Then someone mislabled a steak recipe as “chili”. If you’re going to be so “purist” about it as to exclude essential ingredients like beans and tomatoes, why not leave out the peppers and the liquid, too?
Only in the minds of the deluded are beans “essential” in chili. 
Well, it’s called “chili” so chili peppers would be kind of essential, donchathink?
I don’t understand why you think beans and tomatoes are required in a chili. The OP is asking about the “purist” chili, and I (along with silenus and some others) are answering that question. That was the question asked. Listen, I like chili all sorts of ways, but it’s a perfectly delectable stew with just the meat. Whenever I make chili for myself, it’s hand-cut beef with onions, dried chili peppers, some cumin, possibly Mexican oregano, and sometimes fresh chili peppers. And, no, you don’t even need to add liquid. The meat and onions actually release a lot of juices on their own. The chili recipe is very similar to a Hungarian pörkölt–what we call goulash around here–another red pepper based concoction from thousands of miles away also used by “cowboys” or Hungarian herdsmen, in a similar manner. It’s not just the wacky Texans who do a beef & red pepper (paprika, in the case of Hungary) stew with few other ingredients (although onions are essential in the Hungarian version.)
The name of the recipe translates to ‘peppers with meat.’ This leads me to believe that the peppers are an essential part of the recipe. 
Really though, have you tried it? If you have and you didn’t like it that’s fine but if you haven’t you should at least give it a shot once. I always thought chili needed beans and tomatoes and all that stuff too but then I tried it the other way and it’s really good. It’s that taste you get from the meat, peppers, and spices undiluted by anything else.
If you can confuse a bowl of Texas red with steak, I don’t know what to tell you.
“Forget it, puly. It’s Chilitown.”
Onions are a common ingredient, added for flavor though, not as a filler. Tomatoes fit in that same category. But beans are a filler, replacing meat that should have been included, and have no place in real chili.
My attitude on this subject is not strictly purist though, its just what I like. Maybe there should be another name used, but there’s nothing wrong with making any dish that mixes something else with peppers.
As for bell peppers, they are peppers. And the flavor of peppers improve by mixing many different kinds together. So I use bell peppers, and every other kind I can find.
The great offense I didn’t see mentioned here is the use of hamburger. Chunks of meat, or even a chili grind is allowable, but hamburger produces a spicy form of Sloppy Joe mix, not chili.
Perhaps I wasn’t as emphatic about it as I could have been, but my first post on chili mentions either hand-minced meat or a chili grind.
I got a hand-cranked meat mincer a few years ago just so I could make chili-grind meat – I use the plate with holes about a quarter-inch in diameter – but lately it always seems to come out fine-ground like hamburger; I don’t know why.
Your meat may be too warm. Put it in the freezer until it just starts getting a bit hard and then grind it.
That said, a knife or cleaver makes for much better chili.
I have two words to make chili purists run screaming into the night: ELBOW MACARONI.
Mmmmmm…chili mac. Camp food of the Gods.
I’ll take a stab at it if you throw a recipe my way.
Right, onions and tomatoes for flavor, sure.
Beans are OK if it’s clearly labeled as such. Legumes are so very good for us, I hate to condemn them.
Right, no hamburger.
:smack:Indeed it did. Sorry.
Well, if you want to get to the real roots of chilli… It shouldn’t have beef. The original chile moles known to the the oldest European emigrant cowboys were probably pork and chicken based. And it isn’t Texan, it’s Mexican… doubt that chilli originated North of the Rio Grande. So, I always assumed that was texas’ culinary geography buffer and salute to tradition and origin- The beanless chili. Not real American chilli, with dark red Kidney beans.
The recipe that I have for authentic chili is just browned chunks of beef, minced garlic, flour mixed with chili powder and cumin, and beef stock. And it’s really, really good.
A truly authentic chili would probably use masa harina instead of the flour, though.
I have never been persuaded that beanless chili is the One Right Way, but I am done with kidney beans in my chili. Black beans is where it’s at, man.
Here we go again. Look, there’s no doubt that what Texans call chili is based on a number of culinary traditions–pretty much every dish in the world is based on another dish that came before it, adapted to the local tastes and ingredients. But what we Americans came to call “chili” is a particular dish that originated in Texas, and has since sprung countless variations with and without beans, with Greek spices, with corn, vegetarian-only versions, etc. Just like the hamburger as we know it (let’s not get into that argument again) is an American invention, even if its progenitors may have come from the Old World.
Yea, like I said “Real American Chili” not Texan Chili, which is really weirdly ethnically Mexican restrictive in recipe. Tejas is as lawless and crazy as Mexico, to me. A second world society that happens to appendix itself to the United States.