It’s featured in cook-offs and fundraisers, in cookbooks and on television programs. Chili is one of the more controversial foods widely available in America. Most Americans love chili and most have their own favorite recipe.

Chili may have its roots in Spanish cuisine. Mexican cooking doesn’t claim it. Chili has been known in America since the early 1800s, and possibly before then. It was originally a food for those who couldn’t afford good cuts of meat, or for the pioneers going west. They used dried beef, fat, salt and chile peppers together to form “chili bricks” which were then cooked out on the trail.

Since then, chuckwagon cooks, café owners and chefs all over the United States have worked to make a “perfect” bowl of chili. Even the basic ingredients in chili differ, depending on where one is standing in the U.S. Some basic ingredients include ground beef, tomatoes, chile powder, salt, pepper and paprika. However, in Texas, stew meat is frequently used for a “bowl of red” and plenty of cayenne pepper goes in the mix, as well. Texans also frown on chili with beans.

In Cincinnati, the famous 5-way chili features chili on top of spaghetti, with beans, chopped onions and cheese. This is served in restaurants all over the city. Chili changes with the region, becoming hotter in some places and featuring more tomato in other cities.

Chili has become a gourmet feature in many restaurants, but it once kept people in the West alive during the Great Depression. It was cheap and crackers came with every bowl. This kept the chili cafes open and led to a rise in popularity in the 1950s with the first recorded chili cook-off in 1952 at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. Since then, chili cook-offs have been held nationwide every year. They have been televised and some competitions carry large purses for the winners. Entire cookbooks have been written on ways to cook chili and every bowl is a little different.

When the weather gets cooler, this writer likes chili with beans, medium spicy. I brown a pound of ground pork (not bulk sausage) with a small chopped onion and drain it well. I then add two cans of diced tomatoes to the pot and one can of water. I use the Wicke Fowler’s 2-Alarm Chili Seasoning Kit and use about half the provided chile powder and all the spices except the cayenne pepper. I also add 2 cans of drained, dark red kidney beans. But that’s just my preference. With all the variations in chili recipes, anyone can find a combination that suits his or her tastes.