No beans!!

But, I have gotten many arguments on that.

Beans? Beans? In chili? Yuck, puh, gag.

If the full name is "Chil con Carne", what do you have when you subtract the meat and would anyone eat that? I wouldn't. Give me beans. Plus they're good for the heart. :D

"Cheap beef" is usually fatty, although when using the beef from fresh-killed un-fattened "Corrientes" (range cattle), a large dollop of kidney fat comes in handy for browning.

Tomato sauce? I've seen growed men judging chili-cookoffs fall on the ground, seized by fits, chewing thorny brushado, and frothing at the mouth, having discovered that some novillero has throwed tomato sauce or paste in the chili. Next you'll be wanting to throw a handful of mesquite beans and a teacup of buffler gall.

The only excuses for tomatoes occurs when cooking chili in the morning and needing a Bloody Mary or for mixing Sangrita (Orange Juice, Tomato Juice, Lime Juice, Salt, Chile Pequin) to chase good Tequila or bad Mescal.

Yet Wick Fowler managed to tie once and win once at the Terlingua Chili cook-off even after adding 8 oz. of tomato sauce to his recipe.

+1

Don't care if that renders it un-authentic for the purists or not, gotta have beans

I'm a purist, but I have no problems with beans being served on the side. Hell, throw them in with the chili, if you like along with any of the suggested additions that TMOliver mentions, but for God's sake don't cook the beans with the chili. That's where a mortal sin gets committed. lol

All the flavor of beef is in the fat, as it is in most things. Just because you cut it off, and then add it back does not make beef cheap. Besides the best chili is made from ground beef anyway. It needs some fat in it.

In the old days during one of the summers I worked at the packing house I was in charge of the production of ground beef. The carefully calibrated scientific method used to produce the proper amount of beef to fat was the easiest for the 33 percent fat ground beef used by the school district. Two shovel fulls of beef chunks to one shovel full of fat chunks, chunked that is into the hopper on top of the grinder. Very tasty.

You are incorrect. My mother said a bowl of red requires tomato sauce. Not much, but some.

We make it with both beef and beans in Illinois, and we spell it "chilli". I just mention that so the no-bean "chili" purists can think of it as a different dish if they prefer.

I meant to add this link to a letter to the NY Times from the late Senator Alan Dixon, which includes his own chilli recipe.

Shoot! In Illinois they even make chili/chilli with ground meat, a custom translated from the Wendy's recipe book which seems to include green (bell) pepper along with beans (often those godless "Kidney beans").

Fixed that way, Chili becomes little more than that famous US Navy breakfast dish served atop cold toast, ".... on a Shingle"/"SOS".

I did once eat some pretty good chili with added tomato. The cook throwed in a bottle of otherwise undrinkable Bloody Mary Mix, and we drank the vodka neat. I have another friend whose chili uses black coffee, but then we're transgressing upon the broad general category of "Mole", and I guess a little dark chocolate would work too.

I once, in my youth, met Wick Fowler. He was a PR man, and even Frank Tolbert claimed his knowledge of Chili was purely promotional. Anyway. by the time you drive the long dusty road to Terlingua, you can tolerate all sorts of culinary excess, even if you stop for a dip and a sixpack at Balmorhea.

Back when cowtown was indeed cowtown, the big managers of the packing house always came from Chicago. When I was about 10 the latest one invited my father and the family over for dinner. To make use feel at home his wife, as I see now, decided to serve chilli. When shown what I was going to be having for dinner I said the 10 year old equivalent of "What in the he** is this cr**. I am not eating this ...." I can still see that house's kitchen for some reason. Fortunately none of the imported from Chicago managers stayed long.

A little OT, but it reminds me of a story my first boss, Al Kruse told me. He was invited to dinner at the home of a co-worker. The co-worker was from Mexico and Al was hoping for/expecting an authentic Mexican home cooked meal. He was served cheeseburgers. When he asked his co-worker later on, he was told that she thought he was Mexican too since his name was Cruz and he would want something authentically American.

It's not illegal. They would be liable under civil law if they have breached their contract with you as the diner. You could just voice your concerns and almost everywhere would send something back. I'm not sure how this is threadworthy.

Real chili purists would stick to the old school way of preparation as a way of stabilizing beef without the use of refrigeration. That would include dried beef (not fresh), suet, dried chili pepper and salt. That all gets smashed together, formed in to cubes and dried. People using anything else including fresh meat, pepper, beer, herbs, spices, onion, vinegar, wine and those not using suet are NOT purists. That would encompass pretty much every pompous *** that claims to be such.

Chili like sandwiches, sausages, barbeque, etc, can mean different things for different people in different places. There's no need to look down on people who put a different spin on things.

Remind me not to invite any of you people over for chilli ever. Cos in those house it involves kidney beans, bell peppers and copious amounts of tomato

It was just a conversation item...and this is the dining section of a travel message board, not the filing website of the federal district court.

Hey, it's made it to 4+ pages, so there must be something there. :cool:

Your post reminds of my dad's descriptions of his childhood memories of chili/chilli being cooked starting from a block of fat and meat and seasonings. He grew up poor in downstate Illinois during the Depression. His lifelong favorite storebought/restaurant chilli was the local favorite, Taylor's, made in Carlinville, Illinois. A box comes with two cans that you open and mix: one with kidney beans, and one with a thick paste of meat, fat, and seasonings. Any of us kids who go downstate to visit are expected to bring back at least a half a dozen boxes of Taylor's chilli to share with those who weren't able to make the trip.

Welsh rabbit.

I mean, how much more deceptive can you get? It's not Welsh, and it contains no rabbit whatsoever.

When I was a kid my older brother used to eat that. I kept going over in my mind, welsh rabbit, welsh rabbit? I never saw any ears or legs sticking out of it. I was very confused.

I've never once heard it referred to as Welsh rabbit, and at first I thought you were having a laugh. Google tells me that is the original name, so go figure!

Welsh rarebit....rabbit as a variation I guess.

Welsh "rarebit" is a relatively recent variant. Rabbit is the original,
and it's a sort of slur on the Welsh, implying that these people are
stupid or poverty-stricken or deceptive that they melt cheese on
toast and call it rabbit.

The Welshman's dishonest, he cheats when he can,
He's little and dark, more monkey than man!
He works underground with a lamp on his hat
And sings far too loud, far too often, and flat!
[Flanders and Swann]

Terms of this ilk include Scotch woodcock (eggs
on toast), French horn, and Chinese fire drill.

The origin of Rabbit/Rarebit remains as cloudy as the veil hanging over Snowdon. The "Rarebit" affectation does appear to have been sort of an "elite" adjustment to the slightly insulting original title, a meat substitute for the poor Welsh.

Patrick O'Brian's "Jack Aubrey" provides the fame for a similar dish, "Toasted Cheese", apparently Cheddar melted and browned in a cast iron dish/pan.

The greatest Welsh Rabbit in my memory was my sainted mother's, who mixed some dark beer and a dollop of Worcestershire into the melting cheese, and served it in a flameproof dish atop crisply toasted sourdough slices, the entire dish topped with sliced tomato, then browned under a boiler. Further ascendancy into the pantheon of good eats was achieved by topping the whole thing with a couple of slices of crisp bacon. Mom was a wise housewife, and never purchased "processed" cheese, until the 50s craze for the non-TexMex restaurant version of Chile con Queso, Velveeta heated with a can of Rotel Tomatoes & Green Chiles, arrived. As plebeian as the combination seems (Velveeta??), a dollop on scrambled eggs or an omelet remains hard to beat!

Deleted - my analogy makes no sense...

I have that problem with Soup du Jour. It's usually good but it's always different.

;) :D

Seriously, though, I once ordered a "Thai Chicken Salad" and got a tray with (1) chicken in curry sauce over rice and (2) a salad of iceberg lettuce and tomato. It was at a small, nearly deserted bistro-attached-to-pub in a NZ village in the off-season and was literally the only place in town serving food in the evening; I reckon the bartender was filling in for the cook.

Deleted

Was the curry sauce thai curry? Maybe they were just missing some punctuation - thai chicken, salad :D

From my childhood, long ago, I still remember the occasional appearance on menus of the openly non-deceptive "Mock Turtle Soup".

No doubt made with mock turtle neck stock. :D

I'd say "Rocky Mountain Oysters" is quite deceptive. I mean, who would eat them if they were listed as "Bull Testicles"?

Along the same vein, how about "turkey fries"? :eek:

There were "Rooster Fries" when I spotted them in Nashville.

And "Lamb Fries" in a Chevy Chase film.

Seems we're getting more towards the cutesy euphemisms than the
actually deceptive terms. Which reminds me of a dish I had last week:
hormone in miso sauce. Turns out it wasn't even sweetbreads or
anything like that: it was pig intestines. I thought they were delicious,
as do I find most offal, including lamb, turkey, or bull balls (@BamaVol,
@Pa Kettle) if fried in decent oil.

Speaking of things with a slightly racy edge, how about "soft roe"?

From memory, just a generic orange-colored sauce, probably out of a jar. More Thai than, say, Indian, I guess.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the bartender (bus boy? random passerby?) who prepared the meal read it with a comma. When I ordered, I had pretty vague expectations but even so. :eek:

It was tasty enough and it was the only show in town, so no hard feelings. I still love you, NZ. :)