How chili became a Texas staple

Chili con carne and Texas-style chili is a spicy stew of Mexican origin made with chili peppers, meat, tomatoes, and beans. How did chili become a Texas staple, and what can its history help us understand about the dish? The lessons trace its path through food traditions, practical cooking, and changing ideas about what belongs in chili.

2 articles, 1 video, 1 book · about 1 hr 2 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   Chili con carne and Texas-style chili · Wikipedia · 15 min read

   Tasajo, dried salted beef, was used in many dishes, including carne con chile, a stew of red chili sauce that was very common throughout much of Mexico. George Francis Lyon wrote in 1826 about eating dry meat with chili sauce and tortillas with rancheros. Texas-style chili appealed to rancher Lyman Davis, who owned a meat market and was a particular fan of it. In the 1880s, he and an experienced range cook began selling local cafés chili made with chunks of lean beef and rendered beef suet. The Chili Appreciation Society International, an organization that mainly operates in Texas, specified in 1999 that cooks in its competitions are forbidden to include beans in official chili or marinate any meats. Whether beans belong in chili has long been a matter of contention among chili cooks.

2. Read
   

   "Chili History, Legends and Recipes" · whatscookingamerica.net · 21 min read

   Trail cooks made a sort of stew by pounding dried beef, fat, pepper, salt, and chile peppers into stackable rectangles that could be rehydrated with boiling water. These "brick chili" or "chili bricks" could be boiled in pots along the trail, and DeGolyer believed chili con carne began as the "pemmican of the Southwest." Frank H. Bushick's July 1927 article recalled that, in the old days, a big plate of chili and beans with a tortilla on the side cost a dime. Bushick also recalled that a Mexican bootblack and a silk-hatted tourist would eat side by side, each unconscious or oblivious of the other.

3. Watch
   

   Texas Chile Con Carne (No Beans, Chunky Beef) | Kenji's Cooking Show · YouTube · 26 min watch

   The video is titled "Texas Chile Con Carne (No Beans, Chunky Beef)." It relates to chili con carne and Texas-style chili through its focus on a chunky beef version without beans.

4. Book
   

   Joy of Cooking · Bookshop.org

   Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer covers barbecuing, smoking, and other outdoor cooking methods in greater detail.

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