Chili in its purest form is meat, chili peppers and spices, just like pizza in its purest form is dough, tomato sauce and cheese. You can add beans/tomatoes/onions etc. to chili just like you can add toppings to pizza. It’s still chili, just gussied up.
Note, however, that someone saying that you MUST have beans for it to be chili, is dead wrong.
No they’re not, but good chili has both. Then again, it depends on your tolerance for heat. The chili may have been beyond your heat tolerance and the flavor may have been lost on you. This is not a criticism of you, just that one man’s spicy is another man’s mild.
Good chili should make your eyes bleed!
Side story: One of the best batches if chili I ever made was in Alaska one year, when my roommate bagged a moose. Moose meat, chilis, spices…we ate the whole batch just standing around the stove with 3 big bags of Fritos. Dip, munch, sigh. Repeat. That batch almost made the paint on the range hood bubble. 
Sorry to nitpick, but I’d go even further and say pizza in its purest form is just a disc of dough. Plenty of pizzas don’t have tomato sauce (like the classic Potato & Rosemary pizza, or any of a variety of pizza biancas), and some don’t even have cheese (as in the pizza marinara–tomato, garlic, and olive oil). Also note that the aforementional pizza marinara or the popular pizza marghareta also don’t contain tomato sauce, but rather tomato slices.
Personally, I like my chili with beans. I’ve got two types I like. One’s the ground beef/chili powder version. It’s good and quick. The fam likes it just fine. The other is the beef/pork/whatever version with chiles that takes a bit longer to cook and has a bit more heat than everybody in my family but myself can take.
As long as you’ve got some form of chile in there (either the peppers or the chili powder), who cares what else you do to it. It’s chili.
If only the effects were as quick as Blazing Saddles would lead us to believe…
It has always been my impression that beans were cheap filler for chili. You make it with meat - and if the budget is kinda tight you stretch the chili by adding beans.
Chili without beans isn’t chili.
That being said, I hate beans, so whatever chili without beans is, I’m a fan of that. I call it usually call it “hot dog chili”, and nobody has yet had trouble understanding that.
I only first heard about this dispute recently, on an episode of “America’s Test Kitchen”. Based in Brookine, MA, they made a chili loaded with beans and such, which is how I have always encountered it, even on hot dogs, but the host was the first to admit that a Texan would call it “wussy chili”.
Chili should not have beans or tomatoes. It shouldn’t have any meat either. Real chili consists of a bowl of cayenne pepper that you consume anally.
Chris Kimball. In one of the issues of “Cook’s Illustrated” (from 2003 or 2004) they give a recipe while admitting that they are only going for a very middle-of-the-road “base” recipe. If I’m not mistaken, which I could well be, considering this is pretty much the pattern for all their articles. [gloat]I was fortunate enough to find bound volumes of 2002-2004 CI for $5 each at a local bookstore which sells remaindered stock.[/gloat]
Pound for pound, the best writing on chili and, more generally, the serious business of the relationship of cowboys to their meat, can be found in the essay of John Thorne in his book, “Serious Pig.”
For me, I love beans, but I prefer them served on the side, seasoned just the way I like them, and the chili itself pure. No tomato, either. Never been to Texas neither. I’ve never lived with a woman, however, who accepts this version of chili.
I vote for beans. If that means it’s not “real chili,” fine. I hereby suggest that we call it, “Better than chili.”
Because it is.
Not only do I put beans in my chili.
But I put celery too.
So there.
DeHusband isn’t making chili. He’s making chopped hamburger in a bowl. Tell him to straighten up or his kitchen privileges will be revoked.
Depending on the bean, beans detract from the authentic Red River experience. I cook mine separate and add only at the last minute.
HEATHEN!!!
Go here.
Read.
Learn.
Frankly, put whatever you want in your chili. Just don’t expect me to call it chili.
chili
n 1: ground beef and chili peppers or chili powder often with tomatoes and kidney beans [syn: chili con carne]
So…according to dictionary.com…you have to use ground beef.
Heathens!
I don’t use ground beef.
I agree with Kolak of Twilo. That’s not chili. With the addition of celery, you’ve just crossed over into stew.
I’m with Miller, Odin and many others.
If you like beans or tomatoes or turkey or chocolate in your chili and that’s how you like it and you want to call it chili then good for you. If you are a chili snob … sorry, I mean “purist” and you come to my home and rant about how stupid I am because my chili can’t have 3 kinds of beans, celery, green peppers and tomatoes and I shouldn’t call it chili because it’s really vegetable bean tomato soup with chili spices then you are not only welcome to not eat my “chili” but you are also welcome to leave. Thankyouverymuch.
In my opinion, chili is a stew primarily spiced with chili peppers and cumin.
The rest is just details.
So, curry qualifies as chili?
You people are weird.
Kolak’s link has a very good explanation of the history of chili, and in chili cook-offs where chili itself was invented beans are generally not allowed. So much so that the songwriter Ken Finlay wrote a little ditty called “If You Know Beans About Chili, You Know That Chili Has No Beans.” A sample lyric:
Obviously, each region has its own take on chili, and the definition of the stew has evolved to include variants with beans & celery & spaghetti & whatnot. Generally, everywhere outside the Southwest, I expect chili to contain all sorts of unorthodox ingredients, and I don’t care. I think most people outside the Southwest, as evidenced by this thread, think real chili comes with beans and an assortment of vegetables. That’s fine–just be careful what you call it to a New Mexican or Texan.