50 Fun Facts About Chili

What does 'con carne' literally mean in Spanish?

Which is why Texas purists say the meat is not optional and the beans are not welcome.

Which US state made chili con carne its official state dish in 1977?

House Concurrent Resolution 18 of the 65th Legislature did the honours; New Mexico's official state question is 'Red or green?'

The 'chili queens' who sold bowls of chili from open-air stands were famous in which Texas city?

Their plaza stands were the city's tourist attraction until health regulations shut them down in the 1930s and 40s.

A famous chili stand from the Alamo city gave many Americans their first taste at which 1893 event?

The same fair introduced the Ferris wheel; chili went national soon after.

Who created the first commercial chili powder in 1894 by grinding ancho peppers through a meat grinder?

He ran a saloon in New Braunfels, Texas, where fresh chilies were only available part of the year; D. C. Pendery is the other claimant.

Besides ground chilies, which spices typically go into an American 'chili seasoning' blend?

Cincinnati's very different chili is the one that reaches for cinnamon and allspice.

The long-running argument among chili cooks is over which ingredient?

Texas 'bowl o' red' has none; most of the rest of the country disagrees, loudly.

Which car maker was among the founders of the first Terlingua, Texas chili cook-off in 1967?

He owned a 220,000-acre ranch nearby; two rival championships still convene 10,000 'chiliheads' there on the first Saturday of November.

Terlingua, home of the world chili championship, is a ghost town left over from mining what?

The Chisos Mining Company dug quicksilver there; the cook-off revived the place.

Cincinnati chili was developed in 1922 by immigrant brothers from which region?

Tom and John Kiradjieff named their place Empress after a burlesque theatre and first served the sauce on hot dogs.

Over what is Cincinnati chili traditionally served?

A three-way adds cheese; a five-way adds beans and onions too. Cincinnatians eat about two million pounds of it a year.

What makes a Cincinnati 'five-way'?

The spice mix always includes cinnamon, allspice, cloves, cumin and nutmeg - but, contrary to legend, no parlour in the city uses chocolate.

Which spice is NOT part of the standard Cincinnati chili seasoning, despite the legend?

The chocolate rumour refuses to die, but the Kiradjieffs' Mediterranean spice cupboard did not include it.

Cincinnati's biggest chili chain, founded in 1949, was named for what?

Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides opened it in Price Hill; the recipe is said to sit in a bank vault, and there are about 160 branches.

Which lunch counter is one claimed birthplace of Frito pie?

Teresa Hernandez gets the 1960s Santa Fe credit; the rival story gives it to Daisy Doolin, mother of Fritos' founder.

Who devised the scale of chili heat, and its 'organoleptic test', in 1912?

He diluted pepper extract until five tasters could no longer feel it; labs now use liquid chromatography instead.

How many trained tasters did the original Scoville test use?

The dilution at which at least three of them could no longer detect heat gave the rating.

What Scoville rating does a sweet bell capsicum have?

Jalapenos sit around 2,500-10,000 and habaneros 100,000-350,000.

How hot is pure capsaicin on the Scoville scale?

Police pepper spray runs from 500,000 to 5 million; the hottest chilies top out below 3 million.

Which chili took the Guinness 'hottest' title in 2023, rated around 2,693,000 on the scale?

Both it and the Carolina Reaper were bred by Ed Currie in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

The Carolina Reaper held the Guinness record from 2013 until it was dethroned in 2023. Who bred it?

His PuckerButt Pepper Company crossed a Naga with a Saint Vincent habanero; Guinness logged an average of 1,641,183 SHU.

Which chili was the first certified above 1,000,000 Scoville units, in 2007?

Grown in Assam and Nagaland, it is smeared on fences to keep elephants away, and the Indian Army has used it in grenades.

The Assamese name of the superhot 'bhut jolokia' is usually mistranslated. What does it mean?

'Bhut' meaning Bhutanese was mistaken for a near-homonym meaning ghost, and the spookier name stuck.

Roughly how long ago were chili peppers first cultivated, in east-central Mexico?

Portuguese and Spanish traders carried them to Africa and Asia in the 16th century, and today China grows about 39% of the world's green chilies.

Why did Columbus's crew call the Capsicum fruits 'peppers'?

The English word 'chili' itself comes from the Nahuatl chilli.

From which language does the word 'chili' come?

The Aztec chilli became Spanish chile and English chili - Spanish only supplied the spelling.

Why can birds happily eat the hottest chilies?

The TRPV1 receptor is what capsaicin binds in mammals; birds spread the seeds unharmed, which is exactly what the plant wants.

Why does milk soothe a chili burn better than water?

Capsaicin dissolves in fat and alcohol, not water; the casein acts as a kind of detergent.

Which medical product uses capsaicin?

Qutenza was approved in 2009 for post-shingles nerve pain; the same compound is in police pepper spray.

What is a chipotle?

The name is Nahuatl for 'smoked chili'; they are usually sold stewed in adobo sauce.

The jalapeno is named after which city, the capital of Veracruz?

Since 2010 California has grown more of them than Texas or New Mexico; the brown 'corking' lines on the skin correlate with heat.

Jalapenos went to space as early as which year, aboard the Space Shuttle?

Astronauts have long asked for hot sauce because zero gravity dulls the sense of taste.

Tabasco sauce has been made since 1868 at which Louisiana location?

Edmund McIlhenny's family still owns it; the mash ages up to three years in old whiskey barrels and pickers match peppers to a little red stick.

How do Tabasco's pickers judge that a pod is ripe?

Le petit baton rouge; the sauce is just tabasco peppers, vinegar and salt from the island's own salt dome.

New Mexico is the only state with an official State Question. What is it?

The official answer is 'Red and green', or 'Christmas'; Hatch calls itself the Chile Capital of the World.

Which New Mexico village bills itself the 'Chile Capital of the World' and has held a chile festival since 1971?

Fabian Garcia's New Mexico No. 9, bred at what is now NMSU in 1913, is the ancestor of the valley's famous crop.

Paprika is the national spice of which country?

Szeged and Kalocsa are the growing regions; the word came into Hungarian from Serbo-Croatian papar and Latin piper.

What gives Spanish pimenton de la Vera its distinctive flavour?

Ordinary paprika is simply dried and ground red Capsicum annuum.

Which country was the world's leading producer of green chilies in 2024, with about 39% of the total?

India came second at 12%; the dried-chili trade is led by China, Thailand and Bangladesh.

How many Capsicum species have been widely domesticated?

Annuum, baccatum, chinense, frutescens and pubescens; the superhots are almost all chinense.

What is a Cincinnati 'coney'?

The Kiradjieff brothers' Empress started by ladling their spiced sauce onto hot dogs before anyone thought of spaghetti.

In which range do most jalapenos fall on the Scoville scale?

Mild by chilehead standards, but the pepper Americans eat more of than any other.

Which Franciscan friar described chili-seasoned stews in the Aztec capital in writings from 1529?

Beef only became the standard meat after the Spanish introduced cattle; ranchers later stewed dried tasajo in red chili sauce.

In 1999 the Chili Appreciation Society International banned which two things from cook-off chili?

The Texas-based group's rule reflects the view that the earliest chilis were meat and chilies only.

Which north Texas newspaperman invented 'Two-Alarm Chili' and insisted on adding tomato sauce?

He also held that chili should be refrigerated overnight before eating; a columnist joked it opened eighteen sinus cavities unknown to medicine.

White chili is typically made with white beans, green chilies and which meat?

It is often finished with Monterey Jack or sour cream, keeping the pale colour that gives the dish its name.

In parts of Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas, chili is traditionally served alongside what?

The pairing shows up in school cafeterias, home kitchens and even some restaurants across the region.

Lyman Davis's canned chili brand, launched in 1921, was named after what?

The wolf was called Kaiser Bill; Will Rogers reportedly travelled with a case of the stuff and Ernest Tubb had a hotel keep it in stock.

Before home refrigerators, dehydrated commercial chili was sold in what form?

Wolf Brand was originally sold that way, and a few Southern California makers still distribute brick chili to supermarkets.

St. Louis chili parlour O.T. Hodge smothered burger patties, hash browns and eggs in chili to make what?

The parlour dated to 1904 and lasted until the late 2000s; no branded locations remain.