Chili gets me out of bed.
Lens

Recipes

One recipe per style.

Each style's canonical recipe: a champion's, an institution's, or the published version its authorities point to. The basis for each is stated and linked.

  1. A stoneware bowl of dark red chili made of cubed beef with no beans, three saltine crackers beside it.

    Texas Red

    Wick Fowler’s Chili

    The recipe attributed to Wick Fowler, co-champion of the first Terlingua cook-off in 1967, as published by the chile authority Dave DeWitt on Fiery Foods Central (2015), which presents it as the version Fowler cooked at Terlingua. Fowler’s commercial 2-Alarm spice blend has never been published, so this home version is the closest documented record of his chili.

    8 servings · About 2 hours of cooking, plus an optional overnight rest

  2. An oval plate of spaghetti topped with thin meat chili and a heap of finely shredded yellow cheese, oyster crackers beside it.

    Cincinnati Chili

    Camp Washington Chili

    Published by the James Beard Foundation as the recipe of Camp Washington Chili, the Cincinnati parlor that won a James Beard America’s Classics award in 2000. The Foundation says the owners would not part with their secret family recipe and supplied this slight variation on it.

    6 to 8 servings · About 3 hours, best made a day ahead

  3. An earthenware bowl of green chile stew with pork, potato and strips of green chile, a roasted green chile beside it.

    New Mexico Chile

    Red Chile Enchilada Sauce from Dried Pods

    New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Guide E-327, 'Using Chile to Make Ristras and Chile Sauce,' by Danise Coon of the Chile Pepper Institute and extension vegetable specialist Stephanie Walker (revised 2015). It is the state land-grant university’s own method for the pod-based red sauce that New Mexican cooking is built on.

    About 2 cups sauce, enough for 12 tortillas (the purée step makes about 1 pint) · About 1 hour

  4. A white bowl of chilli with ground beef and kidney beans under a glossy sheen of red fat.

    Springfield Chilli

    Smitty’s Lawson’s Tavern Chilli

    The house recipe of Franklin 'Smitty' Smith, chilli-maker at Springfield’s Lawson’s Tavern for about 25 years, which he released after the tavern closed. It was reported as shared with the State Journal-Register; we could not locate that article and took the recipe from Midwesterner’s 2020 reprint. No Springfield parlor has published its own recipe, and this is the most fully documented tavern recipe we found.

    Serves a crowd (no count given) · Not stated in the source; rendering the suet takes the longest

  5. A hot dog in a bun topped with a line of meat sauce, chopped white onion and yellow mustard.

    Coney Sauce

    Gillie’s Coney Island Chili Sauce (Flint style)

    Contributed by David Gillie of Gillie’s Coney Island in Mt. Morris, Michigan, to A Taste of Michigan, the Michigan Restaurant Association’s 1991 cookbook. The Flint Coney Resource Site calls it the only sauce recipe ever released by a working Flint coney restaurant. We found no published recipe from a Detroit coney island.

    About 10 lb of sauce · About 1 hour 15 minutes

  6. A stoneware bowl of elbow macaroni topped with tomato-red chili with ground beef and kidney beans.

    Midwest Chili

    Spend Smart. Eat Smart. Chili

    Midwestern bean-and-tomato chili has no single canonical recipe. This one is published by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, the state’s land-grant extension service, in its Spend Smart. Eat Smart. program. It is built on the regional baseline of ground beef, kidney beans and tomato.

    6 servings of 1 cup · About 20 minutes

  7. An oval plate holding a burrito smothered in pale green chili flecked with diced green chile, a folded flour tortilla beside it.

    Chili Verde

    Pueblo Green Chile

    Published by History Colorado, the state historical society, 'from the kitchen of José Ortega.' It is a Pueblo home recipe of pork, roasted Pueblo green chiles and tomato thickened with a browned flour roux, the form Coloradans ladle over burritos and sloppers.

    Not stated in the source · About 1 hour

  8. A white bowl of spaghetti under ground-beef chili with red beans, a little shredded cheese and chopped onion, oyster crackers beside it.

    Spaghetti Red

    Joplin Spaghetti Red

    Spaghetti red has no published canonical recipe. Fred & Red’s recipe is secret and was sold with the business in 2016, and Ike’s in Tulsa has never released its own. This is the most widely circulated Joplin approximation, posted on the Acronym Soup blog in 2011 and described there as made by a loyal Fred & Red’s customer, not the restaurant’s recipe.

    Not stated in the source · About 1 1/2 hours

  9. An oval plate of three rolled enchiladas under dark red chili gravy with melted yellow cheese and chopped onion, Mexican rice and refried beans beside them.

    Chili Gravy

    Robb Walsh’s Chili Gravy

    From Robb Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos (2004). Walsh is the principal historian of Tex-Mex and calls chili gravy the lifeblood of the old-fashioned cuisine. We could not consult the book directly; quantities follow the Food.com reprint, and a 2016 HuffPost reprint differs slightly.

    About 2 cups, enough for a pan of enchiladas (about 8 servings) · About 25 minutes