What people are generally referring to when they say the word “chili” is chili con carne, a dish made by stewing red meat (either ground, chopped, or left in discrete chunks) in a chili-pepper-based sauce that almost invariably contains cumin.
The text of the bill offers other rather convincing arguments as well. Inhofe, who now represents his state in the US Senate, cannot claim credit for this idea; similar joint resolutions had been introduced by other members of Congress in the previous seven years. Representative Manuel Lujan Jr. of New Mexico unsuccessfully introduced several bills in the 1980s to name not only chili, but also “chile,” the country’s official food. In 1988, Representative J. J. Pickle of Texas introduced legislation of his own, calling for “chili without beans” to be labeled the official food of the United States, a bold yet ultimately futile move to impose upon a nation Texas’s preferred chili-and-meat stew.
