Few dishes have a more contested origin story than chilli con carne. Texans will tell you it’s theirs – and the’re not entirely wrong. The dish as most of the world knows it emerged from San Antonio in the mid-nineteenth century, where it was sold from open-air stalls by women known as the Chilli Queens, who ladled it out to labourers, cowboys and travellers from vast iron pots over open fires.
It spread along cattle trails and into ranch cookhouses, where a long-simmering pot of chilli was the sensible answer to cheap, tough cuts, a few dried chillies and whatever else was to hand. The Mexicans, for their part, largely disown it – but the dish has deep roots in the chilli-cooking traditions of the American Southwest, which in turn drew on the ingredients and techniques of northern Mexico. The truth, as ever, is somewhere in the middle and considerably more interesting than either side admits.
What’s less contested is why it became such an enduring staple: chilli is a dish that improves with time, tolerates imprecision, and tastes better cooked over fire than almost any other method. The long simmer does the work – blooming the spices, thickening the sauce into something that coats the back of a spoon and demands to be eaten with hunks of cornbread, rice, or a fistful of tortilla chips. The campfire adds something a kitchen hob genuinely can’t: a gentle, fluctuating heat that encourages slow cooking rather than forcing it, and a faint smokiness that works its way into the pot over an hour or so and becomes part of the flavour.
It’s also, practically speaking, one of the best one-pot meals you can make outdoors. Everything goes into a single heavy-bottomed pot, the ingredients are robust enough to travel, and the whole thing can be left to bubble away while the fire does its thing and you get on with more important matters – such as opening the wine that isn’t going into the recipe. This version has a proper kick to it, but the heat is easily dialled up or down, and the vegetarian adaptation (three-bean, no beef) is genuinely excellent rather than an afterthought.
Veggies can swap out beef stock for vegetable stock and add quorn mince instead of beef, or better yet use pinto and black beans with the kidney beans to make a super tasty three-bean chilli.
Ellie Clewlow is WildBounds’ Head of Customer Success. She loves climbing mountains, backpacking, wild camping and cooking over the campfire. Ellie believes it’s almost always worth carrying a little bit of extra weight to be able to enjoy cooking up a storm when you reach your campsite. More often than not you’ll also spot her wine pouch poking out of the side pocket of her pack.
