Across much of the Midwest, chili means ground beef, beans and tomato, often stretched with pasta. It is home and cafeteria food more than competition food. In some states it comes with a cinnamon roll on the side.
There is no single Midwest chili. The family resemblance is ground beef, kidney or other beans, and tomato, made in a big pot. In Indiana, sometimes called Hoosier chili, guides describe tomato or vegetable juice, a little brown sugar, and pasta, usually broken spaghetti or elbow macaroni.
Chili mac, chili with macaroni and often cheese, is a common Midwestern dish and a long-time staple of American military dining. It joined the MRE menu in 1995. Near Joplin, Missouri, a cousin called spaghetti red does something similar.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, a Lithuanian immigrant named John Isaac served chili at his bar from 1900 and renamed the place Chili John’s in 1913. It was served over spaghetti with oyster crackers. The Green Bay shop closed in 2020; a branch his son Ernie opened in Burbank, California, in 1946 carries on.
Then there are the cinnamon rolls. In Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, chili often comes with a sweet roll, a pairing generations of kids met in the school lunch line. Its origin is unsettled. Some point to early twentieth-century logging camps, others to the National School Lunch Program of 1946, and Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas all claim it.
Purists elsewhere tend to call this bean-and-tomato chili a compromise.