Chili: Beans or no beans? (West, Campbell: home, racist, company)

[BobTex]

I like beans.

I like chili .

I don't want beans in my chili.

It is sacrilegious to me ... I'll bet y'all put boiled eggs in your gumbo along with potato salad.

Welll ... do you?????

Now ... I do like a big pot of pintos with sausage links cut up in it and I'll usually dice up some ham in it too. I like my beans cooked down with a thick gravy too!!! I'll even put it over rice.

Since deer season opens for me Saturday and I still have about 3 lbs of ground up deer in the freezer I'd say Friday will be chili makin day!

Dang ... I'm gettin hungry thinkin about it!!!!!

[TexasReb]

=BobTex;32015685]I like beans.

I like chili .

I don't want beans in my chili.

It is sacrilegious to me ... I'll bet y'all put boiled eggs in your gumbo along with potato salad.

This summation says it all, my friend! Good job!

Something like (at least IMHO)?

I like sugar. I also like cornbread and grits. BUT...to add sugar into the former turns it into pound cake. To add it into the latter? Turns it into Cream of Wheat! To add beans to chili makes it into a yankee version of what should be Texas chili within our borders!

[doctorjef]

Don't really care myself, but the chili my Hispamic nanny in Corpus Christi taught my mother to make had both beef and dark red kidney beans, as well as a bit of bacon added toward the end. This is the chili I ate regularly as a kid and which I continue to make a variation of today.

Most important are very generous quantities of chili powder, comino, loads of fresh crushed garlic, and cooked down onion. The problem is really not beans or no beans, but rather not enough spices. Having said that, beans should be a secondary ingredient, the beef really high quality (I like to use ground serloin these days) and any veg apart from onion, garlic, and very little fresh tomato added at the very end are absolutely verboten.

IMO.

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by TexasReb

This summation says it all, my friend! Good job!

Something like (at least IMHO)?

I like sugar. I also like cornbread and grits. BUT...to add sugar into the former turns it into pound cake. To add it into the latter? Turns it into Cream of Wheat! To add beans to chili makes it into a yankee version of what should be Texas chili within our borders!

There is nothing inauthentic about the inclusion of beans. Work yourselves up into some xenophobic hysteria if you want, but I will have beans with my chili as many native and true Texans do....!

[TwinbrookNine]

We have up here what we refer to as "Polish Chili" which has tons of onions, and garlic, green pepper; very very little chili powder, and YES - beans. Beans take the "edge" off the chili - which yes, made this way, does, in fact, taste somewhat like watery sloppy joes. But the beans really make it. Yum!
We wouldn't have it any other way.

[Gilah G.]

Originally Posted by TXNGL

I think it's a Midwestern thing. Chili mac or something like that.

Of course!!!!
Now that you say chili MAC, that makes sense!!!
Bean camp.
But no bean chili on dogs, Fritos, bake potatoes.

And what's with the cinnamon in chili. That's just WRONG!

[Gilah G.]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

Don't really care myself, but the chili my Hispamic nanny in Corpus Christi taught my mother to make had both beef and dark red kidney beans, as well as a bit of bacon added toward the end. This is the chili I ate regularly as a kid and which I continue to make a variation of today.

Most important are very generous quantities of chili powder, comino, loads of fresh crushed garlic, and cooked down onion. The problem is really not beans or no beans, but rather not enough spices. Having said that, beans should be a secondary ingredient, the beef really high quality (I like to use ground serloin these days) and any veg apart from onion, garlic, and very little fresh tomato added at the very end are absolutely verboten.

IMO.

Yep!!

[KathrynAragon]

Southerner by birth, belated Texan by the grace of God here. (I've lived in Texas for about 25 years and thanks to the generosity of Texans, I've been told repeatedly that this qualifies me to identify as a Texan!)

Hell no to the beans and may God have mercy on her soul for trying to eat chili with noodles.

I'm honestly not sure I've ever even TASTED chili with beans. Anywhere. Ever.

Now - red beans and rice, with lots of sausage in them...that's a whole other story...

[Two4damoney]

Originally Posted by TXNGL

I think it's a Midwestern thing. Chili mac or something like that.

Oh ok. I've had chili mac in California. Ok, now it makes sense to me.

[DitsyD]

Chili, as defined by the two major chili cook-off organizers, does not include beans.

http://www.chili.org/documents/CASI%...ule%20Book.pdf
ICS | International Chili Society

If you add beans to chili, then you have made a different dish than chili, you have made chili with beans. Two different dishes. It is like having a beer or having a beer with lemonade added. You don't call that second one a beer, you call it a shandy.