Chili - Chili and Chili con Carne

Chili can be used to refer to both "Salsa Chili" and the well-known "Chili con Carne" dish.

The term "chili" is Spanish and in turn derives from "chīlli", which in the language nāhuatl (atzeco) means chili pepper; as you can easily guess, the fruit of this plant native to South America represents a characteristic ingredient of both preparations.

Chili sauce

The chili sauce is nothing more than a condiment made from chilli and (often but not always) red tomatoes. Depending on the level of spiciness, the sauce can be very spicy (hot), sweet (sweet) or mixed (spicy and sweet, with different intensities); obviously, to obtain a sweet taste, the chili sauces are enriched with sucrose, glucose or fructose, granular or in syrup, which make them even more viscous (an example is given by the Thai Sauce or the Sweet Chili Sauce).

The chili is mainly used as a sauce in which to dip the food, as a sauce for glazing and as a marinating sauce; Thai (sweet) is widely used in Thai cuisine and is sometimes included in Japanese sushi recipes.

The ingredients for chili sauce are: puree or pieces of chillies, vinegar, sugar (sucrose, glucose or fructose) and salt (sodium chloride); the process involves cooking, mixing, thickening and packaging. Other additional ingredients of chili sauce could be water, garlic, corn syrup, spices and flavorings; sometimes, the main element is the red tomato, but the "green chili sauce", based only on green chilli, is also known.

Chili sauce is a particularly popular packaged food; the "HJ Heinz Company" is one of the main producers of chili chili sauce in the USA and provides two grades of spiciness: grade A (Fancy) and grade C (US standard and less spicy).

Chili sauce

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Chilli with beef

In the UK and USA, chili con meat (chili with meat) is often referred to simply as "chili". It is a "stew" type recipe based on: chilli, meat (beef), fat and, often, tomatoes and beans; sometimes it is enriched with garlic, cumin and onions, and geographical variations are not lacking. On the other hand, some believe that the noun "chili" can only be attributed to the traditional basic recipe; in this regard, the beans, added only at a later time (as well as the tomatoes, etc.), have been the object of dispute by many experts of the dish.

The original recipe of chili con carne would be based on dried beef, suet (kidney fat), dried chilli and salt; the ingredients must be crushed and pressed, dried and boiled.

The dish was made famous thanks to the "Columbian Exposition of Chigago", a world fair held in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America; inside the event, the "San Antonio Chili Stand" showed the taste of the recipe to the southwestern American public; not surprisingly, today, the chili con carne (Texas-style Chili, consisting only of beef and chilli) is officially the national dish of the State of Texas.

There are also contemporary and alternative variants of chili with meat. One of these is the vegan version, or "chili without meat"; in this case the beef muscle is replaced by tofu (or tempeh or wheat or mopur muscle, etc.) and suet from vegetable oils. Another variation is the Mexican "chili verde con carne", extremely spicy and usually based on pork with chicken broth and roasted green peppers. Finally, how not to mention the "chili con bianco", made with white beans and turkey or chicken breast.

Chili con carne perfectly matches with tortillas, but can also be accompanied by white rice or semolina pasta.

Chili con carne is also an extremely popular packaged food, in can or brick.

Nutritional Features

The nutritional characteristics of chili sauce cannot be unified, since they depend essentially on the recipe of the product. In general, these foods are not recommended in case of suffering of gastric mucosa or irritable colon. Furthermore, sweet sauces contain very high amounts of simple sugars which, if in excess, tend to alter the nutritional balance of the diet.

The same goes for the chili con carne. Even leaving out the innovative versions, analyzing a product based on chilli and beef, compared to another also consisting of beans and tomato, the nutritional picture changes significantly. The variety with legumes and other vegetables provides less calories, less protein, more fiber, more carbohydrates, more antioxidants and a different salt profile. The mineral salts most present in this version compared to the basic recipe are potassium, magnesium and calcium, while iron, in addition to being scarcely abundant, is also less bioavailable. Being cooked, the chili with vegetables and legumes does not benefit from the greater initial concentration of vitamin C, while the B vitamins are lower than the recipe with more meat.

Below, by way of example, we publish the nutritional values ​​of two different products: chili with meat and beans, and spicy chili sauce.

Nutritional values

				Chili con Carne and Canned Beans	Canned Hot Chili Red Sauce
Edible part				100%	100%
water				74.3g	94.1g
Protein				7.1g	0.9g
	Prevailing amino acids			-	-
	Limiting amino acid			-	-
Lipids TOT				4.3g	0.6g
		Saturated fatty acids		1.74g	0.08g
		Monounsaturated fatty acids		2.14g	0.41g
		Polyunsaturated fatty acids		0.43g	0.07g
		Cholesterol		63.0mg	65.0mg
TOT Carbohydrates				11.4g	3.9g
		Starch		11.4g	1.3g
		Soluble sugars		0.0g	2.6g
Ethyl alcohol				0.0g	0.0g
Dietary fiber				3.9g	0.7g
			Soluble fiber	- g	- g
			Insoluble fiber	- g	- g
Power				109.9kcal	23.6kcal
Sodium				424.0mg	25.0mg
Potassium				274.0mg	564.0mg
Iron				2.6mg	0.5mg
Football				38.0mg	9.0mg
Phosphorus				97.0mg	205.0mg
Thiamine				0.05mg	0.01mg
Riboflavin				0.10mg	0.09mg
Niacin				0.97mg	0.60mg
Vitamin A (RAE)				0.0μg	23.0μg
C vitamin				1.4mg	30.0mg
Vitamin E				0.0mg	0.36mg