Wyo Food

I’ll argue with you about most things in a kitchen. Sugar cube or simple syrup in an Old Fashioned? Picked a side. Does ground elk need added fat? Yes, and I’ll show you the math. But there’s one food fight I’ve stayed out of my whole adult life, and it’s the oldest one in American cooking: do beans belong in chili?

I’m not qualified to referee. I grew up outside St. Louis, where chili mostly showed up ladled over a slinger at a diner after midnight, and nobody at that counter was checking for beans. Then the Army stationed me in San Antonio, which is a little like being posted to the birthplace of the argument. I ate a lot of very good chili there, and I learned when to keep my opinions to myself.

So this fall, instead of picking a team, I rigged an election. One big pot of beanless chili, split in two with about forty-five minutes to go, beans stirred into one half, both pots side by side on the stove on a Sunday afternoon. Fair warning: the results won’t settle anything.

The other half of this story is in a bottle. Back in May, when I wrote about the Wyoming Whiskey distillery in Kirby, I told you to buy an extra bottle and said you’d thank me in October. It’s October. This is what that bottle is for.

Jump to Recipe

Where the No-Beans Rule Comes From

The fight starts in San Antonio. From about the 1860s into the late 1930s, the women known as the Chili Queens set up tables in the city’s plazas, Military Plaza first, and served chili con carne late into the night over mesquite fires. That’s the chili Texas considers the original: meat and chiles, cooked until they’re one thing.

In the 1890s, a German-born café cook in New Braunfels named William Gebhardt started drying and grinding chiles into a powder that kept for months, so chili no longer had to be seasonal. By 1896 he was selling Gebhardt’s Eagle Brand Chili Powder, and in 1898 he moved production to San Antonio. That’s the ancestor of the jar in your spice cabinet.

Beans became a real fight in 1967. H. Allen Smith, a writer living in New York, published a piece in Holiday magazine called “Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do,” with pinto beans in the recipe. Texas took it personally. Wick Fowler, a Texas newspaperman with his own chili kit, challenged him, and on October 21, 1967, the two squared off in Terlingua, out in the Big Bend country of far West Texas. The judging ended in a tie. Chiliheads still gather in Terlingua every November.

In 1977 the Texas Legislature made chili the official state dish with House Concurrent Resolution 18, noting that “the only real ‘bowl of red’ is that prepared by Texans.” You’ll hear about a “Texas chili law” that bans beans, but I read the resolution, and it never mentions them. As far as I can find, no statute does. The ban lives in tradition and in cook-off rulebooks, and those are arguably more binding.

The rulebooks are real. The Chili Appreciation Society International, which hosts one of the two Terlingua cook-offs, bans “fillers” in its official rules and names beans first. The International Chili Society keeps beans out of its Traditional Red category too. But the ICS also runs a Homestyle category where beans are required and should be visible in every spoonful, and its People’s Choice chili, served to the public, must include beans. So one of the biggest chili organizations in the country both bans beans and requires them, depending on the table. That’s the most honest summary of this debate I’ve found.

Both Sides, Argued Fairly

The case for no beans

The purist argument is about focus. Chili, in the Texas sense, is meat seasoned with chiles, and everything else is support staff. Beans are starchy, they take up room in the bowl, and they soak up the sauce and mute it. A beanless bowl is also more versatile. It goes over a hot dog, a burger, or a slinger without falling apart.

The case for beans

The bean argument is about the rest of the country and the rest of the week. Beans stretch a pound of meat to feed more people, which matters if you’re feeding a family or a church supper. They add body and an earthy creaminess a lot of us grew up with. Bluntly, they’re what plenty of people picture when they hear the word. The ICS needed a whole category just to hold everyone who puts them in.

For the record, the elk chili with Hatch green chile I posted in May has two cans of pinto beans in it. A Texan would call that evidence. I call it one data point.

The Sunday Showdown (Results Inconclusive)

Kimi ate a full bowl of each, said they were both good, and declined to go on the record, which is the most veteran answer in this post. My five-year-old voted for “the one with more cheese.” That turned out to mean whichever bowl sat closer to the cheddar, and his vote switched twice.

What I learned: the beanless pot tasted more like chili. The bourbon and chile came through clearer, and the meat was the whole show. The bean pot tasted more like dinner. It was rounder and softer, and one bowl held you longer. Neither is a knock. So the recipe below is beanless as written, with a clearly marked variation for beans. You pick the team.

Building a Proper Chili Base

Brown the meat like you mean it

Dump all the ground beef into the pot at once and it steams gray, because the pot is too crowded for the liquid to evaporate. Work in batches. Press the meat into the hot pot, salt it, and leave it alone four or five minutes until the bottom has a real crust. Then break it into bite-size chunks, not fine crumbles, because chunks hold up over a long simmer. The browned bits stuck to the pot are the foundation of everything else.

I use two pounds of 80/20 beef and one pound of ground pork. The pork adds richness and keeps the texture soft after hours in the pot, but all beef works fine. Pour off most of the fat afterward, but save a couple of tablespoons.

Bloom the spices in fat, not liquid

This step changes chili more than any other. A lot of the flavor compounds in chile powder, cumin, and paprika dissolve in fat, not water. Stir them into broth and they float around, dusty and flat. Cook them for a minute or two in that reserved fat with the onions and a spoonful of tomato paste, and they toast and darken. Keep the heat at medium and keep stirring, because scorched chile powder is bitter and you can’t fix it later.

Give it time, then set the thickness

Once the liquid goes in, the chili wants two to two and a half hours at a bare simmer with the lid cracked, stirred and scraped every twenty or thirty minutes. A heavy enameled pot like the Lodge 6-quart enameled cast iron Dutch oven holds heat evenly and makes scorching less likely. If the chili gets too thick along the way, add broth a splash at a time.

Thicken at the end with masa harina, the lime-treated corn flour used for tortillas and tamales. It’s a classic Texas move. A slurry stirred in for the last fifteen minutes tightens the pot and adds a faint toasted-corn note that flour can’t give you. I keep Bob’s Red Mill Golden Masa Harina in the pantry mostly for this.

Why Bourbon Belongs in the Pot

Bourbon won’t make your chili taste like a cocktail. It ages in new charred oak and picks up caramel, vanilla, and baking spice from the barrel. Deglaze the pot with it and it lifts the browned bits, then cooks down with the tomatoes and chiles into a rounder, slightly sweet background. That takes the sharp edge off the tomatoes and adds a note people taste as “what is that?” instead of “is that whiskey?”

Wyoming Whiskey’s Small Batch is a straight bourbon aged a minimum of five years, bottled at 88 proof, and made in Kirby from Wyoming-grown grain. The distillery’s own tasting notes list vanilla bean, caramel, brown baking spices, and a toffee finish. That’s pretty much a description of what you want in the back of a pot of chili. It’s Wyoming’s first legal distillery, and the drive to Kirby is worth it.

This bottle has already cooked down for fifteen minutes in a Wyoming Whiskey BBQ glaze, and it didn’t cook at all in an Old Fashioned. Chili is the long haul. The bourbon goes in right after the spices bloom and simmers for hours, and that timing matters for the next section.

One safety note: bourbon is flammable. On a gas stove, take the pot off the flame before you pour, then put it back and scrape. You want to deglaze, not flambé your eyebrows.

Does the Alcohol Cook Off? (I Checked, Because My Kid Eats This)

Everybody says “the alcohol burns off.” My five-year-old eats what I cook, so I wanted a better answer than everybody says.

The USDA publishes retention factors based on a USDA-funded study that measured alcohol left in dishes after cooking. For alcohol stirred in and then baked or simmered, the table shows about 40 percent remaining after 15 minutes, 25 percent after an hour, 10 percent after two hours, and 5 percent after two and a half hours. A sauce brought to a boil and pulled off the heat keeps about 85 percent. So “it all burns off” is wrong.

Here’s my back-of-the-envelope math for this pot. Half a cup of 88-proof bourbon holds about 1.76 fluid ounces of pure alcohol. The NIAAA defines a standard drink as about 0.6 fluid ounces, so the pot starts with roughly three drinks’ worth. The bourbon cooks for somewhere between about two and a quarter and two and three-quarter hours, which by the USDA table leaves around 5 to 10 percent. Across eight servings, that’s roughly one-thirtieth to one-fiftieth of a standard drink per bowl, and less in a kid-size bowl.

Two caveats. These are estimates, not lab results, and a partly covered pot, a smaller pot, or a shorter simmer all keep more alcohol in. And a small amount still isn’t zero. For our table, a long-simmered pot is a number I’m comfortable with. If it isn’t for yours, or if anyone eating avoids alcohol completely, swap in half a cup of broth and a teaspoon of brown sugar. You’ll still have a very good chili.

Some people like a splash of raw bourbon stirred into their bowl at the table. That splash never cooks, so all of its alcohol stays put. At our house it’s a grown-ups-only garnish.

Food Safety: The 160°F Rule

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service puts the safe minimum internal temperature for ground beef and pork at 160°F, higher than for whole cuts, because grinding spreads surface bacteria through the meat. A two-hour simmer blows well past that. If you shorten the simmer, check with an instant-read thermometer.

Wyoming Whiskey Chili (No Beans, or Your Way)

Makes: about 8 servings as written, about 10 with beans. Prep: 25 minutes. Cook: about 2 hours 45 minutes. Equipment: 6-quart or larger heavy Dutch oven or pot.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil
• 2 pounds ground beef (80/20)
• 1 pound ground pork (or use 3 pounds ground beef total)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste
• 1 large yellow onion, diced (about 2 cups)
• 1 to 2 jalapeños, minced (seeds and ribs removed for a milder pot)
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup chili powder (a standard blend such as Gebhardt Chili Powder)
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano (Mexican oregano if you have it)
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (optional; leave it out for kids and add hot sauce at the table)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 cup Wyoming Whiskey Small Batch Bourbon (or 1/2 cup beef broth plus 1 teaspoon brown sugar for an alcohol-free pot)
• 1 can (15 ounces) tomato sauce
• 1 can (14.5 ounces) fire-roasted diced tomatoes, with juices
• 2 cups low-sodium beef broth, plus more as needed
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar (optional; taste first, since the bourbon brings some sweetness)
• 3 tablespoons masa harina
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 to 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

Make It Your Way: The Beans Option

• 2 cans (15 ounces each) kidney beans, pinto beans, or one of each, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 to 1 cup additional low-sodium beef broth

Instructions

1. Brown the meat in batches. Heat the oil in the Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add about a third of the meat, press it into an even layer, sprinkle with a pinch of the salt, and leave it alone for 4 to 5 minutes, until the bottom is deeply browned. Break it into bite-size chunks, cook 2 minutes more, then move it to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Repeat with the rest of the meat. It doesn’t need to be cooked through yet; it finishes during the simmer.
2. Cook the aromatics. Pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of fat. Turn the heat to medium, add the onion, jalapeño, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and cook 6 to 8 minutes, scraping up the browned bits, until the onion is soft and golden at the edges. Add the garlic and cook 30 to 60 seconds, until fragrant.
3. Bloom the spices. Add the chili powder, cumin, oregano, smoked paprika, black pepper, cayenne (if using), and tomato paste. Stir constantly for 1 to 2 minutes, until the paste darkens to brick red and the spices smell toasty. If anything starts to scorch, turn the heat down.
4. Deglaze with the bourbon. Turn off the burner (or take the pot off a gas flame), then pour in the bourbon. Return to medium heat and scrape the bottom of the pot well. Simmer 1 to 2 minutes, until reduced by about half.
5. Build the chili. Return the meat and any juices to the pot. Add the tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, broth, Worcestershire, brown sugar (if using), and the remaining salt. Stir, bring to a boil, then reduce to the lowest heat that keeps a lazy simmer going. Cover with the lid slightly ajar.
6. Simmer low and slow. Simmer 2 to 2 1/2 hours, stirring and scraping the bottom every 20 to 30 minutes. If it gets thicker than you like before the time is up, add broth 1/4 cup at a time. The meat will be well past the USDA’s 160°F minimum for ground meat by now. If you shorten the simmer, check it with a thermometer.
7. Thicken with masa. Whisk the masa harina and warm water into a smooth slurry. Stir it into the chili and simmer, uncovered, 10 to 15 minutes, stirring often, until thickened and the raw corn taste is gone.
8. Finish and rest. Take the pot off the heat and stir in 1 teaspoon of vinegar. Taste, then adjust with more salt or the second teaspoon of vinegar if it tastes flat. Skim off any fat pooled on top if you like. Rest 10 minutes before serving.

Beans Variation: Instructions

1. Follow steps 1 through 5 exactly as written.
2. In step 6, simmer the chili for about 1 hour 45 minutes, then stir in the drained, rinsed beans and 1/2 cup of the extra broth. Keep simmering for the remaining 30 to 45 minutes, adding more broth if the pot gets tight. The beans only need to heat through and soak up flavor. Adding them early turns them to mush.
3. In step 7, start with 2 tablespoons of masa harina (beans release starch and thicken the pot on their own), then add the last tablespoon only if you need it.
4. To make both versions at once, the way I did: at the 1 hour 45 minute mark, move half the chili to a second pot, add one can of beans and 1/4 cup of broth to that half, and finish both pots side by side. Split the masa between them.
5. Canned beans are already cooked, so they’re the easy option. If you start with dried kidney beans, cook them fully before they go near the chili. Illinois Extension recommends soaking at least 5 hours, draining, and boiling briskly in fresh water for 30 minutes. Raw or undercooked kidney beans contain a natural toxin that a slow cooker doesn’t get hot enough to destroy.

How to Serve It

Toppings are a whole second argument, but at least nobody gets disqualified over them. On our table:

• Shredded sharp cheddar. Apparently it’s also the deciding vote.
• Finely chopped raw onion, sharp and crunchy against the soft chili.
• Sour cream to cool it down, and jalapeños to heat it back up.
• Fritos, scattered on top or turned into a Frito pie: chips in the bowl, chili over them, then cheese and onion.
• Warm skillet cornbread with butter and honey.
• Hot sauce at the table, so the pot stays mild for the smallest eater.

Leftover beanless chili also makes a great slinger: hash browns, a burger patty, two eggs, and a ladle of chili over everything. And if you’re firmly no-beans but still want beans on the table, serve a pot of cowboy beans on the side. Nobody’s chili gets compromised.

Storage, Freezing, and Reheating

Chili tastes better on day two, and it freezes and reheats about as well as anything I make.

Cool it fast

USDA guidance is to refrigerate leftovers within two hours, and a full Dutch oven holds heat for a long time. Divide the chili into shallow containers so it cools quickly. I aim for a couple of inches deep, not one big tub.

Fridge and freezer

FoodSafety.gov’s storage chart gives soups and stews with meat 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator and 2 to 3 months in the freezer for best quality. Food kept frozen at 0°F stays safe indefinitely, but flavor and texture fade. If we won’t finish it in time, it goes in the freezer on day one or two, not day four.

• Portion into quart freezer bags, squeeze out the air, and freeze flat on a sheet pan. They stack like files and thaw fast.
• In rigid containers, leave about an inch of headroom for expansion.
• Label every bag with the date and “beans” or “no beans.”
• In my experience the beanless version holds its texture a little better through freezing. The beans can soften a bit.

Thawing and reheating

Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, or in the sealed bag in cold water, changing the water every 30 minutes. Never thaw it on the counter. You can also reheat straight from frozen in a covered pot over low heat. It just takes longer.

Chili thickens a lot in the fridge, so add a splash of broth or water and warm it over medium-low, stirring and scraping so the bottom doesn’t scorch. USDA says leftovers should reach 165°F and that soups and sauces should come to a rolling boil when reheated, so bring it up to a real bubble before serving. In the microwave, cover the bowl, stir halfway through, and make sure it’s steaming all the way through. Reheat only what you’ll eat, and if you like the raw-bourbon splash, add it after reheating, to adult bowls only.

Pick a Side (Or Don’t)

After a Sunday of side-by-side testing and a five-year-old who voted twice, here’s my official position: make the one you like. The Texas tradition is real and worth respecting, and so is a big pot of bean chili feeding a crowd on a cold night. Both taste better with a hard sear, bloomed spices, a long simmer, and half a cup of good Wyoming bourbon. That part I will argue with you about.

If you make it, tag @wyofood on Instagram or find Wyo Food on Facebook. I want to see the bowl and the toppings. Then weigh in down in the comments: beans or no beans? I’m still not picking a side, but I’ll count the votes.

— Sean