Only beans! I don't eat meat. My favorite version uses ground walnuts, mushrooms and bulgar for a "meaty" texture.

There are rules for chili in Texas?!

I always use black beans in mine, but I don't live in Texas so it's legal.

I know it's a sin in Texas but fortunately I don't live there, because I like beans :-)

I do believe "real" chili has no beans. So I make very fake chili: I have a ton of beans in mine. The more the merrier. :) A close up of MY chili lol https://www.flickr.com/photos/debby_ab/2949743535/in/album-72157605252467777/

Meat and beans or just meat. Never just beans for me.
Black beans don't belong anywhere IMO. They taste like dirt to me.

The chili needs "kick". Not necessary to be hot in all cases but it must be spicy.

I will never forget my DH inviting me for chili at his mom's when we were first dating. Boiled pinto beans, with that salad macaroni that looks like little cut up arteries. LOL It was a brownish-pink and white stew with the barest hint of chili powder and little else.

I use chili beans and black beans. And deer burger! Delish

Beans! We love beans at our house.

Native Texan here...no beans in chili! That is just wrong.

Beans and more beans also meat.

Native Texan....maybe beans...it's a filler to me.

Not a native Texan although it's been home for over 30 years. I use a variety of beans in chili. Always pintos, kidneys, and black beans. I like chunky tomato in there too, but my husband doesn't.

I would never make chili without beans. Didn't know that about Texans!

No beans and made with meat that is cut into small cubes. Not hamburger...although I confess, I have made it with hamburger before...but add beans....never!

Hubby makes a Texas chili for me, because I don't like beans, and he makes a regular one for himself, with beans. :-)

I've made it with beans and without, always meat. And lots of cumin - love cumin.

So no beans, just meat and tomatoes?

With beans when it's a stand-alone or main course dish.

One can of kidney beans, but I like to kinda mash them ever so slightly with a fork in a bowl and then add them, it adds a nice texture.

I made a batch last week. I use hamburger, and kidney beans and sometimes chili beans too. We like more beans than meat in ours. I have some relatives who make it with pork and beans, now that I do not like

Beans in chili here in SE Kansas. There was an old restaurnt in KC, Dixons Chili that cooked their seperate and served beans topped with chili and NO KETCHUP! Harry Truman ate there!

To me, it isn't chili without beans, although I do buy canned "no-bean" chili to cut my carbohydrate load. When I make chili, I use ground meat, kidney beans, diced tomato, celery, carrots, bell peppers, vidallia onion, chili powder, salt, and a pinch of brown sugar added at the end of cooking time.

Be careful with the brown sugar because a little will shift the taste and a bit more ruins it. Add, stir, and taste test. Repeat until desired taste is achieved.

This recipe is not fussy. Other things can be added such as corn and raisins depending on your whim. Raisins can be substituted for the brown sugar.

This mix can be converted to a chili flavored beef stew. Use diced beef instead of ground meat and add chunks of potato. Bake the potatoes in a microwave oven, cut into pieces and toss into the stew near the end of the cooking period. This keeps the potatoes from turning into mush.

Cooking is done when the carrots, onion and celery begins to break done and soften. Left overs can be refrigerated and reheated several times. Left overs can be extended by adding more browned meat, a can of beans, and a can of diced tomatoes. Add salt and chili powder as desired. It works like porridge of yesteryear.

As a native New Yorker and Washington DC transplant, I know nothing much about chili. All the chili I have eaten has had beans and meat.

I personally prefer no beans and I also prefer diced steak rather than ground beef but if I use ground beef it's a very very course ground chunky lean beef. My husband loves beans so I will make it with black beans occasionally. And I do use a pinch of cinnamon in mine. I have tried it with dark chocolate but I don't find it improves anything.

When I lived in Memphis if you order chili you better tell them not to put spaghetti in it because they serve it that way everywhere. First time it happened to me I thought they gave me spaghetti and sauce instead of chili. Very surprised.

With beans, but that's what I grew up on.

With beans. But we don't eat meat so without the beans its, um .. tomato sauce. :)

With beans absolutely! For one thing, being from WV it's a given that I eat and love beans! (pintos). And who ever heard of a Mexican who didn't eat beans?? And I always thought that the cowboys ate nothing but beans, so what's the deal in Texas and chili without beans?? They used to have a chili cook-off here in nearby Tampa and all those chili "experts" turned their noses up at beans in anyone's chili. What a bunch of snobs.

My husband tells everyone that he married me for my chili. It was the first food that I served him when we were dating. It is certainly not 'gourmet' by any means. We call it pan chili as opposed to pot chili. Eaten with a fork, not a spoon. It includes canned kidney beans, ground beef, tomato soup, chopped onion and green pepper, pickled hot pepper rings and a little of the juice, chili powder and cumin. Over 58 years, it is still one of his favorite meals.

I also make traditional 'soup' chili with dried kidney beans. To me chili isn't chili if there are no beans.

Black beans, because I like my chili dirty.

Growing up mother made chili with kidney beans, I would not eat it. I make it with chili beans, now I love chili!

Beans.

Chili beans are new to me. I had to google them. As far as I can tell, they are a spiced kidney or pinto bean, not a separate variety of bean.

Last year I began adding a little masa harina to our chili. I saw it in a recipe - maybe Pioneer Woman (?). It thickens it, so be ready for the texture, and adds a mild corn flavor that my kids like.

Chili purists would not approve :-)

I live in Texas and I make my chili with ground turkey, kidney beans and pinto beans. :D

Try refried pinto beans in your chili.

Only twice have I had what was billed as "Authentic Texas Style Chili". They both had largish chunks of beef in a thick, dark red sauce and no beans. For one they didn't cook the meat long enough for it to become tender, so it was tough, and chewy and fairly bland. With the other the seeming goal was to make the chili as unbearably hot possible. Neither were what I'd call good.

I have slowly developed a chili recipe that I really like. I do use beans, but have never really liked kidney beans which I find tough, chewy and flavorless, I use a combination of black beans, "chili beans" and little red beans. Furthermore I will make mine spicy with fresh serrano peppers, pickled jalapeno peppers, canned chipotle peppers, two different kinds of chili powder, but I aim for a broad, slow heat that builds as you eat it. Given that everyone says "Oh the Chili is much better the next day" One step in my secret award-winning recipe is to make the chili, refrigerate it overnight, and the reheat it to serve it.

I had a chuckle just now when I looked up recipes for "Authentic Texas Style Chili" and one of the links is to Bush's Beans website:

https://www.bushbeans.com/en_US/recipe/texas-style-chili

It sounds awful.

bob I agree that sounds awful lol.

Also, real Texas chili has no tomatoes in it. No beans, no tomatoes.