in #CASE you were curious about: CHILI
February 27th is National Chili Day! Get ready for a day peppered with adventure when you celebrate National Chili Day! Chili, often served with a delicious side of cornbread, stems from a combination of Mexican, Spanish, and Native American cuisine.
Spanish priests believed that chili peppers were an aphrodisiac, and called the hot dish “the soup of the Devil.” So go be a sinner and scarf down a steaming bowl of chili. It’ll be sure to spice up your life.
So mark your calendars, we celebrate it the fourth Thursday in February every year!
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.”
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.
The International Chili Society says that chili was popularized during the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. Cowboys and prospectors combined dried beef, fat, pepper, salt and chili peppers together into stackable rectangles or “chili bricks” that were then dumped into boiling water.
The first chili cook-off took place in 1967 in Terlinga, 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.
A number of variations of chili have become popularized over the years. Texas-style chili doesn’t contain beans; vegetarian chili (aka chili sin carne) typically replaces meat with corn and other vegetables; chili verde uses pork, tomatillos and green chili peppers in lieu of beef and tomatoes; and white chili uses white beans and chicken or turkey.