Don’t get the wrong idea. In the right place, which is my kitchen, and at the right time, which is about once a year, I rather enjoy the stuff. In recommended frequency, degree of culinary achievement, and level of en­joyment, it belongs in a category with beef liver: on the right side of the line dividing edibles from inedibles, but barely so. No, the loathsome thing about chili is not the concoction itself—how can mediocrity be dignified by loathing?—but chili lovers, a small but fanatical tribe whose uniting character­istic seems to be that they were born without a sense of taste. Not content with chili’s tiny footnote in the annals of gastronomy, they travel the country preaching their false gospel: that chili is an art form, that it has magical quali­ties, that it is our last link to the legends and ways of the Old West. To further their ends they promote the most in­salubrious of Texas festivals, the chili cookoff; they glorify their unworthy subject in books and magazine articles and even publish a chili newspaper; they are attempting to revive chili par­lors, a Texas institution that mercifully was on the verge of dying of natural causes; and, worst of all, they have inveigled that notorious body, the Tex­as Legislature, into declaring chili our official state dish.

The trouble with all this is that chili is third-rate swill. It violates every prin­ciple of good cookery. Imagine opening a Paul Bocuse or Julia Child cook­book and coming across a recipe calling for flavoring the grease and using the meat only for texture. Sacre bleu! It is true that the French sometimes elevate the sauce above the meat, but there any resemblance to chili ends. A French sauce is truly a merging of science and art, a Cartesian triumph resplendent with order and subtlety. It challenges the intellect, leading the epicure not only to savor the taste, but also to speculate how the delicate mixture was made. Handed a bowl of chili, our same gourmand would only wonder why. There is no pretense of subtlety. The cardinal purpose of this sauce is to assault the beef until it is subdued into a tasteless mush.

Another shortcoming of chili: it paralyzes the taste buds. Unlike other hot dishes—the peppery treats of south­western China, the pungent curries of India—chili deadens rather than stimu­lates. Ten minutes after a bowl of chili, the mouth’s memory of the event is erased; but half an hour after, say, a serving of spicy bean curd with ground pork, the surface of the tongue still tingles with delight.

By this point unreconstructed chili heads, as they style themselves, un­doubtedly will have concluded that I was born in the Bronx and put beans in my chili. Wrong. For a decade now I have upheld the honor of this state at an annual chili party co-hosted by, God help him, a pinto bean devotee from Missouri. In fact, it was in preparation for the most recent of these gatherings that I began to suspect the awful truth about chili. My rival vowed to prepare his recipe from scratch. He used only fresh herbs and spices: garlic, oregano, cilantro, cominos. He bought fresh chile peppers, dried them, ground them, and plunged the residue into his pot. He harvested tomatoes from his garden, ran them under the broiler to bring out the flavor, peeled them, and added the pulp and liquid to the bubbling mix­ture. I, on the other hand, used bottled spices, commercial chili powder, canned tomatoes, and a secret ingredient, about which more later. Yet my fast-food chili was the overwhelming choice of our guests.

When the euphoria of victory wore off, it occurred to me something was wrong here. Doesn’t Bocuse, acknowl­edged to be the world’s greatest chef, instruct would-be followers the world over to start with the best ingredients? If prefabricated chili can outshine the homemade variety, then either Bocuse or chili is on the wrong track.

I turned to Bocuse for additional en­lightenment. “One must allow foods their proper flavors,” he writes. “It is a question of striving to retain the original taste of the food.” Yes, that sums up perfectly the difference be­tween chili and the rest of the culinary world. While everyone else is trying to enhance natural tastes, chili obliterates them, offering not a taste but a sensa­tion more closely related to the sense of touch—heat. I suspect that most diners would get as much sensual satisfac­tion from spending fifteen minutes in the August sun in downtown Dallas as they get from a bowl of chili.

To appreciate how little chili con­tributes to civilization, consider the recipe for the traditional Texas bowl of red. Start with coarsely ground lean beef, but never veal or U.S. prime—remember Rule No. 1 of chili cookery: the better the ingredients, the worse the chili. Using rendered beef suet; sear the beef until it whitens.

At this point the authorities diverge. Purists insist on using chile peppers, which violates a corollary to Rule No. 1: never use fresh what you can get out of a can—in this case, chili powder. I’ve heard it argued that chili powder leaves a cloying taste, but since cloying suggests too much of a good thing, the word would hardly seem to apply to chili. At any rate, if you’re committed to authenticity, stem and seed dried Jap-style peppers, then boil them in water for half an hour, or until the skin comes off easily. Grind the pods to a pulp and reserve the water. Then com­bine beef, suet, ground peppers, and water, bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Season to taste, adding oregano, salt, cayenne, and chopped garlic. The amounts don’t matter; you’re not making hollandaise. Bring the mixture again to a boil, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occa­sionally.

At this point you will notice that you have prepared grease stew. Do not despair. Former Texas Governor Allan Shivers is credited with the recipe for salvaging this situation:

Put a pot of chili on the stove to simmer. Let it simmer. Meanwhile, broil a sirloin steak. Continue to simmer the chili and eat the steak. Ignore the chili.

If, however, you feel you’ve invested too much time to turn back now, you can skim the grease, even though the old-timers didn’t, or disguise it with a thickener like masa harina (Mexican corn flour), which would impart a ta­malelike taste if it weren’t utterly lost among the peppers.

That is all there is to Texas’ her­alded bowl of red. Now will somebody please justify how that glop could be passed off as . . .

The Official State Dish of Texas

Over the years the Texas Legislature has done just about everything man can dream up to do to his fellowman. In the not so recent past, for example, we have seen the Sharpstown scandal, a resolution honoring the Boston Strangler, simultaneous efforts to tax bread and exempt natural gas, and a reapportionment bill with districts in shapes and sizes unknown to geometry. But never has the Legislature so aban­doned its sworn duty to enhance the public welfare as when it certified chili as the official state dish.

This nefarious scheme was hatched in the mind of an otherwise honorable legislator from Marshall by the name of Ben Grant. If the name sounds fa­miliar, he was the author of a death-by-injection bill to provide more hu­mane capital punishment—a matter someone responsible for making chili the state dish has good reason to be concerned about. Grant’s initial pur­pose was to immortalize the farkleberry as the state berry, but when this proved too much even for the Legislature, he started his chili crusade.

Now this kind of nonsense goes on all the time in legislative bodies. Usual­ly it is quite harmless. New Mexico lawmakers, for example, have named both the chile pepper and the pinto bean their state vegetables. Jack Garner of Uvalde once tried to have the prick­ly pear cactus declared the state flower instead of the bluebonnet. He failed, but he was known thereafter as Cactus Jack and went on to become vice presi­dent under Roosevelt. Perhaps Grant harbors similar ambitions and hopes to become known someday as Greasy Ben.

The record shows that the resolution passed the House with a minimum of controversy. There were a few attempts to amend the proposal—some South Texans tried to substitute menudo, a member from Port Arthur offered gumbo, and Craig Washington, from Houston’s Fifth Ward, made a pitch for chitterlings. But ultimately it passed, 70 to 36. Since the Senate for­feited any pretense of acting in the pub­lic interest years ago, chili was over the last hurdle.

All this could be considered rather innocuous and in good fun were it not for the fact that there is a food with a valid claim to the title of official state dish, and it is not chili. I am speaking, of course, of barbecue.

The case for barbecue is overwhelm­ing. It is the food most identified with Texas in the public mind. When West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard came to the LBJ Ranch, what did Lyn­don serve? Not chili. (And if he had, Erhard wouldn’t have gotten the traditional bowl of red. Johnson’s recipe called for tomatoes and onions.)

Furthermore, barbecue is aesthetically pleasing. What should Texas place alongside Virginia’s magnificent Smithfield ham? A raven-black brisket, sliced to expose gently flowing juices? Or a bowl of what ap­pears to be a failed beef stew? Barbecue is capable of endless variety, de­pending on wood, sauce, and type and cut of meat. But despite the many recipes for the original bowl-of-red type of chili, ultimately they all taste alike, varying only in torridness. Bar­becue cookery is truly an art, requiring such skills as fire building, wood choos­ing, pit knowledge, sauce manufacture, and carving. The hardest thing about preparing a pot of chili is finding some­one to eat it. Finally, the process of natural selection has proved barbecue’s superiority over chili. Most restaurants of less than the highest pretensions of­fer something they call chili, but it is next to impossible to get a true bowl of red in a restaurant these days. Chili parlors, once the scourge of the land, have all but disappeared. In the Dallas Yellow Pages, for example, there are 109 listings under barbecue, but only 2 under chili. The public has spoken. Why wasn’t the Legislature listening?

I raised this point to Greasy Ben recently, and he admitted to some twinges of conscience over barbecue. But he claimed to have done research demonstrating that barbecue did not originate in Texas, while chili did. So what? Stephen F. Austin didn’t origi­nate here either, but we named our capital after him.

I suppose I should pause here to make what politicians call a full dis­closure, before some vengeful chili head accuses me of concealing a con­flict of interest. I am a member, indeed a founding member, of the Texas Bar­becue Appreciation Society. Our organization was established in 1973, and its first official action was to propose a legislative program that included changing the state seal to a brisket sur­rounded by a sausage link and exempt­ing barbecue entrepreneurs from air pollution regulations. Unfortunately, the six founders split soon after the society’s inception into sauce-on-the-side traditionalists and sauce-on-the- meat revisionists, and we have there­after been unable to add any members or transact any business. That was all the opening the powerful chili lobby needed.

Scoff not. There really is a chili lob­by. Check the records of the 1977 leg­islative session and you will find a Robert Marsh of San Antonio regis­tered in favor of House Simple Resolu­tion 18. With financial contributions from Chili’s Restaurants and the manufacturers of Wolf Brand canned chili, Marsh brewed what he claimed to be the world’s largest pot of chili to feed to the members of the Legislature: 259 gallons weighing over 2500 pounds. Marsh also persuaded Pearl to donate 24 cases of beer, which several law­makers told me had more to do with the bill’s ultimate success than the taste of the chili. I am happy to report, however, that there remain some stan­dards in the world. Marsh submitted evidence of his largest pot of chili to the editors of the Guinness Book of World Records, but they wrote back that they did not consider it a signifi­cant achievement.

As for Grant, let it be noted that justice works in strange ways. The man who started the chili boom now suffers by his own hand. As a minor celebrity in the chili world, Grant is called upon to eat more bad chili than anyone in Texas. He is highly sought after as a judge for . . .

Chili Cookoffs

The main thing you have to under­stand about chili cookoffs is that most of the people who organize them care no more about chili than the exchange rate of the lira. This has been true from the very first cookoff, held in the Big Bend ghost town of Terlingua eleven years ago. While chili heads would have the rest of the world be­lieve that the contest was designed as a test of Texas-style chili against chili as it is known in the rest of the world (stocked with tomatoes, onions, and beans), in fact it began as just another public relations gimmick. A year earlier Dallas Morning News columnist and Texana authority Frank X. Tolbert had written a book called A Bowl of Red, incorporating everything one could want to know about chili, which apparently wasn’t much. In that golden age of chili antiquity, the public hungered neither for the dish nor for knowledge of its past. Then somebody hit upon the idea that a chili competition between Wick Fowler, Texas’ acknowl­edged chili master, and California res­taurateur Dave Chasen, who kept Hol­lywood plied with vegetabled chili, might stir up enough free publicity to boost sales of Tolbert’s book.

At that point providence took a hand. Chasen was sidelined by illness and New York author H. Allen Smith was persuaded—some would say tricked—to take his place. Smith’s credentials, in the eyes of the Texans, were limited to two: he had written an article for Holiday magazine that summer pro­claiming Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do, and he’d published his chili recipe, thereby revealing him­self as an easy mark. Smith did not win the cookoff, which ended, appropriate­ly, in a dead heat, but he did go on to write a book and numerous magazine articles about the match. Fowler went on to build his Caliente Chili Company, which markets his spice mixture, into a $1 million company before his death in 1972. But the real winner was Tol­bert: his book is still being printed in hardcover editions and he’s opened his own chili parlors in Dallas.

Terlingua proved so successful that chili cookoffs began to proliferate. The attraction was not just the chili but a unique camaraderie shared by 2000 or so chili heads—most of them male, middle aged, and middle class. At a time when the United States was going through Viet Nam, black power, and student protests, the cookoffs were one of the few rituals left in which Ameri­ca’s past could be celebrated without fear of drawing picketers and demon­strators. The San Marcos Chilympiad, the Texas state championship, started in 1970; when it barred female entrants, a Hell Hath No Fury cookoff sprang up in Luckenbach. Today chili cookoffs take place from Hong Kong to Scot­land, but Texas is still the epicenter. Someone who started on July 4 of this year could have followed the chili cir­cuit to Comfort, Alice, Floresville, Llano, Victoria, Schulenburg, Houston, Pleasanton, Thorndale, Austin, San Marcos, Junction, Houston again, Plano, Beeville, and Flatonia, before heading for Terlingua on November 4 for this year’s world championship. I have attended more of these than I like to count—two—and as a result, I’ve developed a short list of survival rules for chili cookoffs.

(1) If you value your health, don’t eat chili. This advice is somewhat su­perfluous since hardly anyone goes to chili cookoffs to eat chili. It is hard to imagine anything less appetizing, for example, than the San Marcos Chilym­piad. The event was held this year in mid-September on a malarial weekend after several days of heavy rain. Offi­cially the temperature was in the low nineties, but the combination of the sun’s rays reflecting off the white gravel, which reclaimed the cookoff site from swampy fields on all sides, and the heat unleashed by 245 Coleman stoves and wood fires drove the heat factor close to a hundred. Everyone seemed much more interested in the beer concession than in chili, leading me to suspect that the only people really enthusiastic about chili cookoffs these days are beer wholesalers. (The Corsicana cookoff last spring is be­lieved to be the first ever held in a dry town.) Spec­tators shuffled from booth to booth, trying in vain to distinguish one por­ridge from the next. Finally I saw a reporter from an Austin TV station, obviously acting out of a sense of duty, ask for a taste at a booth labeled Dip­pers Chili.

“You got somethin’ funny in this chili,” he said to a ten-year-old girl who was staffing the booth. “Tell the truth. What’s in it?”

“Dog shit!” the child fired back.

Aside from recalling Barry Goldwater’s accusation that Texans don’t know their chili from leavings in a corral, the exchange says a great deal about what has happened to chili and chili cookoffs over the years. Their ra­tionale has evolved from little more than an elaborate prank shared by friends into a deadly serious commer­cial venture for local organizations. (With an estimated 50,000 spectators who attended the Chilympiad paying $1 apiece, not to mention entry fees, the cookoff grossed a tidy sum for a San Marcos civic organization.) The camaraderie and good feelings that once distinguished them are missing. Cookoffs have gone the way of rock music festivals: from love feasts to obscenity and violence. The Thorndale cookoff ended this year in a free-for-all with several spectators suffering stab wounds, and the Terlingua event had to be relocated to a nearby desert inn to aid security after motorcycle gangs in­vaded the 1975 championship. The old­er chili heads don’t travel the circuit anymore—“Some of these people have gotten really nuts,” says Tolbert, who didn’t make it to San Marcos—and in their place are thousands of urban cow­boy types driving RVs and wearing T-shirts with legends like Linda Love­lace Gagged on My Chili.

With the old chili heads relegating themselves to the sidelines, chili cookoffs have taken an ironic twist. Origi­nally conceived to praise the sainted bowl of red, they have all but oblit­erated it. Realizing how little variety there is in straight chili, contestants have tried desperate measures to catch the attention of judges. In San Marcos I saw Hawaiian chili with pineapples and pork, and gumbo chili with okra and spinach. Tolbert, a braver man than I, has tried mushroom chili at Lake Tahoe, sour-cream chili in New Jersey, butterbean chili in Ohio, alliga­tor chili in Louisiana, and has seen first prize at Terlingua captured by a chili with limes and sweet bell peppers. This lunatic fringe seems to grow each year. Even those who claim to be tradi­tionalists are suspect. Walking around during the hours when the chili was being prepared, I saw the following heresies: sweet bell peppers, Rotel tomatoes, rosemary, chicken broth, cheese, and a can of Gebhardt’s Chili-Quik.

(2) Never under any circumstances listen to anything that’s said over the public address system. At the Chilympiad spectators were continually under siege from an announcer whose job was to whip up what he perceived as the crowd’s lagging enthusiasm. “Come on now, folks, it’s time for the egg toss, entries closing in ten minutes.” Chili cookoffs are not very exciting—watch­ing someone cube and brown beef is not likely to replace pro football as the nation’s leading spectator sport—but when the weather is mild and the sur­roundings are special and the mix of people is just right and enough of them know each other, a cookoff can be a considerable improvement over a tav­ern. It is the announcer’s aim to insure that this situation does not develop; he substitutes for the nagging waitress who’s always trying to sell you another beer. “All right, on the count of three, let’s all yell, ‘Yea, Rattlers!”’ There is no peace. One of the mike men fancied himself a regional Howard Cosell; he narrated the egg toss using Cosell’s strange syntax and stilted rhythms. The purpose of the contest is to see which pair can throw a raw egg the greatest distance and catch it without breaking the shell; one failure was de­scribed thus: “It decides to completely disseminate itself at the point at which it was intended.”

(3) Ignore the judging. There are two kinds of chili judges: fixed and biased. Organizers of chili competitions have run into the same kind of prob­lem the government faces when it tries to regulate a controversial industry like natural gas: you don’t want someone who doesn’t know anything about the subject, but anyone who does is certain to have prejudices set in concrete.

“Tell me who the judges are and I’ll tell you who’s going to win the cookoff,” says one chili head who claims to have won 38 competitions and apparently knows a lot of judges. The bowls that go to the judges are not supposed to be identifiable, but often there is a distinguishing characteristic, such as the limes that carried a Cali­fornian to an early Terlingua cham­pionship. In fact, Terlingua has a ter­rible reputation for shenanigans. Judg­ing panels in the early days were stacked, and, though Tolbert in a re­vised edition of his book headlines a chapter “Honest Judging at Last,” ru­mors of judicial favoritism persist.

So you can’t count on getting a bowl of championship chili at a cookoff, even when it’s certified as such. As chief of counterinsurgency for the Barbecue Appreciation Society, I’m convinced that the shady judging tac­tics that go on at chili cookoffs are a deliberate attempt to protect the chili mystique. After all, if it were possible to identify a particular batch of chili as indubitably the best, the truth about chili would be exposed like the emperor’s new clothes. This way it is always possible to maintain that a bet­ter bowl exists. Don’t play into their hands. If you want to make an honest judgment about chili in a controlled situation, try one of Texas’ new . . .

Chili Parlors

The origins of chili are as mysterious as the esteem in which it is held. There are almost as many theories as there are recipes, but the most likely is that it developed from a North American Indian staple known as pemmican: dried beef pounded fine and mixed with rendered suet. All the authorities agree that chili cannot be blamed on Mexico, for it is unknown in Mexican cookery. In A Bowl of Red, Tolbert even cites a modern Mexican dictio­nary that describes chili con carne as “a detestable dish sold from Texas to New York City and erroneously de­scribed as Mexican.”

Whatever its origins, chili was re­fined in San Antonio during the nine­teenth century into the dish as we know it today. Just as the fiery Chinese dishes of Hunan descended from kitch­ens of peasants who could afford pep­per but little meat, so chili got its start among the very poorest San Antonians in the years before Texas independence. The first chili parlors did not appear until the 1880s, however, and even then they were just open-air U-shaped tables set up in Military Plaza by wom­en who quickly became known as “chili queens.” This tradition survived for more than half a century, until Mayor Maury Maverick in 1943 chased the chili queens off the plazas for health reasons.

It did not take long for chili to penetrate the land. Texans traveling to San Antonio brought back word of the con­fection to their hometowns, but the Typhoid Mary of this plague was the proprietor of the “San Antonio Chilley Stand” at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Thereafter chili spread to the Midwest, though usually in an adulter­ated form. Cincinnatians, for example, still put lettuce and spaghetti noodles in their chili. In Illinois, more than the form is adulterated: Springfield claims to be the “Chilli [sic] Capital of the World,” perhaps to insure that it will have no rival.

For a time chili parlors were so prevalent in Texas that Will Rogers is said to have judged towns by the qual­ity of the chili. The parlors seemed to go along with other Texas traditions: a chili parlor sat across the street from Neiman-Marcus in downtown Dallas and another was located near the head­quarters of the King Ranch in Kings­ville. But those emporiums are years gone. I asked a number of chili heads if they knew of any old-time chili par­lor that survives. Not even Tolbert could name one.

However, Tolbert stubbornly insists on doing his part to keep the tradition alive. His Frank X. Tolbert’s Original Texas Chili Parlors in Dallas (3802 Cedar Springs at Oak Lawn and down­town at 802 Main) offer the best bowl of red that can be bought in Texas today—for whatever that’s worth. The meat is tender, but still chunky enough to offer some resistance. The peppers don’t overwhelm the other seasonings, though they come closer than they should; you can restore the balance by adding Tolbert’s homemade hot sauce to the potion, for the salsa imparts the slightest hint of sweetness that more than makes up for the increased heat. The consistency is just right: no thick­ener, but an ample proportion of meat to chili that makes one unnecessary. Finally, the color—a deep purplish red, not a soggy reddish brown or a telltale tomatoey cardinal—bespeaks authenticity. The only trouble is the medium itself. Like a painting where the artist used lubricating grease and ox blood, one asks of Tolbert’s chili: it’s interest­ing, but is it art?

The downtown location is more re­liable, for the Tolberts (Frank Jr. is the head chef) don’t often get out to Cedar Springs to make the necessary mid-course corrections in the family formula. I had bowls on consecutive days at Cedar Springs and found them wildly different in both flavor and consistency. Unfortunately, the down­town parlor is open only on weekdays and only for lunch.

The Cedar Springs parlor is designed with the cocktail trade in mind: clean, dark wood tones; split levels; immacu­lately framed posters advertising previous Terlingua cookoffs; and intimate lighting. When my bowl of red arrived, the dim light glistened on the grease like gas flares dancing on the Houston Ship Channel. At the time I wished I could have inspected it more closely, but my next venture was to Chili’s (7567 Greenville and 4291 Beltline in Dallas and 5930 Richmond in Hous­ton), where the greenhouse-style decor allowed me to see all too well. The chili was so thick I thought it had been topped off with epoxy, and as I churned it with my fork, I occasionally exposed white things that didn’t look like they belonged there. It proved to taste uncomfortably close to canned chili, though there was extra beef and such an excess of cumin that I briefly thought about investing in cominos on the commodities market. The tipoff on Chili’s is that, despite its name, its T-shirts feature a large picture of a ham­burger.

The Texas Chili Parlor in Austin (1409 Lavaca, no relation to Tolbert’s) falls somewhere in between the Dallas extremes. The chili—actually the chilis, for there are three degrees of hotness, each from a different pot—is passable but unremarkable, and the spices seem to be competing among themselves for supremacy.

The fourth and last parlor that has been spawned by the chili revival is in Leon Springs, a tiny community twelve miles from San Antonio’s northwest fringe just off Interstate 10. This peace­ful Hill Country setting seems an un­likely place to start a national busi­ness, but if the Yeller Dog’s Chili Par­lor thrives, the wooden saloon that is its home may one day be as famous as the golden arch in Des Plaines, Illinois, that marks the spot of the original Mc­Donald’s. At least that’s the hope of proprietor Robert Marsh, the one-time chili lobbyist who now hopes to do for chili what Ray Kroc did to hamburgers.

“You can bet there’s going to be a national chain of chili parlors soon, and I hope it’s gonna be mine,” Marsh said as he spooned some chili into a bowl. “If this place flies, we should take off in a year or so. We’re already market­ing our chili mix.” Marsh produced a red and yellow package labeled Yeller Dog’s Hoot ’n’ Holler Certified Texas Chili Fixin’s. I noted the phrase at the top: “Chili! The official state dish of Texas!” Along with the spice package comes a recipe for “Prize-winning gourmet-type chili,” calling for pinto beans and sour cream. (“You can put cooked beans in your bowl of chili if you want,” I recalled Tolbert saying, “but never cook them together. The chemistry’s all wrong.”)

Marsh laughs about the chili-lobby­ing incident—it never occurred to him that he was technically a lobbyist until a newspaper reporter, no doubt a bar­becue lover, called to ask whether he’d registered—but he’s serious about chili. He even has what he and one San An­tonio radio station call a chilicast with sports scores and news of chili cookoffs. His own chili involves no shenanigans. When I asked him about tomatoes, he winced: “That’s Yankee influence. They wanted it to taste like spaghetti sauce.” Marsh uses no toma­toes, no onions, no thickener. Not very hot, his chili leaves a pleasant after­taste, but to compare his chili to Tol­berts’ is like comparing Tolbert’s to . . .

The Best Chili in the World

Mine, naturally. But before I reveal the secret of its creation, I must dis­pense with one last myth:

There can be no such thing as a recipe for chili.

My advice is to give up trying to codify the outcome of a pot of chili. It can’t be done, and what’s more, it shouldn’t be. Chili should be ap­proached the same way I once heard a sculptor describe his profession: you take a block of marble and chip away everything that doesn’t look like David. In preparing chili, take the necessary ingredients—amounts are immaterial—and chip away at the beef until you get something that tastes like chili.
The recommended ingredients are: browned beef, beef fat, garlic, chili powder, cumin, cayenne, paprika, salt, white pepper, oregano, basil, and—taste taking precedence over tradition—canned tomatoes and onions. The idea is to keep adding elements in whatever quantities are necessary until the flavors are neutralized. The only rule I can offer is that too much cumin or cayenne will ruin the pot just as surely as too little garlic or onions. When your taste buds are no longer able to detect the dominance of any one spice, the proper point has been reached. You are now ready to trans­form your creation into chili with the addition of the secret ingredient.

The peppers that are supposed to be used with chili are incapable of work­ing in harmony with natural flavors. What is needed is something that will set off the spices so that they fuse together in a burst of heat and light and flavor, as though a nuclear explosion had suddenly occurred in the pot. After years of experimenting, I have dis­covered that the Chinese red pepper is the uranium of the picante world. A bottle of Szechuan paste with garlic, available in any Oriental market, will enhance every taste in the mixture even as it adds a fiery hotness.

Just writing about it makes me hun­gry. In fact, I think I’ll go have a bowl—of sauce. Along with my barbecue.

The post I Still Hate Chili appeared first on Texas Monthly.

I FLATTER MYSELF THAT I KNOW A BIT about Texas food. I think about it all the time, I’ve been writing about it for more than twenty years, and I have judged everything from chili cookoffs to a cookie chill-off (it was refrigerated desserts — don’t ask). But during the past year, I discovered to my chagrin that a whole new area had opened up about which I was totally clueless: food on the Internet. So on the prettiest, crispest days of fall, when my friends were out scuffing through the autumn leaves or gnawing on barbecued ribs at charming country fairs, I went surfing for cyberribs. My quest was twofold: to find Texas foods and to ferret out reviews of Texas restaurants.

Many sedentary hours, one backache, and a bottle of Visine later, I can attest that there is Texas food in the virtual world and in spite of my grousing, I enjoyed the hunt. I do, however, have a few caveats to pass on. First, a lot of the homepages aren’t regularly updated, an annoying but common problem on the Net. Second, like Texas food itself, the quality of the pages varies. A few are quite professional, but others represent some person’s hobby or some company’s sideline. Actually, if you think of these pages as nachos rather than full dinners, you’re more likely to enjoy them.

Food

Texas food pages can be broken down into how to cook it, where to buy it, and why we love it. The first set of sites consists of recipes, the second has mail-order information, and the third, the “weirdest and wackiest”, takes as its sole purpose the celebration of a favorite Texas food. By the way, when I say “Texas food” I mean a food that is primarily identified with Texas, such as barbecue or chili, whether or not it is exclusive to the Lone Star State. A lot of these homepages originate in Texas, but not all; some of the most entertaining are produced out of state by homesick ex-Texans and Texas wannabes.

Burrito Page. My favorite food page, bar none. You can have burritos sent cross-country if you’re stuck in a burritoless wasteland, or read “landmark texts of burritology,” including “Cylindrical God,” a 1993 San Francisco Weekly article on “the world’s most perfect foodstuff.” Best of all, you can do an individual “Burrito-Analysis.” Click on icons for your favorite fillings and get a personality sketch: “Your pairing of a meat-free burrito and all those fatty toppings indicates a dangerous ability to live with illusions.”

Smokin’ the Internet. The barbecue page briefly covers the basics, including a schedule of cookoffs, mail-order products, book reviews, and recipes like Bubba Rubba Ribs and Grand Marnier chicken. But wait: It comes out of Kansas City! (Get a rope.) My fellow Texans, a definitive Texas barbecue page could smoke this one in short order. Any volunteers?

Bob Nemo’s Mole Page. The place to find a killer recipe for green pumpkinseed mole and to learn competing theories about the origin of mole (I like the one where the wind blows the spices into the cookpot).

The (Now More Festive) Tequila Home Page. In the tequila page’s recent poll, 23 percent of respondents voted that “tequila is a god” while 28 percent said, “I’d rather drink lizard urine.” A grab bag of drink recipes and arcane information, the site includes a link to a page whose ranking of top brands is right on the money. Don’t miss the amusing hallucination inducer graphic.

Pointers to Hot Recipes . This neat reference page, produced by the aptly named FireGirl, will direct you to recipes for apricot salsa and other searing selections from Thailand, India, Mexico, Cajun country, and more.

Restaurants

Getting decent restaurant reviews in cyberspace is dicey. If you read an Internet newsgroup (check the alt., rec., and city name areas of your newsgroup directory), you’ll have to plow through comments from everybody and his dog, though in all fairness you can get good tips. As for reviews on the Web, prepare to be frustrated: Often the remarks are months or even years old, and critical selection criteria are not apparent. But the databases can be useful if you’re planning a trip to a city and want a quick overview of what to expect.

Houston Restaurant Database. Open forums are only as good as their contributors, but this extensive one (more than four hundred entries) maintained by the physics department chapter of the Graduate Students Association at Rice University is better than most. All types of restaurants and price ranges are included. The remarks on the House of Pies, for example, were priceless. “Listen, sweetheart”, one person wrote, “if you want to avoid grease, go someplace else. The french dip is the best thing on the menu . . . Other than that, watch out for the ketchup. I’ve seen it walk.”

Epicurious. Two major food magazines, Bon Appétit and Gourmet, appear on this well-known Web site, which contains ten sprightly (but undated) reviews of intelligently chosen Houston restaurants written by Alison Cook, a former senior editor for Texas Monthly and food editor for the Houston Press.

Sally’s Place . Thislittle corner of the Web contains 25 literate, well-selected, and up-to-date Houston listings written by freelance food mavens Teresa Byrne-Dodge and Cassandra Manley. Click on Dining, then Restaurant Listings.

Finally, I’m going to shamelessly flack for Texas Monthly—our own Web site. Click on “What’s Cooking” to access current restaurant listings and recipes we’ve published over the years, including those from the State Fare section.

The post Virtual Vittles appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Doesn’t anyone have anything to say about barbecue?

THE COVER STORY ON BARBECUE was great [“Smokin’!,” May 1997]; however, one thing was left out—a scratch-and-sniff page.
GORDON RUBINETT
Austin

I SUSPECT THAT THE OPENING LINE about a Texas legislator who should be ashamed of himself for making chili the official state dish twenty years ago was referring to me. I, along with Representative Ron Bird and others, authored and passed the legislation making chili the state dish. Barbecue was our closest rival, but chili prevailed because history was on our side. Chili was born in Texas and has spread from this state around the globe. I suggest that the birthplace of barbecue is unknown. I am proud to have had a part in making chili the state dish. Don’t get me wrong. There is no disputing taste. To each his own. I love a good plate of barbecue and consider myself a connoisseur of chili, barbecue, peanut patties, and feminine pulchritude. And we have a high quality of all of those right here in Marshall, the cultural center of the universe.

I should mention Ezell’s Bar-B-Q to you—the best-kept secret in Texas. He makes a rib sandwich you would not believe. The talent to eating a rib sandwich is, of course, to be able to eat with one side of the mouth and spit the bones out the other side. Ezell also makes a sauce so hot that it cured my ulcers—seared them over. I should also mention Neely’s Sandwich Shop, which was the hangout for Bill Moyers, Y. A. Tittle, and Joe Goulden in their youth.
BEN Z. GRANT
Marshall

I WAS SHOCKED TO FIND SEVERAL of my favorite BBQ places not listed: Gerard’s Bar-B-Que and Broussard’s Links in Beaumont.
R. HAYNES, Beaumont

… Rib Cage in Groves and Patillo’s in Beaumont.
KATHI ORGERON, Nederland

… Sam’s BBQ in Houston.
TED GRIGG, Humble

… Baker’s Ribs in Houston.
SAM HOUSTON KNUTSON, Houston

… Otto’s Barbecue and Hamburgers, Joel’s Bar-B-Q in Flatonia, Rudy’s Barbecue in Leon Springs, and Vernon’s Kountry Bar-B-Q in Conroe.
PAT CRANE, Conroe

… Harvey’s Bar-B-Que in Irving.
MIKE E. HOWARD, Irving

… Cyclone Corral Bar-B-Que in Cyclone.
JOHN T. YOUNG, JR., Midland

… Pat Gee just east of Tyler off Texas Highway 31.
RICK BOONE, Uvalde

… J.B.’s Bar-B-Que in Orange and West Texas BBQ north of Lumberton on Texas Highway 96.
LARRY MELTON, Beaumont

… Cooper’s Pit Bar-B-Q in Mason.
LAQUITA LINHART, Sugar Land

… the City Meat Market in Giddings.
BRIAN HANSON, College Station

… Smolik’s Market in Karnes City.
CHRIS SOMMER, Dallas

… Uncle Dan’s in Waco.
PAMELA PEARSON, Houston

… KC Masterpiece, Zarda BBQ, and Jake Edwards Bar-B-Que in Kansas City, Missouri.
LINDA SWITZER, New York, New York

… Tony Demaria’s Bar-B-Que in Waco.
STEVE BERGGREN, Waco

… Underwood’s Bar-B-Que in Waco and Brownwood.
RICKEY L. HARMAN, Lubbock

… Sammie’s Bar-B-Que in Fort Worth.
NANCY KIENZLE, Roanoke

… Cousin’s Barbecue in Fort Worth.
JUDY J. STAMEY, Fort Worth

… Bill’s Bar-B-Que in Kerrville.
PATRICK J. QUINN, Ingram

… Flashback Barbecue in Temple.
LOIS ARMENTA, Temple

… Stacy’s Bar-B-Que in Jacksonville. BILL BRIDGES, Palestine

… Dean’s Bar-B-Que and Catering in Beaumont.
WILLIAM CRUSE FUQUA, Beaumont

… North Main BBQ in Euless and Smitty’s Bar-B-Que in Brownwood.
LADD WEBBER, Dallas

… Zimmerhanzel’s Bar-B-Que in Smithville.
DAN M. ELKINS, Paige

… Rosedale BBQ, Wyandot BBQ, Summit Hickory Pit, and the Smokestack in Kansas City.
JOHN W. MARKS III, Houston

Band Aid

YOUR ARTICLE ON SOUTH by Southwest [“5,707 Schmoozers, 750 Bands, 29 Musical Cars, and 250 Gallons of Cream Gravy,” May 1997] features some amazingly accurate illustrations—except for the one purporting to show Michael Corcoran watching one of Austin’s two finest bands, the Damnations (the drummer is our son, Keith). The band Corcoran is enjoying is obviously Austin’s other best band, the Gourds (featuring our son-in-law, Kevin Russell, on mandolin, guitar, and vocals).
MYRNA AND DAVID KEITH LANGFORD
San Antonio

Moody Blues

AS ACCURATE AND APPROPRIATE as your article was about Tilman Fertitta and Galveston [“Big Fish,” May 1997], it was just as gratuitous and inappropriate in its character assassination of Robert Moody and the Moody family. They have long been intertwined with the history of Galveston. Their contributions to this community are legend and unparalleled.
BERNARD A. MILSTEIN
Galveston

Taxing Matters

I HAVE STILL NOT RECOVERED from “For an Income Tax” [Behind the Lines, May 1997]. You have been duped by the education lobby, which for years has been proposing a personal income tax in the name of quality education. We have pumped hundreds of millions of tax dollars into this theoretical quality education gambit, and we still have major education problems in our public schools. Your own surveys have shown this. But the education lobby’s beat for a personal income tax goes on!
JACK MATTHEWS
Fredericksburg

REGARDING A STATE INCOME TAX of 2 percent, I agree on two counts: It would be the most equitable and it has as much chance as an atheist in the Legislature—not a prayer.
JOHN RAINEY
Winnsboro

Storm Clearing

I AM CONCERNED THAT YOUR ARTICLE “Riders on the Storm” [July 1996] left a false impression concerning my occupation. I am the world’s only full-time professional storm photographer. I have a U.S. Service Mark Registration for the term “Storm Chaser,” as applied to my profession. Our chase team is a professional organization with close ties to the National Weather Service, law enforcement, the American Red Cross, and similar public and government agencies. We always act in a professional, law-abiding manner.
WARREN FAIDLEY
Tucson, Arizona

The post ’Cue List appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Chilis, Soups, and Stews

“Now, observe closely: this is the secret ingredient,” said Uncle Richard as he poured in a serving of masa harina into his bubbling pot of chili.

It was an early December day, and I was at home in New York, watching my family celebrate Thanksgiving on a video they had made for me. I hadn’t been able to go home to Texas for the holiday that year, and so they had recorded the festivities for me so I wouldn’t feel left out of the family’s fun.

The night before Thanksgiving, my uncle had made chili. He’s a Dallas-based filmmaker, but like everyone in my family, he’s a passionate home cook—a quality I attribute to my family’s making time in the kitchen about fellowship as well as good food. So watching him on video prepare this iconic Texan dish was comforting, as he made it the same way everyone in my family cooks it—with lots of beef, chiles, and a dash of masa harina to thicken the gravy.

When I was growing up, cold nights at my house meant we’d be served supper in a bowl, whether it came from a pot of soupy beans or a pot of meaty chili. Texans are known for making both very well, though it’s common knowledge that the two are to remain separate, as most Texans will tell you that there is no place for beans in your bowl of chili.

I’m not sure of the origin of this belief, though I once heard a theory posited that adding beans to a bowl of chili disservices both—the two are strong enough to stand alone. I adhere to this belief, though I do have to admit that when I was in junior high, a northerner who had moved to Texas served her ver­sion of chili with beans at a church supper, and I was a bit fascinated by this combination. I spent the next year insisting that my chili have beans (let’s just say this was my form of rebellion), so my mom indulged me and would serve me a bowl of beans on the side to add to my chili; the rest of my family abstained.

But this brief dalliance with beans in my chili didn’t last long. By the time I moved to New York in my twenties, I was once again steadfast in my belief that beans did not belong. This, however, sometimes made for an uncomfortable evening with non-Texan friends. I’d serve them my chili, and they’d poke around with their spoons and say, “Isn’t there some­thing missing? Where are the beans?” (And if they were from the Midwest, they’d wonder where the pasta was, as well.) So as my mom had done for me, I’d offer a bowl of beans on the side so they could add them if they wished. But I always urged them to try my chili as it stood, so they could taste and under­stand how Texans prefer their state dish.

My first observation that Texas-style chili might not be available everywhere was on a trip to Wash­ington, D.C., when I was nine. We were visiting my cousin David and his wife, Pat, a military couple who had left Texas to work at the Pentagon. My parents had brought him a grocery bag filled with all the fix­ings you’d need to make a decent pot of chili, which I thought was a strange gift. But it all made sense when we got off the plane and handed David the bag. He smiled and said, “It’s been too long since I’ve had proper chili. Thank you. This is the best gift ever.”

Today, chili ingredients such as dried ancho chiles are more widely available, and I’ve learned to make a proper Texan chili in New York. I’ve also been made privy to my mom’s fantastic bean recipes, along with other Texan classics such as chicken and dumplings, carne guisada, and tortilla soup. So if you’re craving a comfortable meal that’s served in a bowl, with a little time and a big pot you too can make these dishes, which will warm you right up and make you feel closer to home.

Seven-Chile Texas Chili

People often ask if my chili is authentic Texas chili. I’ll say yes, because I’m a Texan and it’s the chili I grew up eating. Though defining what is authentic Texas chili can be difficult. The term chili comes from chile con carne, which translates to peppers with meat. That’s what I make, with the addition of some spices and aromatics. Some could say, however, that my chili isn’t the most traditional Texas chili, and there has been some grumbling.

Some people have grumbled because there’s cinnamon and chocolate in my chili, though these flavors are commonly found in Mexican cuisine. Some people have grumbled because there aren’t tomatoes in my chili, though I don’t think that cowboys on the range had access to tomatoes all the time. And some people have grumbled because I don’t use chili powder, though using fresh chiles will trump chili powder any day.

Feel free to experiment, however, with your own chili. It’s hard to mess up chili, as the longer it cooks, the more the flavors both deepen and blend in a complex dish where the sum of the bowl is greater than its parts. Even if you take some liberties with my chili, I will insist that you leave the beans out of the pot. Please feel free to serve them on the side for those who do like beans. But as I once read, serving the two separately shows the utmost respect for both dishes, as combining them only lessens both the beans and the chile con carne. And we wouldn’t want to do that!

6 to 8 servings

6 dried ancho chiles
2 dried pasilla chiles
2 dried guajillo chiles
2 dried chipotle chiles
4 dried chiles de arbol
4 pieces of bacon
4 pounds chuck roast, cut into ¼-inch cubes
1 large onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup brewed coffee
1 bottle of beer
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground clove
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon cayenne
½ teaspoon grated Mexican hot chocolate
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
4 dried pequin chiles
2 tablespoons masa harina
Grated cheddar and chopped onions, for serving

1. Remove the seeds and stems from the dried chiles. In a dry skillet heated on high, toast the ancho chiles, pasilla chiles, guajillo chiles, chipotle chiles, and chiles de arbol on each side for about 10 seconds or just until they start to puff. Fill the skillet with enough water to cover chiles. Leave the heat on until the water begins to boil and then turn off the heat and let the chiles soak until soft, about 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a large, heavy pot such as a Dutch oven, fry the bacon on medium heat. When it’s done, remove from the pan and drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Leave the bacon grease in the pot, and on medium heat, cook the beef on each side until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. (You may have to do this in batches.)

3. Remove the browned beef from the pot. Leaving the heat on, add the diced onions to the pot and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another 30 sec­onds. Add the beef back into the pot, crumble in the bacon, and add the coffee, beer, cumin, oregano, cinnamon, clove, allspice, cayenne, chocolate, 3 cups of water, and salt. Turn the heat up to high.

4. While the pot is coming to a boil, make the chile puree. Drain and rinse the chiles then place them in a blender along with the pequin chiles (you don’t need to presoak these little chiles) and 1 cup of fresh water. Puree until nice and smooth and then pour the chile puree into the pot.

5. When the chili begins to boil, turn the heat down to low and simmer uncovered for 5 hours, stirring occasionally. Taste it once an hour and adjust seasonings. If it starts to get too dry, add more water. After 5 hours, scoop out ¼ cup of broth out of the pot and combine with the masa harina. Pour the masa harina mixture into the pot and stir until the chili is thickened. Let the chili simmer for another 30 minutes or so. When done, serve with cheddar and onions.

NOTE: If you can’t find all of these chiles, just use the more readily available anchos and chipotles.

The post An Excerpt From The Homesick Texan Cookbook appeared first on Texas Monthly.

First, Manhattan’s Hill Country Barbecue gets Aaron Franklin cooking on a gas-fueled smoker. Now, New York magazine has discovered Frito Pie.

The publication’s food blog, Grub Street, posted a slideshow on Friday of New York’s “nine most interesting Frito Pies,” marking the city’s latest food trend. Lauren Bloomberg explained that it all started in September, when Gabe Thompson, of the high-end Italian restaurant L’Artusi, served it at the San Genarro Festival, a street fair in Little Italy.

“It comes in a Fritos bag, which is snipped open so that chili con carne can be ladled inside,” Ligaya Mishan wrote in the New York Times when she sampled the dish. “You think it is a joke, and then your eyes go wide.”

Thompson spent part of his childhood in Texas—his official bio mentions memories of gardening with his grandfather here—and got his culinary training in Austin while working at Granite Cafe and Emilia’s.

He “used to grab a bag in the cafeteria snack line at school,” noted Bloomberg, who wrote that she’s enamored with the “walking taco.” 

Here’s a short numerical report card on Grub Street’s report card:

4 – Number of joints that, based on the photos or Bloomberg’s description, actually serve their Frito Pie in-bag, as the dish’s inventors intended.

3 – Too-fancy options. RUB (Righteous Urban Barbecue) nails it with the nacho cheese, but also adds . . . beans. Baked beans. Double Wide’s uses short-rib chili and aged white cheddar. And we’re not sure what kind of pepper tops The Beagle’s dish, but it’s neither green nor pickled. 

2 – Ridiculous side dishes in the photo of The Levee’s Frito Pie: Dum-Dum lollipops and cheese balls. It is in Williamsburg.

1 – Frito pie that is delivery-only, from a place in the East Village called The Brindle Room. Perhaps this is the one idea we should steal.

0 – Number of Frito pies that came from a high school football stadium concession stand. 

The post New York City Has “Interesting” Frito Pie appeared first on Texas Monthly.

When Ben Z. Grant, a state representative from Marshall, persuaded the Sixty-Fifth Legislature to make chili the official state dish, in 1977, he had history on his side. Many people believe that chile con carne was invented in San Antonio during the late nineteenth century by women called chili queens, who cooked the concoction over open flames and sold it to soldiers and tourists. Although countless variations exist, a time-tested recipe was published in Frank X. Tolbert’s 1953 history of chili, A Bowl of Red. Missing from the ingredient list? Beans. “You can’t cook them with the chili, because the chemistry isn’t right,” says his daughter, Kathleen Tolbert Ryan, the co-owner of Tolbert’s Restaurant, in Grapevine, which sponsors the Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff. But if you decide to add them, we’ll never tell.

Ingredients:
2 ounces beef suet (may substitute vegetable oil) 3 pounds lean beef, preferably stewing meat 3 to 6 ancho chile pods, boiled for 30 minutes, then cooled, stemmed, seeded, chopped, and returned to cooking water (may substitute 3 to 6 tablespoons chile powder or ground chile) 1 tablespoon oregano 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon crushed cumin seed 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce 2 to 4 minced garlic cloves, to taste 2 to 4 extra ancho chile pods, stemmed and seeded (but not chopped) 2 tablespoons masa harina or cornmeal

1. Cook suet until fat is rendered. Remove suet. Sear meat in fat in 2 or 3 batches.

2. Place meat in large pot with chopped ancho chiles and as much reserved liquid as needed to keep meat from burning (about 2 inches of water above the meat).

3. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes. Add remaining ingredients except extra anchos and masa. Return to a boil, then cover and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally and skim off grease.

4. Add extra ancho chile pods to taste and masa harina to thicken. Simmer another 30 minutes until meat is tender. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

The post How to Make Chili appeared first on Texas Monthly.

“Chile con carne: a detestable food which, falsely called Mexican, is sold in the United States from Texas to New York.”
—Francisco J. Santamaria, Diccionario de Mejicanismos, 1959

“Chili eaters is some of your chosen people. We don’t know why you so doggone good to us. But, Lord, don’t ever think we ain’t grateful for this chili we about to eat.”
—A prayer by Amarillo cowhand Bones Hooks (1867–1951)

“The aroma of good chili should generate rapture akin to a lover’s kiss.”
—Joe Cooper, With or Without Beans, 1952

“The bowl of blessedness!”
—actor and cattleman Will Rogers (1879–1935)

“It can truly be Texas red only if it walks the thin line just this side of indigestibility: Daring the mouth to eat it and defying the stomach to digest it, the ingredients hardly willing to lie in the same pot together.”
—John Thorne, Serious Pig, 1996

“Chili concocted outside of Texas is usually a weak, apologetic imitation of the real thing. One of the first things I do when I get home to Texas is to have a bowl of red. There is simply nothing better.”
—President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973)

“Congress should pass a law making it mandatory for all restaurants serving chili to follow a Texas recipe.”
—bandleader and trumpeter Harry James (1916–1983)

The post For the Love (or Hate) of Chili appeared first on Texas Monthly.

The Dish

To stare into the glossy depths of a Texas bowl of red, with its heady currents of beef and blessed absence of beans, is to understand a truth about chili: It demands passion. In the history of our state, no other native dish has sparked such shameless boasts and heated quarrels. It was allegedly born as a chile-and-cumin-spiced meat stew made by scrappy Spanish colonists in eighteenth-century Texas; it later became a chuck wagon staple, then gained fame as a meal sold on the streets of San Antonio by women known as “chili queens.” It did not stir true public fervor, however, until the fifties and sixties, a period in which LBJ popularized his family’s Pedernales River Chili and Dallas newspaperman Frank X. Tolbert published a book on the subject, A Bowl of Red. Tolbert also ushered in a golden (and vituperative) age of chili-making: In 1967, after sparring in print with Yankee journalist H. Allen Smith over the meaty dish, he helped establish the World Championship Chili Cookoff in Terlingua. The event inspired great revelry and strong opinions, and it eventually split into rival factions, spawning a whole slew of contests and closely guarded recipes. Is it any wonder that in 1977 the Legislature declared chili our state dish?

How to Make It

For all the vehemence it inspires, cooking chili is a laissez-faire endeavor: It requires attention but not so much that you can’t wander off to chat up your neighbor or find yourself another Lone Star. “It’s the perfect social dish,” says championship chili queen Christine Knight. The 38-year-old Cibolo resident is a relative newcomer: Though she and her late husband, Scott, traveled to Terlingua’s dueling chili cookoffs for more than fourteen years, she began competing only about three years ago. But armed with a recipe that she and Scott developed—he competed as Big Kahuna Chili—she quickly rose to the top, placing first at both the Ladies State Chili Championship of Texas and the Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff. Her secret? Fresh spices, which she buys from Mild Bill’s Spices, in Bulverde. “Old spices won’t make a bad pot of chili,” she says, “but they won’t make a winning one.” Other than that, the key is simplicity—a three-quart pot, some freshly ground chuck, and sense enough to leave the lid on so that the magic can happen. —KR

Christine Knight’s Big Kahuna Chili, the Princess Edition

2 pounds coarsely ground chuck (chili grind)
1 eight-ounce can tomato sauce (such as Contadina)
1 sixteen-ounce can beef broth (such as Swanson’s)
1–3 fresh jalapeños, scored vertically (optional)
3 tablespoons dark chili powder, divided (such as Mild Bill’s, sold online, or McCormick)
3 tablespoons mild or regular chili powder, divided (such as San Antonio Original, sold online, or Gebhardt)
2 tablespoons granulated onion
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 beef bouillon cube
1 chicken bouillon cube
2 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons paprika (such as Pacific Beauty)
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 package cilantro-tomato Sazón Goya seasoning

In a chili pot over medium heat, sear meat till gray, taking care not to brown it (browning changes texture). Remove grease using a turkey baster or by draining meat in a colander in the sink. Add tomato sauce, beef broth, and about half a cup of water. Tie the jalapeños in cheesecloth and add to pot. Cover and cook for 30 minutes, adding water as needed, then remove jalapeños.

Add 1 1/2 tablespoons dark chili powder, 1 1/2 tablespoons mild chili powder, granulated onion, cayenne, beef bouillon, and chicken bouillon. Stir, cover, and simmer for 1 hour, adding water if mixture gets too thick. Add remaining chili powders, granulated garlic, cumin, paprika, pepper, Sazón Goya, and more water if necessary. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Serves 8.

The post Chili appeared first on Texas Monthly.

As far as Texas Monthly is concerned, Frito Pie is best served in the bag. But that’s not really an option when your serving size is 1,325 pounds.

Monday, Frito-Lay and the State Fair of Texas teamed up to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of Fritos by creating the world’s largest Frito Pie—or “Fritos Chili Pie,” if you insist on using the Plano corporation’s preferred nomenclature. 

The accomplishment was verified by a Guinness Book of World Records official.

As Scott Reitz of the Dallas Observer reported last month, said official was Michael Empric, “an adjudicator who helps determine what constitutes an initial record and whether an existing record has been broken.”

As Reitz wrote on Monday, “The 1,200-pound goal was obliterated by an extra 125 pounds of sodium and cholesterol.”

According to the Frito-Lay press release, the concoction required “635 bags of Fritos chips (10 1/2 ounces each), 660 cans of Hormel® Chili without Beans (15 ounces each) and 580 bags of shredded cheddar cheese (8 ounces each).” 

We can’t decide if it’s extravagantly awesome or unbelievably wasteful that they choose to open up 635 bags of Fritos, instead of trucking in a pallet from the factory. 

Also, we are feeling pretty bad for Wolf Brand Chili. 

The record-setting pie yielded approximately “5,000 single-serve samples,” meaning that the Fair’s attendees still had room to try out something deep-fried. Because let’s face it: 1,325 pounds of Frito Pie should not serve more than 2,650 people.

“I can’t say that the State Fair’s mega-concoction looks particularly appealing,” wrote Bruce Tomaso of the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the trough.”

It’s true. You still kind of need the bag. And the Fritos aren’t supposed to be on top. 

The post Frito Pie for 5,000, Anyone? appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Happy Guinness World Records Day! Today is the eighth annual event held (largely online) by the British arbiter of the Longest, Shortest, and Fastest. Today people around the globe are encouraged to attempt a wide variety of odd, impressive, and completely meaningless world records.

Here in Texas, however, people do that all the time, unprompted. In the past six weeks alone, the state has set four marks, starting with “The world’s largest Frito pie” (above) at the State Fair on October 1. And yesterday, because it’s also “America Recycles Week,” Dallas-based AT&T announced that it had set the record for “collecting the most wireless devices in a week.” 

Sure, that’s a little boring compared to older Texas records like “Most People Wearing Frog Masks” (set at Texas Tech) or—get ready to click!—”Dog With Largest Eyeballs.” But a record is a record. (And no, we don’t know why we didn’t do a whole post on the dog with largest eyeballs either.)

Texas is also the record-holder for “Largest Pecan Pie” and “Largest Serving of Salsa,” but we come up short with Guinness in a lot of other crucial food divisions. Here’s six world records that were set here, including the four newest, and four marks that the state has simply got to break.

SIX RECORDS SET IN TEXAS

1. FRITO PIE
As the TM Daily Post covered at the time, Frito-Lay and the State Fair of Texas teamed up for one giant trough-based serving of chili, cheese and corn chips that was officially adjudicated by Guinness at 1,325 lbs. It was the first time for this category. 

2. RECYCLING WIRELESS DEVICES
According to AT&T, Guinness has certified the company’s September collection of 50,942 devices in a week, and Texas beat every state, contributing 12.4% (5,879) of the dead phones. (California came in second with 4,916. Take that, tree huggers!)

3. CONSECUTIVE BACK HANDSPRINGS
As MyFoxDFW and Bruce Tomaso of the Dallas Morning News reported, 16 year-old Hockaday cheerleader Miranda Ferguson broke the record for consecutive back handsprings, which was 32, by executing the maneuver 35 times at halftime of a football game October 5. You can see the footage of that night, along with a lot more, in this clip of Ferguson’s appearance on “The Today Show.”

4. BREAST MILK DONATION
Yes, it sounds like a weird one, but it’s actually a major act of charity: as WFAA reported on October 24, Granbury mother Alicia Richman, having saved up more than enough frozen breast milk for her own baby, donated 86 gallons to the nonprofit Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas, which puts it to use in neonatal intensive care units.

5. PECAN PIE
World records and minor league baseball stunts: a natural fit. The El Paso Diablos set the pecan pie record back in 1999, making, according to Guinness spokesperson Sara Wilcox, a 50-footer (in diameter) that weighed in at just under 19 tons. She further elaborated that:

The crust was made from 3,471 lb of flour, 2,085 lbs of shortening, 170 lbs of sugar, 170 lbs of powdered milk and 3,000 lbs of water. The filling was made up of 1,500 lbs of pecans, 13,350 lbs of sugar, 850 lbs of margarine, 200 lbs of salt, 6,700 lbs of eggs, 210 lbs of vanilla [and] 9,700 lbs of corn syrup.

6. SALSA
The honor here goes to the Annual Tomato Festival in Jacksonville, where Bob Blumer of the TV show “Glutton For Punishment” put together a 500-gallon bowl (weighing 2,672-pounds) in 2010. 

AND FOUR RECORDS TEXAS NEEDS TO BREAK

1. FLOUR TACO
The Baja California city of Mexicali set this mark to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2003, fashioning a 1,654-pounder that was 36 feet long and included nearly 1,200 pounds of steak, 186 pounds of dough, 179 pounds of onions and 106 pounds of “coriander.” We assume the British Guinness means cilantro.

2. ENCHILADA
This one is a sad tale. The record for “largest enchilada,” at 3,122.063 pounds, belongs to the Gobierno Delegacional de Iztapalapa in Mexico. In April of 2011, a group in San Antonio set out to break the record for Fiesta. But according to Sarah Mills of the San Antonio Express-News, their 300-foot long, 1.5 ton slab of cheesy goodness, which used 1,900 pounds of cheddar, did not qualify because it wasn’t made from one single tortilla.

3. NACHOS
It’s one thing for Mexico to own such a record. But Lawrence, Kansas? That’s the place that currently lays claim to “the largest serving of nachos”—a 4,689-pound platter served up at the Kansas Relays this past April 21. The Kansas Relays? Your move, Texas.

4. CHILI CON CARNE
Truly, this one cannot stand. The world record for chili is the property of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. What’s next, Scranton-Wilkes Barre setting the mark for biggest bowl of queso? The Keystone Aquatic Club’s 1,438.32-pound serving of chili was cooked up in 2003. According to Guinness:

The process of cooking the chili began at 04.00 on 19 July and took 5 hours to make. This included the chopping of the vegetables and the firing of eight burners to cook the meat. Together with the usual ingredients, the chili con carne contained 6,434.49 g (226.97 oz) of Budweiser and 4,161.70 g (146.80 oz) of Coors beer.

So, we’re betting that at least 400 pounds of that was beans. 

The post Six World Records Set in Texas…and Four More That Need to Be appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Chili. A classic Texas dish, some would say—but not I. 

I loathe it. What is it about a bowl of red that appeals to the palate, anyway? Surely not beef suet, an essential ingredient in old-time recipes. Chili is the most overrated, overhyped variation on beef stew ever concocted by man. Such is my disdain, in fact, that 35 years ago I wrote a Texas Monthly cover story denouncing it as “third-rate swill” and sat for a photo with a bowl of the stuff emptied over my head. My protest was prompted by a misguided decision of the Sixty-fifth Texas Legislature, which, in a moment of collective insanity, had voted to declare chili the official state dish. This was a travesty, akin to naming catfish the official state seafood. Had the barbecue lobby been caught napping? Had the voting machines in the House of Representatives malfunctioned, as they are wont to do? Had the highway to Lockhart been shut down?

None of the above. It so happens that Texas had found itself at a moment in history when chili fanatics were beginning to spread their false gospel: that chili is an art form; that it is our last link to the legends and ways of the open range; and that, to that end, the chili cookoff came into being in Terlingua circa 1967 not as a publicity stunt but to celebrate the virtues, real or imagined, of a bowl of red.

Let us reflect for a moment on the relative merits of chili and its rival for culinary fame, the brisket. Chili, as I wrote those many years ago, violates every principle of good cookery. Its basic ingredient is grease; the object is to reduce the beef to a tasteless mush. If the essence of fine cuisine is to bring out natural flavors, then the apotheosis of chili demands their obliteration. I suspect that most “chili heads,” as they are known, would get as much gastronomic satisfaction from fifteen minutes of sniffing chili powder as they get from downing a spoonful of chili.

The ideal brisket, on the other hand, can inspire raptures on the beauty of a strategically placed ribbon of fat, not to mention the accompaniment of a sauce to tempt the culinary gods. And let us not overlook the role of the master carver, whose exacting mission it is to pierce the center of the slab of beef, to sever the perfect slice therefrom. The greatness of brisket lies in its ability to hold its flavor and temperature for hours, if necessary, and to maintain its integrity as a solid piece of meat. At last, the moment arrives for the slices to be piled high upon a plate. This is the true test of brisket, the point every barbecue aficionado awaits, the fulfillment of the pitmaster’s art. This is how Texans were meant to dine. Ah, blissful gluttony!

Top that, Kansas City! Stick to ribs, Memphis! Cut the coleslaw, North Carolina! There is no food more unambiguously identified with Texas than the brisket. When LBJ and Lady Bird famously hosted German chancellor Ludwig Erhard at the presidential ranch, in 1963, they served brisket. Had chili been on the menu instead, the NATO alliance might have fallen apart.

In an effort to elevate barbecue to its rightful throne, I joined with several friends some years back to form the Texas Barbecue Appreciation Society. We sent questionnaires to lawmakers asking if they were willing to override the Legislature’s previous action and recognize the true importance of brisket. Rumors were rife that chili heads had greased some palms to skew the outcome of the original vote. There were also serious issues to be resolved. Was barbecue authentic if it was cooked in a gas oven? Should sausage be regarded as barbecue, or did that designation belong solely to brisket? Unfortunately, most legislators did not find these weighty questions worthy of debate, and the Texas Barbecue Appreciation Society reluctantly moved to disband. 

We were years ahead of our time. If a vote to name our state dish were held today, barbecue would prevail in a landslide. What civilized Texan is not familiar with the fine brisket at Snow’s BBQ, or at Franklin Barbecue, or at Pecan Lodge? Meanwhile, chili cookoffs, I’m happy to report, attract relatively small hordes to the Big Bend region these days. Barbecue, at last, has found its way to the pinnacle of Texas cuisine.

Which is why I now call on the Legislature to undo the grievous error of signing chili into law as the official state dish in 1977. I hereby nominate the honorable Charlie Geren, a state representative from Fort Worth who happens to own the Railhead Smokehouse, to carry the legislation. If he needs help drafting it in the interregnum, I am available. When the next session begins, in January 2015, I expect it to be House Concurrent Resolution 1. 

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For Lisa Fain, it may have started with a cheese log. She was eight years old when she watched her grandmother make one for a party.

“It was her aunt’s recipe, and I was just blown away,” says Fain. “I never realized you could make a cheese ball. I thought it was something you got from the store. That was a moment when I realized, just about anything can be homemade!”

As “The Homesick Texan,” Fain shares all the recipes and cooking knowledge she’s acquired since then, first on her blog, which started in 2005, and then with The Homesick Texan Cookbook in 2011. Now comes The Homesick Texan’s Family Table: Lone Star Cooking from My Kitchen to Yours (Ten Speed Press), which delves even more deeply into her love of cooking Texas food, and the people who instilled it.

Despite living in New York City (hence the moniker), Fain’s Texas pedigree is strong: seven generations, including a great-grandfather who was once head of the Collin County Cattleman’s Association and a great uncle, former Texas A&M-Kingsville president James C. Jernigan, who was a contemporary of former Governor John Connally—which may or may not be how Nellie Connally’s recipe for Chicken Spaghetti found its way into Fain’s great-grandma’s recipe collection (she updates it in the book by replacing canned soup with a homemade cheese sauce).

As Fain writes in the book’s introduction, “Most Texans will say that their most memorable meal was home-cooked, shared at the family table.”

JASON COHEN: The saying is, you have your whole life to do your first book. Did you spend a lot of time thinking about what you wanted the second one to be?

Lisa Fain: Yes and no. I mean, it was always in the back of my head that I’d like to write more than one book. The first book, I wrote the proposal in a weekend and it sold in a day. I wrote the whole thing, and photographed the whole thing, in under six months. Because I’ve been doing the blog for so long, I had just this wealth of stuff. This one, I don’t want to say it was a struggle, but it was a lot more difficult, yeah.

JC: The “family table” concept is a natural, but did you kick around other ideas?

LF: No. I wanted to do something that involved family recipes, dealing with my grandmother and my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother died when I was seven, and my grandmother, you know, she’s getting up there. She’s going to turn ninety next year, and she still lives on a farm by herself and drives all around North Texas and is very independent, but you never know what could happen, so I wanted to be able to talk to her, and I wanted her to be able to see the book. That was one thing that made me really sad with my first book: a couple years before it came out, my grandfather died and then my other grandmother died. They were a big part of my food journey, and I was really sad that they hadn’t been able to see it.

JC: It’s striking how many memories and recipes go back to your great-grandparents.

LF: I was very fortunate to know three of my great-grandparents and actually have memories of them. They were from such a different world. They were both farmers: they lived on farms, and that’s how they made their living, which is so far removed from my experience, and I’m only two generations away. So it was always interesting, even when I was a kid, to go visit them in the country—which is now not so much the country.

JC: Your grandfather from Sedalia, Jack Jernigan, he kind of straddled the two worlds?

LF: Yeah. He grew up as a farm boy, but he and his brother were in WWII, and they got their PhDs on the GI Bill. He was a psychologist at the veterans hospital in Dallas, but he always kept the land. And then my grandmother did the same thing with her family (in Melissa). When they retired in 1980 they left Oak Cliff and built a house on the land that was in my grandmother’s family, that had been continuously farmed since the 1840s. And that’s where she lives now.

JC: And the other side of your family: Grandma Ashner?

LF: They’re also from Oak Cliff. They were city people. But they still loved food and were all really excellent cooks. My grandmother, for her honeymoon, they ate their way around Mexico City, and this was like in the late forties, so I always thought that was really cool.

JC: You work from family recipes, but you also usually come up with your own spin on the classics, yes?

LF: Absolutely. I have a stack of cards from my great grandmother Blanche—handwritten cards. I always thought I had the worst handwriting, but her handwriting is even worse than mine. On some of these, I have no idea what she’s written, so, it’s kind of like, trying to decipher chicken scratch. And a lot of old recipes, it’s very charming when they say, “hot oven” or “handful,” but you have to make it a little more specific.

And then, I do like to add some twist. Obviously I love chile peppers. I’ll add some jalapeno or cilantro or garlic to the fried chicken brine that my family likes to use, things like that. But some recipes, I didn’t change at all. The lemon pie recipe is exactly as my grandma made it, exactly as her mother made it. The oatmeal bread is the same way. Didn’t change a thing. Some things I just left as they were because they were really perfect.

JC: You and your parents eventually moved to Houston. So who has the better food: Houston or Dallas?

LF: (laughs) You know, I think they both have their strengths, and I enjoy eating in both. For pure diversity, Houston is the way to go, but Dallas is catching up. It gets a lot of bad rap, especially about its Mexican food, but it has a very strong Mexican food scene I think.

JC: How often do you eat the kind of Texas home cooking you write about?

LF: In New York? I actually do eat a lot of tortillas and beans, and salad. It’s kind of like my go-to thing. Every Sunday I usually make a big pot of pinto beans and snack on that all week. I usually make a batch of tortillas and just keep those in my fridge. You can always do something with those.

JC: Tortillas and beans—could there be two foods that are any simpler to make that people somehow think are hard to make?

LF: No. And that’s the funny thing. I mean, I grew up with those homemade tortillas, and I guess my mom did a pot of pinto beans once a week too. Flour tortillas for me were a challenge. It took me a long time to figure out how to do those right. But once I did, there was no looking back, because they’re so far superior to anything you can get in a store, at least in New York. And beans—I think in New York, at least, when you go to a Mexican restaurant, they treat the beans kind of like a throwaway dish. They don’t put any love or care into it and they’re always so flavorless. Because it’s not hard to make beans taste good.

JC: You had recipes for “Houston-style” and “San Antonio-style” flour tortillas in the first book. This time, it’s buttermilk-bacon, and sweet potato chipotle flour tortillas. Fairly recent inventions? 

LF: Within the last couple of years. The sweet potato one I did because I make sweet potato biscuits, and I’ve always thought that the flour tortillas at Chuy’s tasted like they were made out of Bisquick. I don’t know why, but they had this biscuit-like consistency, or not consistency, but a specific flavor. From that, I got the idea to make sweet potato tortillas. And then the buttermilk ones, I saw that there’s some place in Austin making buttermilk tortillas and I was really intrigued by it because I hadn’t tried them. Then someone asked me if I ever used bacon fat for bread in place of lard. So I thought I’d use it. And it worked. 

JC: It sure did. I think the second batch I made was even better than the first, because I had the dough in the fridge for a while. They were easier to roll out.

LF: Yeah, the longer they sit the easier they get to roll out.

JC: Your dad and your brother both live in Oregon. Are they the same as you, needing to constantly make Texas food?

LF: Absolutely. We talk about those sort of things all the time. What’s different for them is, people in the Pacific Northwest do not like spicy food at all. So they’ll put half a jalapeno in a big thing of soup and everyone will be like, oh my god, oh my god, it’s so hot. And of course they have the same challenges, finding the ingredients and stuff like that.

JC: With the foodie culture that we have compared to ten years ago, do you think your journey might be different if you’d moved to New York now, and you could actually find Ro-Tel tomatoes all over Manhattan?

LF: It’s an interesting question. Now, if I want to get on the train, I can get a breakfast taco. There’s barbecue now in New York City. Sometimes I find Topo Chico at Whole Foods. And there’s Shiner everywhere. There are these staples of Texas that were not available when I arrived here, and I totally missed. But there’s still some things you just can’t get here, like queso. Nobody serves queso and when they do it’s just awful. And nobody knows how to make nachos. My big thing is Tex-Mex. That’s like my soul food.

JC: Despite your love of Tex-Mex, in the first book you say chicken-fried-steak is your absolute favorite. Do you think it, rather than chili, (or barbecue), should be the state dish of Texas?

LF: No, I’m pretty cool with chili to be honest. I think chili’s completely bastardized. That’s kind of a problem, with chili, there so many opinons of what it is, and I’m very much the Texas chili purist. But I think that’s a great state dish, because it incorporates beef, it’s a cattle state, and Tex Mex: the two defining early cultures of Texas. And, it tastes good!

JC: Do you have a chile pepper-handling horror story?

LF: I do. I do. Yes. It happened a couple of summers ago, and I now know what hell is like.

I was chopping jalapenos, and it was August, so they were super fresh. We actually have a farmer here in New York at Union Square who grows the hottest chiles. They make my eyes water just to look at them.

I’ve never worn gloves when I chop chiles, or goggles, I’ve always been like, “Ah, I can handle it.” And usually I can! But anyway, I was chopping the jalapenos, and a seed flew up, and it landed in my eye. It felt like a thosuand needles had been dipped into fire, and were poking me at the same time. I finally got it out and, it burned for about an hour. I really thought I was going to die. I could barely see out of it. It was probably the worst experience of my life in food.

But, I still don’t wear goggles.

JC: Can only happen once, right?

LF: I’m more careful.

JC: You were here in March for Foodways Texas, and you’d been hoping to come back to see the bluebonnets. You’ll also be here again for book signings. Woud it kill your brand if you just moved back to Texas?

LF: I sell the most books in Texas and I get the most traffic from Texas, which is funny to me. I think people relate to the “homesick” part, but also just relate to the food in general and celebrating Texas food—no matter where you are. That’s what I try to do and I think that what’s important to people and I think that’s why Texans in Texas enjoy the book and the blog. I do love New York, and I do miss Texas. My ideal scenario would be half my time in Texas and half my time in New York. I just haven’t figured out where I want to to put down stakes in Texas yet.

JC: I think it also speaks to the feeling that “everything’s better in Texas.” That if you weren’t in Texas, you’d spend all your time missing it. You think, “Oh, if we ever left Texas, it would be horrible… there wouldn’t be any food!”

LF: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it’s funny, people who haven’t lived in other places, they get shocked… I went out with some people in Texas and I ordered a chicken-fried steak and they’re all getting salads, and they’re like, why are you getting chicken-fried steak, and I’m like, “because I can’t get it in New York.” Their eyes get wide: what! there’s no chicken fried steak in New York? I was like, “no, not really.” What?! That’s crazy. So people don’t even realize that a lot of the things that they take for granted just aren’t availabe. So I think that is definitely an interesting thing for readers. You’ve got it good, because you’re still there.

The post At the Family Table With the Homesick Texan appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Q: This past summer my teenage daughter and her friend tie-dyed some T-shirts in our garage, and now my husband has found me “complicit” in the “desecration” of his beloved chili pot, which he recently discovered had a remnant of dye in it. I fear that our 24-year-long relationship has been irreparably damaged. How can I make this right?
Name Withheld, San Antonio

A: The Texanist cooks his chili in the very same pot from which the meaty stew of his youth was long ago ladled. This prized vessel was handed down to him by his father, a fine man and pretty fair chili chef. Every time the Texanist cooks chili, he thinks of his dad. The pot is special to him. Thus, the Texanist can understand your husband’s three-alarm disappointment as a result of the freaky goings-on in his own cherished pot. But the Texanist is also the father of a daughter who is prone to occasional mishaps, mostly of an innocent nature so far. By the Texanist’s estimation, your husband, depending on the exact age of your girl, is somewhere between thirteen and eighteen years late in realizing that once a child enters the picture, few treasured personal items will, for one reason or another, retain their sacred status. That failed diaper that permanently stained the couch in his man cave and the sippy cup full of chocolate milk that was allowed to leak its entire contents down the crack of his truck’s backseat only to be discovered a week later should have been the first of many clues. Since your husband’s pot was not rendered inoperable by the tie-dying or really even all that desecrated, the Texanist finds you not guilty of complicity. But to help with the thawing of the chilliness between you and Mr. Name Withheld caused by this misadventure, simply wash the pot thoroughly and then have your husband reconsecrate it to its former perceived glory with a big batch of his “famous” Texas red.

Q: I never cease to be amazed at the interesting and unusual things that grace our highways. On a stretch of Texas Highway 39, west of Hunt, there is a string of fence posts with a single boot secured to each one. It’s known as Boot Hill, even though there’s really no hill. Surely there is no other state with such an interesting collection of inverted footwear. Where did all these boots come from?
Ben Sanders, Houston

A: Rural Texans are known to put all sorts of mementos out on the fence for the pleasure of gandering passersby. Huge catfish heads, large rattlesnakes, and trophy coyote carcasses are fairly common sights on the fences of our hinterlands. The boot fence outside Hunt is a fine example of just this sort of display. The Texanist is familiar with the landmark, as it serves as a signal to him that the good times about to be had at Crider’s Rodeo and Dancehall are imminent—and about three miles back the other way on 39. The fence’s origins date to the early seventies, when a Kerr County family began putting the worn-out boots of the half dozen young buckaroos with whom they had been blessed up on the fence posts of their friend and neighbor, John Jobes. Soon the old boots of Jobes’s two young daughters went up. Then Jobes’s ranch hands put their boots up on the fence. In time, the posts became the final resting spot for most anybody’s old boots. Nowadays, this stretch of fence adorned with old boots is quite lengthy and has even jumped to the other side of the road. But contrary to your belief that this display is solely a Texas thing, the Texanist knows of at least two non-Texan footwear-adorned fences, one on a country road between Placerville and Coloma, out in California, and another in Glenwood, Minnesota. And then, of course, there’s the Cardrona Bra Fence, in Otago, New Zealand, another example of an eye-catching non-Texan roadside attraction.

Q: I am a native Texan, having been born and raised in Harlingen. I have, however, lived in the northern suburbs of Chicago for the past forty years. About once every two weeks or so, I will hear the word “pecan” mispronounced—usually at a Panera or a pie shop—especially around the holidays. This really grates on my nerves. Should I correct the person in question as politely as possible or let him or her continue down the path of ignorance?
Randy Casey, Libertyville, Illinois

A: “Pecan” (or, alternatively, “pee-kahn” or “pee-can”) is one of those words whose correct pronunciation is hotly contested. Whether the arguer’s allegiance is to “pecan” or, alternatively, “pee-kahn” or “pee-can” is almost always dictated by the regional dialect of the particular area from whence they came. Texas is decidedly “pecan” territory, while much of the East Coast goes with “pee-can” and most of the rest of the country is made up with “pee-kahn” people. Sometimes there are anomalies related to the origin of a person’s parents. For instance, there might be a native of Maine who goes with “pecan” because his Texas-raised mother pronounced it that way, while his fellow Mainiacs say “pee-can.” Since you are likely a “pecan”-er currently residing in pretty deep “pee-kahn” territory, the Texanist is wondering if you’ve ever been corrected. If so, you know very well that all such attempts are completely futile, as one must first acknowledge an error in one’s ways before an adjustment can be made, which is highly unlikely.

Q: My father-in-law gets way too into my son’s peewee football games, going so far as to cuss from the sidelines when he is upset with the outcome of a play or a referee’s call. So far he’s only received strange looks from the other parents, but I’m afraid he’s going to get into trouble with the officials or cause a fight or something. I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but he acts like nothing’s wrong.
Susan P., Lufkin

A: If one were to jot down a list of things that folks here in Texas can be excessively passionate about, football would be found right up there alongside state pride, state cuisines (and the pots in which they are prepared), and maybe even states’ rights. And the Texanist doesn’t have to tell you, a football mom, about the palpable excitement generated when two teams clash, gladiator-style, out on the gridiron. Whether the warriors in these pitched battles are 17-year-old high schoolers facing off on Friday night or 27-year-old professionals going at it on Sunday afternoon or 7-year-olds meeting at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning when normal people are sipping coffee and looking at the newspaper, or prepping for a fun trek to a nearby state park, or, ahem, sleeping off the previous night’s revelry, it matters not. Football is a great spectator sport. Until the spectating is tainted by a discourteous and unruly fan, that is. The Texanist applauds your father-in-law’s football enthusiasm and bets that beneath his unvarnished exterior he’s probably a good granddad on the inside. But it sounds as if his pigskin avidity is crossing over to an unacceptable rabidity, which if left unaddressed has the potential to spoil what ought to be a splendid outing for everyone in attendance. You or your husband needs to tell him that the Texanist says to dial it down a notch. Then back that warning up with the threat of a family-imposed ejection or, perhaps, a season-long ban. It would be best that he hear it from one of you instead of a league official, a cop, or worse, the angry (and sleepy) mom of the opposing team’s nose guard.

The Texanist’s Little-Known Fact of the Month: Of the more than 50,000 physicians currently registered with the Texas Medical Board, there are but a mere six with the surname Pepper. Set an appointment with any one of them for any time other than ten, two, or four o’clock.

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Bust out the Dutch ovens: it’s getting “chili” in Texas. The origins of the robust dish Texans fervently claim as their own are, as food writers are wont to say, lost to history. But Frank X. Tolbert, in his 1953 treatise on Texas chili, A Bowl of Red, made a pretty good case for San Antonio as the birthplace of the ruddy, lustrous, peppery pot of meat we’re so fond of. So did the Sixty-fifth Legislature, which anointed it our official dish in 1977, boldly declaring that “Texans continue today the tradition begun in San Antonio 140 years ago of making the best and only authentic concoction of this piquant delicacy.” No doubt chili’s connection to Texas is deep and indisputable, from Gebhardt to Wolf brand, from the late-nineteenth-century “chili queens” of the Alamo City’s downtown plazas to the modern-day maestros of the Terlingua cookoffs.

But don’t look for a united Texan front when it comes to defining “authentic” (except for a near universal, almost hysterical aversion to the inclusion of beans). I lack the fortitude to wade into the murky depths of secret formulas and verboten ingredients and therefore align myself with the author of this recipe, Terry Thompson-Anderson, who reasonably suggests that perhaps “the rivalry and the controversy make for dozens of equally fabulous bowls of chili.”

Serves 8 to 10

12 ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed
7 pasilla chiles, stems and seeds removed
2 1/2 tablespoons cumin seeds, toasted, then ground
1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds, toasted, then ground
1 1/2 tablespoons dried Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
6 pounds beef chuck roast
1/3 cup fresh leaf lard (preferable) or shortening
2 large onions, chopped
15 garlic cloves, minced
2/3 cup tomato paste
1 can (15 ounces) tomato sauce
3 quarts chicken stock (set aside 2/3 cup for the masa harina)
1/2 cup masa harina whisked into 2/3 cup hot chicken stock
kosher salt

Heat a heavy-bottomed 12- to 14-inch skillet over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, add a layer of the chiles. Cook, turning often, until a strong chile aroma—one that is not bitter or charred—emanates from the pan. Do not allow the chiles to burn. Spread the chiles on a wire rack to cool and become moderately crisp. Repeat until all the chiles have been toasted. Grind the chiles to a fine powder in an electric spice or coffee grinder. Shake the chile powder through a fine strainer to remove any large pieces. Combine the ground chiles with the cumin, coriander, oregano, cocoa, paprika, cayenne, and black pepper. Set the mixture aside.

Trim the chuck roast, removing all fat, gristle, and tendons. Chop the meat by hand into 1/2-inch dice; set aside. Melt the lard in a heavy-bottomed 8-quart (or larger) Dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the fat is hot, add the meat and sear, stirring often. Add the onions and garlic. Cook, stirring often, until the onions are wilted and transparent, about 7 minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir to blend well. Cook, stirring, until the tomato paste is thick and dark in color, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato sauce and chile-spice mixture. Stir to blend well, then add the chicken stock. Bring the mixture to a full boil, then lower heat to a simmer and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 1 1/2 hours. Stir in the masa mixture and salt to taste. Cook, uncovered, an additional 30 to 45 minutes on low-medium heat, or until the chili is thickened and the meat is fork-tender. Stir often to prevent sticking. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired. Serve hot and add your favorite toppings (diced onion, avocado, sour cream, shredded cheese, corn chips, et cetera).

Adapted from Texas on the Table, by Terry Thompson-Anderson. Published by the University of Texas Press.

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