Ya... some confusion going on it seems. Chilie is a pepper. Chili is a dish. So in a literal sense you can have chilie powder made out of dried ground peppers. Now... to make the dish most in the U.S. consider chili you have to add a spice mixture know as "chili powder". As I recall Lars has a fondness for Mexico and lives in the South Western corner of the U.S. I'm not surprised that he would think of powdered peppers before a spice mixture. One of the things really interesting about his cooking is that he is doing different things with his food. Much as I'd love to sample Lar's cooking someday I'm going with Arley on the cumin. Cumin is the heart and soul of the dish we call Chili. My pot of chili often contains several kinds of hot peppers but it also takes a load of cumin. People walking into my home will exclaim in delight when I cook chili because of the fragrant cumin. I found whizzing my whole cumin seed in the blender with some tomatoes chops the cumin up pretty good. Not as good as hand chopping. My first lesson with cumin seed was to chop it up on a cutting board with a knife. Still strikes me as the best flavor. Our friends on the CF from India have recommended toasting the cumin... very good but I'm not 100% sold. The seed does require considerable cooking to release the oils that account for the intense flavor. The very best cumin I can purchase at the moment is bulk ground cumin from GFS which is a restaurant supply company. Tops even Penzey's whole seed. Still ground does not get the full spectrum of flavor so I add mostly ground GFS cumin and top note my flavor with some freshly chopped seed. Somehow ground cumin even when fresh and strong still does not have the high aromatic essence of whole seed. Chili powder often contains garlic that I've removed from my chili. Garlic is great and garlic is good but it is also sweet and not the character I want. Maybe sometimes it is alright.... I used to add sliced fresh garlic to my chili. Goodness that warms your entire body when the mood is there for it. Cilantro, in particular fresh cilantro provides an intense aromatic flavor and scent that many associate with north of the boarder "mexican" cooking. LOL!... sorry don't mean to go on so much. Chili is one of my favorite dishes. Fresh garden tomatoes are priceless if you want chili with star power. Different peppers add heat with different characters as Lars noted. Peppers at different stages of ripeness also display remarkably different characteristics. Green habeneras are not ripe but they are milder and have more tang then mature red habs. Then the amount of time a pepper cooks will change the flavor and heat profile of a pepper. My chili is tested and approved by Luna! Suppose I should admit I don't use chili powder in my chili. Not powdered peppers or any branded spice mix. Cumin and cilantro with hot peppers being part of the vegtable mix. I top coat much of my food with salt and black pepper and always do so with chili. : ) lyra

Unintended duplicate post. Houzz screwed up and gave me an error message thinking the first post did not actually post. Apologies - I'm responding to this one so it sinks down and can be forgotten.

I've used this recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and did not find it to be too thin or "soupy": https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_05/chili_con_carne.html I did, however, find that it was not seasoned as well as I liked, and I had to add some cumin, I used celery salt instead of regular salt for seasoning and added a bit of powdered cayenne as I was not comfortable adding low acid vegetables to the mix. The problem I encountered was not density, it was texture. When I can ground beef it just seems to be overcooked, with that odd texture, and I don't like that. Annie

A few autumns ago we had a soup party for about 25 - it was mostly outside around a fire. I made three kinds of soup; a seafood chowder, Italian Wedding Soup, and Beef Barley (there were no vegetarians in our crowd.) I had several different kinds of bread, a cheese and cold cut platter, mustards, butter, a couple of kinds of compound butter. a crudite tray skewing to fallish vegetables, dips in small pumpkins. I supplemented my own soup bowls with a couple of dozen from the dollar store (or you could rent them) and a dozen large mugs. I had enough for each person to use two for different kinds of soup, and my kids and sister, washed and set the used ones back out again. It was one of our best parties and people still talk about it. I kept the soup warm in crockpots on a table on our deck where all the food was set out.