus Pepsi), it all depends upon perspective.
To continue reading this column, click here.
To see the original blog entry where we discussed beans in chili, click here.
Check out this recipe for Texas Chili.
November 7, 2012 - 10:42 AM
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This comment was left on the previous blog post, but it was very interesting so I wanted to copy and paste it on this thread, too:
Great article on Chili this morning. The International Chili Society requires competition chili to be prepared on-site in less than four hours. You can’t cook beans from scratch in that amount of time. Cowboys on the range would dry their beef and pound it into bricks with chilies as a preservative. At the end of the day the brick would go into a pot of water and reconstitute, viola, chili. San Antonio is regarded as the place where chili was discovered between 1880 and 1890. Street vendors, known as Chili Queens, cooked and sold chili on the streets until 1943. Then the city made them adhere to the same regulations as restaurants, so they just disappeared. The first chili powder is attributed to William Gebhardt in 1896; though DeWitt Clinton Penderey could also claim the first sale of chili powder around the same time. Gebhardt and Penderey are still household names in the chili world. This information came from Frank X. Tolbert. He first published “A Bowl of Red” in 1953 and it was updated in 1988. It has the most complete history of chili and some great recipes.
Comment by TWA Chili — November 7, 2012 @ 10:41 am |Edit This
It is interesting. Thanks for reposting it.
In reading about Texas chili disallowing tomatoes & beans, I had the immediate thought – ‘They don’t know what good chili is!…’
Then I remembered that it took me about two decades to actually try brisket, since it wasn’t pork barbecue. The only problem was – the first brisket I tried was better than about 90% of the pork barbecue I’d ever had in my life. For the record, I’ve easily had thousands of samples of barbecue, literally. Between the sandwiches & ‘plates’, that’s a soft number.
So, back to the point, I’ll have to try Texas style chili, and then see what I think. I love beans in chili, but life is made much better by experiencing new things. Especially in food. This winter will be a good time to experiment & try varying versions of the recipe. Thanks, Lindsey!
CR, indeed. It seems to me that Texas chili and our version of chili are about as different as beef stew and vegetable-beef soup, but I like both of those things. I think my aversion to chili without beans applies more to something made with ground beef than it does to non-ground beef being stewed until it is tender. How could that be bad, right?
Lindsey, it’s like the first time I tried andouille sausage in gumbo. Or the first time I had beef sausage. Earl Campbell’s brand. WOW! That was excellent! The BEST I have ever eaten! You can mail order it, as it’s not common in this area. That would be my first choice of meat to put in my Texas chili. Especially since Earl is such an icon. But far more because whoever he has process his sausage is 5-star caliber.
As for ground beef, Lindsey, I’ve changed to pasture raised ground turkey in all cases unless I have some grass-fed ground beef. There’s just far too many disease-ridden cases from the factory meat plants.
Beans belong in chile. Don’t waste your time. Just go to the Texas Tavern and buy it. None better. Dan Casey wouldn’t know it unless Obama served it to him.