A couple of weeks ago we had guests for lunch. Claire served chili — I like chili and Claire makes really good chili. When I was growing up in Oklahoma, we ate “Texas chili” although we didn’t call it Texas chili — we just called it chili. Texas chili was made with beef… just beef, no beans! If anyone even mentioned putting beans into chili, they’d be run out of town. I also don’t remember there being a lot of peppers, onions, etc, either — if there were, they were chopped very fine. I guess chili pepper was added as to taste, but I don’t remember it ever being especially hot.
Just about every restaurant had chili on the menu, but if you tried to order it in say, July — people would look at you like you were an idiot, and of course even though it was on the menu, it wasn’t available. You only ate chili during cold weather. Restaurants usually had it available from about October to February.
I mentioned that Claire makes really good chili — but she uses ground beef (like hamburger meat.) That would never have happened when I was living in Oklahoma. Chili was made from “chili meat.” Some purists made their chili using hand-cut cubed beef, but most everyone used “Chili grind.” Chili meat or chili grind is, basically, beef ground like hamburger, but a coarser grind.— maybe a size a little larger than green peas, but the size could vary.
My uncle was the butcher in my dad’s grocery store and he always had hamburger meat and chili meat available. They were both made with the same machine or grinder. He just put in a larger die to grind the chili meat. I’m not sure if I’ve seen “chili meat” in the local stores around here, but I’ve really never looked for it. Probably any butcher could make it for you, but I don’t know if it’s a “stock” item. Maybe I’ll do some extensive research on it one day — in the meantime I’ll just accept the fact that chili, like a lot of things, has changed and go with ground beef.
— 30 —