I don’t hate it or anything, and I’ll eat it if it’s put in front of me, but really if I never had chili again I wouldn’t notice or care. I’ve had it all kinds of ways and it all just seems like a mish-mash of stuff to me. I like all of the usual ingredients, but combined they just aren’t good to me anymore.
People rave about their chili and I’ve tried them all and am all “meh”. My SO loves chili and keeps trying to make different types to tempt me. I dutifully try them, and I eat them without complaint (I swear!) but it’s still just “meh”.
Technically this is supposed to make me love you 14% less. To prevent that I have allocated 56% of the affection I [del]feel[/del] felt for Christina Aguilera and assigned it to you.
More seriously, I endorse this rant, except that I would like to change “chili” to “barbecue.”
The thing is, you’ve probably never tasted authentic chili. I come from the city where chili was invented. Real chili does not have a lot of ingredients in a mish-mash. Real chili doesn’t have beans or tomatoes. It has red chili powder, which you toast dry in the frying pan first then moisten with lard or some other oil, chunks of meat (beef or venison), and onions. That’s about it. I like to put a little pickled jalapeno juice in mine.
All that extra crap is…well… *extra *and sullies the purity of the chili experience. You still might not like it, but what you’ve been served prolly has not been chili.
Oh come on. There’s about a gazillion different styles of chili, and nobody can claim that there’s ONE authentic kind. Even if you narrow it down to “Texas-Style chili”, there’s no one recipe for it. Everyone does it a little differently.
And all those people who know & love Midwestern-style chili or Cincinnati chili or New Mexico chili are not just gonna bow down and say their chili isn’t really chili. It is. Chili is a catch-all name for a broad range of stews.
You might try New Mexico style Green Chili, made with roasted Hatch or other green chiles (recipe shown is for a meatless sauce, but you can make it more of a stew-like main dish with pork or maybe even chicken).
You aren’t. But I’m a little more rabid about it (for lack of a better word.) I won’t eat it. Even if I was starving. Can’t even stand the smell of it. When husband is cooking it, I go upstairs - I get nauseous. And it’s not HIS chili, it’s ANY chili.
I’ve made it that way in the past. I was underwhelmed. It wasn’t bad, just not great. It’s all in what you’re used to. I knew someone who put Italian sausage in his chili, and another who put hot dogs in his. Both abominations to me, but they liked it.
Nah, you’re not the only one. I hate the stuff. Chili powder is, in quantity, some seriously foul shit. It’s weird, because I love everything that’s in chili powder, and I kind of like it in very small amounts. But bigger quantities, like the seeming cupsful people use in chili…well, it stinks and tastes just as bad as it smells.
Somebody brought leftover chili to work for lunch today and heated it up in the microwave. I clocked back in early just to get away from the smell in the break room.
Huh, OK, then, I guess I’ll never offer you some of my chili, then, because I put Italian sausage in it, too. Which I won’t even attempt to claim is “pure” or “authentic”, but I like it.
And 'Mika, there’s nothing wrong with not liking a particular food. I happen to disagree with you, but there’s plenty of room in the world. And you probably like some foods that others don’t like, too.
I like all kinds of chili, but I don’t get the mish-mash comment. In its purest form, chili is just basically meat and chile peppers, perhaps with a onions, , garlic, salt, and pepper. When I make chili for myself, that’s all the ingredients I use, with an addition of cumin and sometimes Mexican oregano, but you can skip both of those. The varieties of Texas reds I’ve had all stuck to this script. The only variation is some have tomato, and some don’t. Actually, the purist purists insist on no onions, either. They say only beef, garlic, chili powder, no fresh chiles, and sometimes masa to thicken.
But there is so much variety. You have your Midwestern chiles that are fairly mild, with kidney beans and often pasta and whatnot in them; you have your New Mexican green chiles that are made with roasted Hatch peppers; white chiles made with chicken and fresh fennel; you have versions with tomatillo instead of tomato, then you have that weird, soupy, vaguely curry-like concoction called “Cincinnati chili” that is best served on top of a hot dog with copious amounts of shredded cheese. And so on. The possibilities are endless.
And you know what? I do like them all, but my favorites are at the endpoints. I love the purist Texas red, and I love the insanity of a Cincinnati Skyline chili.
