Poking aroud online, I find a lot of chili recipes with a lot of different combinations of ingredients. But I’m looking for something that would count as an utterly basic chili recipe, i.e., the kind of recipe one might start with only to add other ingredients once the basic recipe has been understood thoroughly. If you see what I mean.
I mean, basic chili.
What’s a totally basic, elemental, fundamental chili recipe?
(No beans.)
I don’t think you can get much more basic than Texas chili:
You can get slightly more basic than that. Don’t add the tomatoes. And don’t use onions. And that’s about as simple as you’re going to get. Beef + hot peppers (in the form of a powder here) + cumin + a slight amount of liquid.
Actually here’s a more absolutely basic Texas chili recipe that does not have onions or tomatoes.
edit: Anyhow, you’re building on the basic flavors of beef, chili peppers, and cumin. I make my Texas red more the first way: with onions and sometimes tomatoes, sometimes not. Plus I use whole chiles which I roast, soak, and puree into a liquid (rather than just using powdered chiles or chili powder.)
Chili is one of those dishes where the variation makes a question like that difficult to nail down. I suspect the ancestral chili was something close to a dish like chile colorado, made with game meat. When I make scratch chili I use fresh peppers instead of dried, but I roast them first. I don’t really use a recipe either, I’m still in the process of getting it right I suppose. This is pretty close…
10 fresh poblano peppers, red
5 fresh serrano peppers, red also
5 fresh red fresno or jalepeno peppers
3 fresh red bell peppers
2 pounds tri-tip or chuck roast
2 sweet onions
1 head garlic
3 or 4 slices of jowl bacon
1 teaspoon fresh ground cumin
2 tablespoons ground chipotle powder
1/2 bottle dark beer
Salt… around a tablespoon, more or less to taste
Pepper- to taste
Wash and roast your peppers, I use my big green egg but you could do it over a gas flame on your stove if necessary, perhaps even under the broiler in an electric oven. When you’ve roasted them till they’re nice and tender, so the skins are blackened you want to peel, deseed and pulse them a few times in your food processor or just chop them finely. Reserve the pepper mix and then pulse chunks of your beef till it’s a very coarse grind. I prefer tiny little chunks to it being ground up, but it’s all up to you. Then you want to work some salt and the dried chipotle powder through the meat untill it’s liberally coated.
Slice up the jowl bacon into slivers and render in a heavy cast iron dutch oven or kettle, when browning and there is enough fat add the onions and sweat them, then add all the garlic chopped just short of minced. When the onions and garlic are tender, add the beef and brown. Don’t crowd the meat… do it in two batches if necessary. When the beef is browned add the cumin and the beer to deglaze. Then add the pepper mix and simmer gently covered until it’s done. It’s usually about an hour, hour and half in my experience. That’s it, you’ll have a pretty good and reasonably ‘authentic’ chili.
1 can red beans
1 can black beans (or a second can of red beans)
1 pound hamburger
stewed tomatoes or 3-6 cut up tomatoes depending on size
chili powder
Can’t get much more basic than that.
You need to tell us what you think of when you say “chili.”
Some people think of a stew with tomato based sauce, hamburger, and beans.
Some people think of chunks of beef or pork in a spicy, non-tomato-based sauce.
Some people think of a green stew made with roasted green chiles.
Some people think of a thick sauce made with ground beef, cocoa, cinnamon, and other spices served over spaghetti.
I could go on and on and on.
What’s your definition of chili?
Well, they are on the right track. The OP said “No beans.” 
A look at some previous threads will provide a number of options.
Yeah, you’re right. I had always thought that regional variations on Chili were variations of some basic recipe, but having poked around I see that this isn’t how people think of it.
It turns out I basically meant a basic Texas Chili, though it looks like some people think Texas Chili shouldn’t have tomato products in it and typically I think of it as having something tomato-y in it.
Being desperate to make some chili last night for some reason, I finally just did so, taking the approach of just using the ingredients common to the majority of recipes I found online. It ended up being beef, onions, tomato sauce, chili powder, cumin, and oregano. (I didn’t have any actual chilis to put in it, but I figured this’d do for an experiment.) Proportions? (That’s really what I was hoping to get insight into in this thread.) A big pile of chili powder, a medium pile of cumin, and a small pile of oregano. About a third of a large onion, minced. 15 oz of tomato sauce. One pound of ground beef.
Let’s just say… much less oregano next time. Or none at all. And half the tomato sauce.
Other than that it was okay. Satisfied my craving.
You’ve got the basics. Less tomato, less oregano (Let me guess - you ended up with something more akin to spaghetti sauce, didn’t you?). Next time, add some peppers that haven’t been powdered, along with garlic. The more types of peppers you use, the deeper the flavor can get.
I love Wick Fowler’s 2-Alarm Chili Kit because you can adjust the recipe. The flavors are in separate packets. For example, I use half a packet of the pepper to make 1 alarm chili. I’m a wimp. 
all you need is a can of tomato sauce and ground beef.
I don’t think it really matters that much. The fundamental building blocks for all of those chilies are: meat, chile peppers, and cumin.
The variations start with what kind of meat? Is the meat diced, cubed, chopped, a mix? Tomatoes or not? Onions or not? Are the chiles powdered, fresh, or a mix? What liquid (water, stock/broth, beer, coffee)? Other spices (Mexican oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, cinnamon, chocolate, etc.?) Is it thickened? With what? (Masa, flour, cornmeal, etc?)
But I think pretty much all the chiles come from that base of meat + chile peppers, with cumin as the predominant spice (though I wouldn’t be surprised there isn’t some
chile recipe that omits cumin, I can’t think of any and to me it’s the defining flavor of the dish.) Vegetarian chilis would, of course, make substitutions for the meat, but keep the general flavor profile of chile peppers and cumin.
I would also urge you to use Mexican oregano and not regular (Greek/Mediterranean) oregano. Despite the similarity in name, they are different flavors (though there is some similarity, I suppose). Mexican oregano is not true oregano–it comes from a different species and is related to lemon verbana. Use that when oregano is called for in all Mexican and most (if not all) Southwestern and Tex-Mex dishes (Mexican Oregano is also known as Tex-Mex oregano or Mexican wild sage.) I’d say after cumin, this is probably the most important herb to have in your spice mix, though be gentle with it.
All I ever use is fried hamburger with diced onions (yes, I know that “real” chili has steak in it; going to have to try that sometime), a can of kidney beans, a can of tomatoes and a packet of French’s Chili-O seasoning. I like it hotter than that, so I add Tobasco to mine.
Basic, and ready to eat in about 20 minutes.
You’re right on the basics, but I do think it matters quite a bit. If you are looking for what I call basic Midwestern chili - ground meat, bell peppers, beans, spices in a tomato based sauce - and someone hands you a bowl of New Mexico green chile, it’s gonna be a surprise. Same with if you were expecting Texas chile and someone handed you Cincinnati chile, served over spaghetti. They are different critters even if the basics are the same.
Oh, no doubt they are different. I always qualify the type of chili I’m serving, because while I like making Texas chili, I live in the Midwest, where bean and kitchen-sink varieties are more common.
That said, I interpreted that the OP was looking for the recipe of an ur-Chili, from which all other chilis spring so, as much as that question can be answered, I did my best to answer it. I think all the chilis you’ve listed above come from the same basic starting point. Red chili, green chili, white chili, the foundation is the same.
Yes, they taste very different. Turkish oregano is sweet and perfumey and Mexican oregano is grassy. If you ever have a chance to be near a spice store like Penzeys you should take the opportunity to smell them side by side.
Anyhow, all this posting and I haven’t posted my most basic recipe for Texas red. This recipe actually has quite a bit of onion so I don’t know whether Texans want to argue about authenticity or not. The technique actually comes from Hungarian cooking, where Hungarian goulash (pörkölt) actually has a bit of similarity to Texas red (doesn’t have the cumin, though.)
2 lbs meat cut into 1/2 inch dice (I use chuck or boneless beef short ribs)
1 lb onion, diced
4 cloves garlic (more or less if you want)
3 tablespoons chili powder of your choice
broth/beer/water
salt
pepper
Fry onion in generous amount of oil (or lard) until translucent. Add finely chopped garlic, fry for a minute or two. Reduce heat to low. Add chili powder and mix thoroughly with onions and oil. Cook for a minute or two, until fragrant. (This part is important. Add the spices to the oil, as many of the flavors are oil-soluble and not water soluble, so you won’t get the same flavor as if you added the spices later, when you have a watery mixture.) Add meat (you should brown this beforehand, seperately) and a little bit of liquid–you actually don’t need that much–the meat will render juices from itself. I add maybe 1/2 cup. Cover, simmer over low to medium-low heat for 2-3 hours. Of course, salt and pepper to taste.
Now, what I actually do most of the time is a little more complicated. I fry up a hot green pepper or two (either banana pepper or jalapeno) with the onions. I toast a mix of ancho, guajillo, pasilla, and mulato or arbol chiles (I use about 2-3 of each), cover them with boiling water, and let them soak for 30 minutes. I de-stem them (but I keep the seeds, since I like it spicy) and puree them in the food processor with a little bit of the soaking liquid (not too much, it can get a little bitter.) Instead of using 3 TB chili powder, I use 1 TB and add about 1/2 TB or so of cumin, 1 TB Hungarian paprika, and about 1/2 teaspoon or so of Mexican oregano. If I feel like playing with other herbs/spices, this is where I add them. After that, I dump in the chile mixture, let that mixture cook for a minute or two. If I’m in a tomato mood, I’ll add a 15 oz can of Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes (crushed/whole/sauce, it doesn’t matter) and no other liquid. If I’m in a tomato-less mood, I’ll add 1/2 cup of broth or beer. At the end, I’ll stir a few (maybe 3) tablespoons of masa to thicken and add flavor, letting it cook down for 5-10 minutes to get rid of the raw masa taste. If it becomes too thick at this point, I’ll add a little broth to thin it out.
I’m baffled by all the folks saying that the fundamentals are meat, peppers, and cumin, or some variation on that. Chili has three and only three essential ingredients: Beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Anything without one of those three is not chili. Onions, assorted meat, cumin, garlic, and the like are all welcome additions, but they are not what makes something chili. If there’s some substance called “Texas chili” that doesn’t contain beans, that’s just proof that Texans have forgotten their roots.
Well, because that’s what it is. Chili, as far as I know, comes from carne con chile, a Mexican dish that simply translates to “meat with chile.” Beans are definitely an add-on (even if you look at American canned brands of chili, often there will be two separate kinds: chili and chili with beans.)
Even Wikipedia has this right:
Beans are definitely not a requirement of chili, unless perhaps you live in the Midwest (and even there you’ll find bean-less variations, as for example, in the Coney sauce on a Detroit Coney dog or Cincinnati chili.)
Of all the myriad chili preparations I’ve had, they all have the commonality of meat (or meat substitute for veggie variations), peppers, and cumin.
It just so happens I am making a pot of chili today, and I think it’s pretty basic, but tasty. Here’s what I put in:
1.5 lb ground beef
1.5 chopped yellow onions
1 14 oz can diced tomatoes
1 14 oz can tomato sauce
1/4 cup chili powder
2 tbl cumin
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
salt
pepper
enough water to make it the right consistency
Browned the ground beef, along with the onions, dumped the rest of the ingredients in and simmered for about an hour. I added some kidney beans, but you don’t have to. If I had some, I would have added some green bell pepper with the onions.