As A General Rule Of Thumb, The Smaller The Pepper, The Hotter It Is

On February 22, we celebrate National Chili Day — a moment to pay homage to the legendary dish that brings people together and can tear them apart. Chili is the ultimate people-pleaser, but it’s also the ultimate cook-off dish.

Family recipes are guarded like crown jewels; secret ingredients are never spoken of above a whisper. And the debates about what makes true chili — beans or no beans? —are fierce! But these are all part of what makes chili such an experience. When chili is being served — perhaps with some chopped onions and shredded cheese on top — everyone comes to the table.

• 1493 – Christopher Columbus discovered chili peppers when he discovered the Americas in 1493.
  • Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounter chili peppers in the Caribbean and called them “peppers” because they, like the black pepper, have a spicy, hot taste.
• 1494 – Diego Alvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus’ second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain and first wrote about their medicinal effects in 1494.
• 1600s – For the first 100 years after being introduced to chili peppers in the 1600s, the Japanese put them in their socks to keep their toes warm instead of eating them.
• 1731 – According to What’s Cooking America, the first recorded batch of chili con carne in America was made in 1731 by a group of women who had emigrated from the Spanish Canary Islands, which historians noted not as “chili” but as a “spicy Spanish stew.”
• 1828 – J. C. Clopper writes, after visiting San Antonio, Texas, about “a kind of hash with nearly as many peppers as there are pieces of meat – this is all stewed together.”
• 1860 – the Texas version of bread and water was a stew of the cheapest available ingredients (tough beef that was hacked fine and chiles and spices that were boiled in water to an edible consistency).
  • The “prisoner’s plight” became a status symbol of the Texas prisons and the inmates used to rate jails on the quality of their chili.
  • The Texas prison system made such good chili that freed inmates often wrote for the recipe, saying what they missed most after leaving was a really good bowl of chili.
• 1880s – During the 1880s in San Antonio, Texas, a Latino woman nicknamed “Chili Queens” sold stew they called “chili” made with dried red chiles and beef from open-air stalls at the Military Plaza Mercado.
• 1893 – At the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the San Antonio Chili Stand helped people from all over the United States appreciate the taste of chili.
• 1895 – Lyman T. Davis of Corsicana, Texas sold chili from the back of a wagon; you could obtain a bowl for 5 cents (and all the crackers you wanted were free).
  • 1921 – Davis began to can the chili and called it “Wolf Brand” (named after his pet wolf Kaiser Bill).
  • 1924 – oil was discovered on Mr. Davis’ property. He sold the chili business. The new owners used Model T Ford trucks with cabs shaped like chili cans and painted to resemble the Wolf Brand label. A live wolf was caged in the back of each truck. Today the company is owned by Stokley-Van Camp in Dallas, Texas.
• 1896 – German immigrant William Gebhardt creates a way to pulverize dried chiles using a meat grinder, which eventually becomes the product known as Gebhardt’s Eagle Chili Powder. It’s a critical ingredient in Chili.
• 1960s – Lydon Johnson, president of the United States from 1963-1969, declares that Texas Chili is the best: “One of the first things I do when I get home to Texas is to have a bowl of red. There is simply nothing better.”
• 1967 – The first chili cook-off took place in 1967 in Terlingua, Texas, a border town about 400 miles west of Chili’s alleged birthplace, San Antonio. It ended in a tie between a native Texan and (surprisingly) a New Yorker, but chili cook-offs are still held there today.
• 1977 – Chili manufacturers in the state of Texas successfully lobbied the state legislature to have chili proclaimed the official “state food” of Texas “in recognition of the fact that the only real ‘bowl of red’ is that prepared by Texans.”
• Chili is often a favorite dish in cook-offs.
• American frontier settlers used a “chili” recipe of dried beef, suet, dried chili peppers and salt, which was all pounded together, formed into bricks, and dried.  The bricks could then be boiled in pots on the trails.
• Before World War II, hundreds of small, family-run chili parlors (also known as chili joints) were found popping up throughout the state of Texas as well as other places in the United States.  Each new chili parlor usually had a claim to some kind of secret recipe.
• Chili con carne, meaning “chili with meat” and commonly known in American English as simply “chili”, is a spicy stew containing chili peppers, meat (usually beef), and often tomatoes and beans.
• A teaspoon of red chili powder meets the recommended daily allowance for Vitamin A. Vitamin A plays an important role in vision and bone growth.
• “Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.” – Alleged dying words of Kit Carson
• There are 140 varieties of chili peppers grown in Mexico alone.
• The green chili pepper has been growing in the United States – what is now New Mexico – for more than 400 years.
• Chili peppers were used in ancient cuisines in Europe, the Caribbean, Asia and the Middle East.
• U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson famously loved chili. The White House received so many requests for the family recipe that Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady, had the recipe printed on cards to be mailed out.
• William Gerard Tobin, former Texas Ranger, hotel proprietor, and an advocate of Texas-type Mexican food negotiated with the United States government to sell canned chili to the army and navy.
• Chili peppers originated in Mexico. After the Colombian Exchange, many cultivars of chili pepper spread across the world, used for both food and traditional medicine.
• China is the world’s biggest producer of green chili peppers, providing half of the global total.
• Capsaicin extracted from chili peppers is used in pepper spray as an irritant, a form of a less lethal weapon.
• Capsaicin, the chemical found in chili peppers that makes them hot, is used as an analgesic in topical ointments, nasal sprays, and dermal patches to relieve pain.
• Chili peppers help you burn more calories by raising the body’s core temperature during digestion. What’s more, they trigger a reaction in your gut that tells your nervous system to produce more brown fat, a healthy fat that expends calories.
• Chili peppers alleviate sore muscles and tame arthritis thanks to endorphins, and by inhibiting substance P, a neuropeptide that causes inflammation.
• Thanks to capsaicin and its relatives, “capsaicinoids,” chili peppers improve heart health in a couple of ways. First, they lower cholesterol levels by reducing the accumulation of cholesterol in the body and increasing its breakdown and excretion. Second, they block the action of a gene that makes arteries contract and restricts the blood flow to the heart and other organs.
• Chili peppers have been found to prevent the development of certain types of cancer—especially, prostate cancer. How? Scientists theorize that the peppers trigger something called apoptosis, a type of “cell suicide” that encourages the turnover of cells. These peppers also contain a lot of carotenoids and flavonoids, which scavenge free radicals in our system. Free radicals have been known to cause cancer.
• As a general rule of thumb, the smaller the pepper, the hotter it is.
• There are only 40 calories in 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of chili pepper.  Chili pepper is a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Potassium, Copper and Manganese and a good source of Dietary Fiber, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus.
• FULL RANKING OF THE MOST POPULAR CHILI ACCOMPANIMENTS #1: Cheese (31%) #2: Crackers (15%) #3: Cornbread (15%) #4: Sour cream (12%) #5: Tortilla chips (9%) #6: Diced onions (5%) #7: Hot sauce (4%) #8: Avocado (3%) #9: Salsa (3%) #10: Black olives (1%) #11: Cilantro (1%)
• FULL RANKING OF THE MOST POPULAR WAYS TO EAT CHILI #1: In a bowl (52%) #2: On a hot dog (12%) #3: In a Frito chili pie (9%) #4: On top of fries (8%) #5: Over rice (6%) #6: On a baked potato (4%) #7: On garlic bread (3%) #8: Over spaghetti (2%) #9: With mac & cheese (2%) #10: On a sloppy joe (2%)

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Mobile-Cuisine

Farm Flavor

Delishably

Real Clear Life

National Today

Days of the Year