Chili con carne

The types of meat and other ingredients used vary based on geographic and personal tastes. Recipes provoke disputes among aficionados, some of whom insist that the word chili applies only to the basic dish, without beans and tomatoes. Chili con carne is a common dish for cook-offs, and may be used as a side. It is often garnished with various cheeses or salsas.

Origins and history

In writings from 1529, the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún described chili pepper-seasoned stews being eaten in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now the location of Mexico City. The use of beef as the primary meat originated when the Spanish introduced cattle to Mexico.

Most of the beef being consumed in Mexico, especially by the rancheros (cowboys) in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, consisted of dried salted beef known as tasajo or cecina. Tasajo was used in many dishes, including a stew of red chili sauce known as carne con chile, (meat with chili). Carne con chile was very common throughout much of Mexico, as it was an easy and cheap meal. An English naval officer and explorer, George Francis Lyon, wrote in 1826 about eating dried beef in a chili sauce with rancheros while travelling through northern Veracruz, near Pánuco:

I then joined a party of Rancheros who had assembled to kill a cow and cut her flesh into tasajo, —an operation which they performed with extraordinary skill and dispatch, separating the sinews from the flesh with anatomical precision. Two men devoted themselves to cutting the meat into long strings or ropes, which they threw to another who rubbed them well with salt: after this, no other process remained but to hang the beef in festoons over long poles to dry in the sun. I breakfasted with the Rancheros, when their work was done, on dry meat with chili sauce and piping hot tortillas served up in rapid succession. Our second course was a dish of cow's blood stewed with sweet herbs: and having prefaced our meal by a glass of white brandy distilled in the Rancho, we all ate heartily.

French colonist Mathieu de Fossey had a similar experience in 1831 when he was served tasajo cooked in chili in the village of Jáltipan near Coatzacoalcos in southern Veracruz:

That day we had a completely Indian meal, in which they served us tasajo cooked with chili, beans and tortillas. They call tasajo the meat that is dried in the sun after being salted and cut into long, thin strips to prevent putrefaction, which would be more active than the absorptive force of the sun, if one tried to dry it in thicker pieces, and despite this caution, it always retains an unpleasant smell and taste.

In her 1843 book Life in Mexico, Scottish noblewoman Frances Erskine Inglis wrote about eating a dish called embarrado, a composition of meat and chili, while attending the rodeo (cattle roundup) and herradero (cattle branding celebration) in the village of Santiago in the state of Hidalgo in 1840:

The Indians had cooked meat under the stones for us, which I found horrible, smelling and tasting of smoke. But we had also boiled fowls, and quantities of burning chili, hot tortillas, atole, or atolli, as the Indians call it, a species of cakes made of very fine maize and water, and sweetened with sugar or honey; embarrado, a favourite composition of meat and chili, very like mud, as the name imports, which I have not yet made up my mind to endure; quantities of fresh tunas, granaditas, bananas, aguacates, and other fruits, besides pulque, à discrétion.

American traveler Theodore Taylor Johnson also wrote about eating carne con chile while in San Blas, Nayarit, in 1849:

Returning to the town we obtained a true Mexican dinner, consisting of jerked beef stewed with onions and plenty of cayenne pepper, which they call "carne con chile colorado". This was accompanied by the ever lasting frijoles or beans; and for desert, delicious chocolate and tortillas.

In Spanish, the term "chile con carne" (consisting of the word chile (from the Nahuatl chīlli) and con carne, Spanish for "with meat") is first recorded in a book from 1857 about the Mexican–American War. A recipe dating back to the 1850s describes dried beef, suet, dried chili peppers and salt, which were pounded together, formed into bricks and left to dry, which could then be boiled in pots in an army encampment in Monterrey, of what is now Nuevo León, Mexico.

Chili also became commonly prepared in northern Mexico and southern Texas. Unlike some other Texas foods, such as barbecued brisket, chili largely originated with working-class Tejana and Mexican women. The "chili queens" of San Antonio, Texas, were particularly famous in previous decades for selling their inexpensive chili-flavored beef stew in their casual "chili joints".

The San Antonio Chili Stand, in operation at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, helped popularize chili by giving many Americans their first taste of it. San Antonio was a tourist destination and helped Texas-style chili con carne spread throughout the South and West of the United States. Chili con carne is the official dish of the U.S. state of Texas as designated by the House Concurrent Resolution Number 18 of the 65th Texas Legislature during its regular session in 1977.

Chili parlors

Before World War II, hundreds of small, family-run chili parlors could be found throughout Texas and other states, particularly those in which émigré Texans had made new homes. Each establishment usually had a claim to some kind of secret recipe.

By 1904, chili parlors were opening outside of Texas, in part due to the availability of commercial versions of chili powder, first manufactured in Texas in the late 19th century. After working at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Charles Taylor opened a chili parlor in Carlinville, Illinois, serving Mexican Chili. Varallo's, the oldest restaurant in Tennessee, opened as a chili parlor in 1907, competing with other chili parlors that had opened in Nashville during the 1890s. In the 1920s and 1930s, chains of diner-style chili parlors began opening in the Midwest.

Cincinnati chili is a substantially different dish developed by Macedonian and Greek immigrants, deriving from their own culinary traditions. Dozens of restaurants offer this style throughout the Cincinnati area. It can be traced back to at least 1922, when the original Empress Chili location opened.

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Chili John's chili parlor was founded in 1913. As with Cincinnati chili, their chili is most commonly served over spaghetti with oyster crackers, but the recipe has more chili powder and fat. The original proprietor's son opened a second location in Burbank, California, in 1946, which remains open; the Green Bay location closed in 2020.

Until the late 2000s, a chili parlor dating to 1904, O.T. Hodge, continued to operate in St. Louis. It featured a chili-topped dish called a slinger: two cheeseburger patties, hash browns, and two eggs, smothered in chili. No O.T. Hodge-branded locations remain.

Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington, DC, founded in 1958, is a significant local institution and has been noted on national lists, although the Washington Post called the food "awful" in a 2016 review, despite the restaurant's "importance."