THEY'RE GOOD FOR YOUR HEART! Since there was a bit of a fearsome debate late night on Twitter amongst several ThingThrowers, decided to raise it here--Chili Con Carne--beans, or no beans? Can we at least all agree that
Cincinnati Chili is not, in fact, really chili?
I'm not a fan of beans in general, so I'm a definitive vote for no beans.
ReplyDeletei don't know why you would need beans and ground beef in the same dish. you can do it, it's just unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteIf it has beans it is a stew, not chili. FACT.
ReplyDeleteCincinnati chili is "an Americanized version of a Greek stew." From the Authentic History of Cincinnati Chili.
Asked and answered. Next question.
Agreed on Cincinnati, and of course chili contains beans. Would you leave the sausage out of a hot dog?
ReplyDeleteBecause without each other, it's not chili?
ReplyDeleteIf it doesn't have beans, it's a beef stew. Beans is one of the essential ingredients to make it a chili.
ReplyDelete"Would you leave the sausage out of a hot dog?"
ReplyDeleteWhat the fuck does that even mean? You are demonstrating a lack of basic food knowledge or a tenuous grasp of earth languages. Are you, in fact, an alien?
The man believes in driving at the speed limit in the passing lane. He's a menace.
ReplyDeleteIt's an analogy; both are essential ingredients to their dish, a sausage in the hot dog and beans in the chili. What's confusing about that?
ReplyDeletePresumably, you're still cooking it slowly with onions, a tomato base, and some kind of capsaicin vehicle. Linguistic prescriptivism aside, if the price of it not being chili is nevertheless something better, i'm all for it. The key word, however, is chili, so if you have that, I think it's covered.
ReplyDeleteThe best hot dogs have no pork at all.
ReplyDeleteOf course. Hot dogs contain a beef sausage. What's the issue?
ReplyDeleteWhy yes, I do believe in driving safely up to the speed limit. Not my fault that the people I'm trying to pass in the right lane are speeding, breaking the law and andangering themselves and others.
ReplyDeleteBut if you don't have beans it's basically just a beef and onion dish. So....not chili.
ReplyDeleteI agree if you take out the tomatoes and the peppers ,you no longer have chili. If you were to have ground beef, beans, and onions without the tomato or chili, you wouldn't have chili, just farts. If you think the beans improve the taste of the dish, whatever you want to call it, throw them in. I don't think they do. It's a flavor argument not a semantic one.
ReplyDeletePep: You know, uh. Friday, we're allowed to go 55... On some occasions, even faster.Joe: I'm well aware of the federally mandated speed limit, Streebeck. But did it ever occur to you that, by going 8 miles an hour slower, we might save some gasoline and ease the burden on the poor taxpayers out there who pay our salaries?
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me, I need to pick up the Virgin Connie Swale.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm in Texas and I order "chili" it's pretty much not going to come with beans. If I order "pizza" in Chicago, I'm going to get a different thing than what I order in New York. But trying to tell someone they're using the word wrong is why Sweden has never finished their equivalent of the OED.
ReplyDeleteNo true Scotsman would eat a Haggis made like that...
Wait, somebody else sang that song when they were kids? I thought my brothers made it up.
ReplyDeleteUmm, I can let you have Connie Swale. She ain't what she used to be.
ReplyDeletehot dogs are sausages, but not all sausages are hot dogs. Sausages, including hot dogs, can include any a variety of ground meats and various spices.
ReplyDeleteI'm sticking with alien.
I don't usually enable JavaScript, but chili is something near and dear to my heart.
ReplyDeleteChili, like barbecue, was developed as a way to make poor and/or tough cuts of meat edible. Unlike barbecue, it's a specific dish, so it needs a few specific ingredients. There are three things common to every chili:
1) Meat. Fun fact: the "carne" in "chili con carne" refers to beef, or did in 100-years-ago Texico: it was distinguished from chili con caballo, I guess. Anyway, if you want to go all TopChef and have a "protein", that's tolerable. But "vegetarian chili" is like "Welsh rarebit"; the adjective is meant not to describe the food, but to make fun of a certain subset of humanity.
2) Chile peppers. Not chili without chiles.
3) Liquid. It's hard to simmer food without it. It doesn't have to be beer, but really it does.
Meat, heavily spiced and slow-simmered. That's it. Anything else is accoutrement, even onions and garlic. Adding beans will get you kicked out of Texas, but I can't remember the last time I made chili without them. Adding tomatoes puts you dangerously close to pasta sauce territory, but, like saying "literally" when you mean "figuratively", it's acceptable in many circumstances.
I don't know (or particularly care) what is or is not chili from a linguistic perspective. I know that I like what *I* call chili better with beans than without them. I like my Wegmans chili with beans. I like my Firehouse Subs chili with beans. I order my Hard Times chili with beans. And, most of all, I lurve my Clyde's chili (best I've ever had) with beans.
ReplyDeleteI love beans, so I put them in my chili if there is meat in it or not because I also like vegtarian chili and chicken chili. I totally get that my preferred chilis are more fusion in style than OG chili.
ReplyDelete