National Chili Day
Chili is one of those comfort foods that taps into my reservoir of nostalgia. It reminds me of Mom and her insistence on having a Coca-Cola with it. It reminds my little sister and I cuddled up with Mom under the scraps of beauty afghan her aunt made for her. It also reminds me of hiding from the bat that got into the apartment… but that’s a whole other story.
Photo by Katerina Holmes
My point being that chili tastes, to me, like home. As soon as I feel that first crisp autumn breeze, it is time for me to bust out my cauldron and fill it up with mundane ingredients that, when combined in one of the million correct ways, create a magic stew with the power to transport me home. Even if just for a little bit. Plus, it sticks to my bones and keeps me warm when the weather turns cooler, so it has that going for it, which is nice.
I have never met two people who make chili the same way. Not once. And that’s not even a little bit surprising given all the closely guarded family recipes, secret ingredients, and hotly contested debates about what makes chili chili. Beans? No beans? What kind of beans? Tomatoes? What type of meat? What cut? What kind of peppers? There are as many ways to make chili as there are people who want to eat some chili. And that infinite variation is part of what National Chili Day celebrates: it makes the dish accessible to a wide range of tastes, to the extent that only 5% of respondents reported disliking chili, as well as a wide range of dietary requirements and budgets.
Observed on the fourth Thursday of February, National Chili Day celebrates this warm, hearty dish in all its variations. National Chili Day was cooked up by Rich Kelly, owner of Hard Times Cafe—an Alexandria, Virginia chili parlor—in 2006. Though there have been chili potlucks for ages and competitive chili cook offs since 1967 (at the latest), National Chili Day provides a specific, happy excuse for more chili and more gatherings around bowls filled to the brim with the good stuff. It is fitting to observe this unofficial holiday toward the end of February, giving us something warm and spicy (to varying degrees) to help ward off the cold as we see Spring growing on the horizon.
Photo by Juraj Varga
There are a number of legends about the origins of chili: from pre-Columbian Aztecs to Canary Islander immigrants, from California-bound gold prospectors to, as John Nova Lomax put it, “a proto-psychedelic, hyper-Catholic, Spanish/Mexican Indian tale about a teleporting, recipe-sharing Blue Nun.” What is certain is that San Antonio, Texas (shout out to my SA peeps!) played a central role in the history of chili. Whether what we now know as chili con carne—the state dish of Texas—first appeared in the 17th, 18th, or 19th century, it made its debut in San Antonio. Served up by the city’s Chili Queens in open market stands—and later, if they were very lucky, small cafés—chili became a uniting dish, with folks of all walks of life lining up for chili on tamales or served with tortillas. As the railroads began to connect San Antonio with the rest of the United States, the Chili Queens’ stands became a frequent tourist haunt where travelers were drawn to this dish that was peculiar to San Antonio and who then took their experiences of chili con carne back home with them. Chili’s popularity further soared when a San Antonio chili stand was set up at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
As the broader United States became increasingly exposed to chili, divergences began and specific region preparations took shape. As did the debates about what makes chili chili. In Texas, a bowl of red contains beef, tomatoes, and red chiles—and no beans whatsoever. In Springfield, Illinois, chilli is ground beef, beans, chiles, hot oil, and no tomatoes. Kansas City chili is brisket …or burnt tips …or pork shoulder, seasoned with Worcestershire sauce and cumin and is, often, otherwise served DIY: you pick how juicy you want the meat, what condiments you want, what toppings, etc. There’s New Mexico verde chili, Frito pie, Chasen’s chili, and so on. Cincinnati chili might get more sidelong glances than many other regional variations on the dish between its inclusion of spices like cinnamon and nutmeg and it’s being served on top of spaghetti noodles.
And that’s not even touching on family recipes and secret ingredients! Coffee, beer, chocolate, cinnamon, bacon grease, and bourbon are just a handful of the secret ingredients I’ve heard people use in their recipes and I’ve tried almost all of them with a lot of success. My chili is a variation on Mom’s chili which was a variation of her mother’s which seems to have chiefly drawn from Cincinnati chili (my grandparents grew downriver from Cincinnati in Louisville, so that tracks). My grandmother adapted her recipe to feed a family of eight; Mom adapted hers to stretch as far as possible while also keeping our bellies full during years and years of lean times; I’ve adapted mine to be some kind of love child between my family’s interpretations of Cincinnati chili and that Texas chili born in my beloved Alamo City. I always serve it in a bowl. It’s thick like Texas chili and, yes, I serve it over pasta (though, I like using rotini because of the way it holds onto the chili). Sometimes I serve it with some sweet jalapeño cornbread and sometimes with crackers. It packs varying degrees of heat (depends on who I’m cooking for) and, yes, it has beans in it. And it has a whole lot of just my personal culinary flare.
But I don’t think I could ever give anyone the exact recipe because I never end up making it the same way twice. While making chili is kind of a ritual for me—one that connects me to my mom and my sisters to two places I get homesick for—it is also a bit freeform. To invoke what is probably a pretentious analogy, I think of it like writing variations on a musical theme: the base ingredients are the same, as are the thematic motifs, but there are complex and dynamic dialogues occurring between each of the spices and between each spice and the base ingredients, just as there are between each of the instruments and between each instrument and the theme. Like I said, probably pretentious, but the visuals of the analogy work for me.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska
Regardless of what your regional chili preference is, whether or not your favorite chili is as much as bastardization as mine, or how much mustard you want those chiles to put on the heat, we can all—well, except you 5%, I guess you should have something you enjoy—appreciate a hot bowl of chili on this late February day. So, if you’re lucky enough to have one nearby, pay a visit to your local chili parlor or dust of your favorite chili recipe and cook up a batch of the good stuff. If you’re feeling particularly daring, you could try a completely different kind of chili than you usually eat; the internet is teeming with chili recipes from all corners of the United States.Maybe don’t try this particular chili recipe, though.And while you’re filling your belly with warm chili this National Chili Day, I also invite you to learn more about the origins of chili and about the San Antonio Chili Queens, in particular. Our culinary history can tell us a lot about how we’ve interacted with other people over time, about historical struggles, and about the impact marginalized communities have had and continue to have on our culinary—and, thus, social and political—landscape. In fact, I hope we can all take some time, even just every now and then, to learn more about all kinds of our food history: it can teach us a lot about ourselves and our communities.Happy National Chili Day!