There Are No Beans In Chile

Chili (full chili con carne) is a barbecue dish pure and simple from the regional American cuisine known as TexMex. In it there are a lot of Mexican influences, but chili con corne is totally unknown in Mexico itself. All sorts of anecdotes circulate about the origins of chili. Thus it is said to have been invented by a prison cook who had the thankless task of preparing a meal for his undoubtedly starving fellow inmates who had been forced to do hard labor all day in the blisteringly hot sun, with little else at his disposal but a batch of half rotten meat. To kill as many bacteria as possible, he decided to simmer that meat for hours, and to combat the pungent smell, he added a load of onions and garlic. The bad taste the cook masked by filling his stew completely with the hottest chili peppers he could find. His creation, peppers with meat, was enthusiastically received.

In fact, chili originated in the last quarter of the 19th century as an easy-to-prepare dish in the field kitchens of cowboys during cattle drives. Around 1900, it was offered for sale by Mexican housewives (the chili queens) at the San Antonio market in Texas, a center of livestock farming.

Originally, there are no beans in chili. That addition only came about during the years of the Great Depression (the crisis of the 1930s) as a cheap alternative to expensive meat. Since then, there has been a bitter battle between (Texas) purists who stubbornly insist that there should be no beans in chili and freethinkers who actually like it. Real chili (without beans) is the official state dish of Texas and the semi-official national anthem of Texas is a song titled “If you know beans about chili, you know that chili has no beans” by Ken Finlay. Real chili, that is, without beans, is also known in Texas as a “bowl of red.