Thickening

Consistency is one of CASI’s five judging criteria, defined in its guidelines as a smooth combination of meat and gravy. ICS judges look for sauce that is neither too thin nor too thick, in balanced ratio to the meat. John Raven advised keeping chili thick during cooking, since too much water keeps the spices from permeating the meat, and thinning it toward the end with canned beef or chicken stock.

The early cook-off recipes thickened with wheat flour. Julian Capers’s 1952 recipe says that if the juice is thin, the cook should shake one or two tablespoons of flour with a little cold water in a covered jar and stir it in. Wick Fowler’s recipe lists three tablespoons of flour for thickener. Allegani Jani Schofield, the 1974 Terlingua winner, used masa flour instead: at the end of two and a half hours she made a runny paste of masa and water, stirred it in rapidly to keep it from lumping, and cooked thirty minutes more.

Masa harina is masa, the dough of corn cooked in a solution of slaked lime, dried and powdered into flour. The champions' recipes CASI has published for 2018, 2019 and 2025 use neither masa nor flour. Their body comes from the meat and the chili powders, with broth added at the end to adjust: Greg Lindsey’s recipe tells the cook to add hot water a few tablespoons at a time if needed and reminds the reader that the goal is gravy, not soup.