The Heat of Argument

In Texas they love to argue about chili. Chili with beans is wimp food, say the hard-core. Bean-eaters reply nuh-uh!

I’m afraid the debate, if you can call it that, is just another example of Texans’ myopia when it comes to anything that happens outside the borders of their own state. I say that as someone who once considered himself an adopted son of the Lone Star state.

I’ll defend Texas barbecue to the death, but all the fuss about chili just leaves me cold. You see, I’ve never had a Texas chili that could compare with the chile of my other adopted state, New Mexico. And beans are as natural to New Mexico chile as bluster is to Texans’.

In New Mexico, chile comes in many guises, from the nearly extinct carne de olla (very close to Texas chili: basically, meat and ground red chile, served with pinto beans on the side to be mixed in as desired) to green chile stew (which can contain anything: beef, pork or lamb, vegetables and beans).

In fact, the most memorable chile I’ve ever eaten was almost purely beans. When I was in college in New Mexico, I was invited to a chile feast at a friend’s house. His family lived in Albuquerque’s north valley, where the Rio Grande curls among cottonwood bosques.

One summer night we sat outside under the gnarled 100-year-old trees and talked while his mom finished fixing dinner. The menu was simple and in the fashion of the pueblo where she grew up: You ladled a bowl full of pinto beans that had been slowly simmered with fatty chunks of pork. Then you added green chile stew by the spoonfuls, as much as you wanted. You scooped it all up in warm flour tortillas and chowed down.

It looked really good, and I wanted a lot. “Watch it,” my friend said. “My mom makes some pretty hot chile.”

Yeah, right. After 20 years in New Mexico, I’d eaten hot food in almost every corner of the state. I wasn’t scared. (You have to understand, the stuff you see labeled New Mexico chile here is nothing like what is sold in New Mexico. The stuff here is mild, almost bell-pepper bland. New Mexico chile at home ranges from hot to absolutely incendiary.)

I’d eaten them all and had developed what I thought was a charming insouciance about spicy food. But after only one spoonful, I could tell this stuff was off the map. I felt like I was in one of those Tex Avery cartoons; smoke was coming out of my ears and there was a factory whistle going off in my head. I grabbed a beer and then another. I ate tortillas as fast as I could.

His mother covered her mouth with one hand and giggled. I got another bowl and started spooning off as much of the hot sauce as I could. I ladled in more beans. I drank more beer. Nothing could put out that fire.

Finally, my head sweating, my hiccups coming hard and fast, I managed to gasp out a “very nice,” and stagger to one of the lawn chairs, where I collapsed, mouth tingling and stomach distended from having gulped about a quart of beer and half a gallon of pinto beans in less than five minutes.

Just remembering it brings tears to my eyes 20 years later. So you’ll understand why, the next time someone starts carrying on about the manliness (or lack thereof) of beans in chili, I just might punch him in the mouth.