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Chili Mac and Chili Con Beans
The Vincennes Packing Corporation, of Indiana, puts out a streamlined aid to campers that would make Alice of Old Vincennes turn in her grave. But it seems to suit outdoor appetites especially toward fall, when Chili con Carne, or Chili con Anything comes into full bloom, and is specially relished by the chilly females of our species. Directions on the can tell how to make both peppy dishes. For Chili Mac you parboil a cup of broken spaghetti and dump it into a con Carne made by heating those con Beans with a bit of onion and meat, or just heating them.
This is less a formula than a campfire shortcut: a can of chili beans, a handful of pasta, and whatever meat and onion you have. The proportions are left entirely to the cook, so the notes below fill in the gaps.
- What "con Beans" wasA can of chili-seasoned beans without meat, sold alongside canned chili con carne. Any modern can of chili beans in sauce, roughly 15 oz, stands in directly; drain little or none of the liquid, since it becomes the sauce.
- Working proportionsOne cup of dry broken spaghetti swells to about two cups cooked, which will nearly swamp a single 15 oz can. Two cans of beans to one cup of dry pasta gives a dish that still eats like chili rather than like pasta salad.
- Parboil, not boilParboiling here means about two-thirds of the package time, drained while still firm. The pasta finishes in the chili and absorbs liquid as it does, so anything cooked through beforehand turns to mush in the pot.
- The onion and meatGround beef browned first with the chopped onion, then the beans added on top, keeps the meat from stewing grey. A half pound of beef and one medium onion is enough for two cans.
- Thinning as it standsPasta keeps drinking the sauce off the heat. Hold back a little of the pasta water, or a few spoonfuls of water or tomato juice, and loosen the pot before serving.
- Seasoning the canCanned chili beans of this period were often saltier and less hot than what is sold now, so taste before adding salt, and lean on cumin, chili powder or a dash of vinegar rather than more salt.
- YieldTwo cans of beans, a cup of dry spaghetti and a half pound of beef feeds four campers generously, or two after a long day's walking.
The Vincennes Packing Corporation was one of a number of Midwestern canners that put up chili con carne and chili beans in the first half of the twentieth century, when canned chili was a cheap source of hot, filling food for a camper or a boarding-house cook. The joke about Alice of Old Vincennes refers to Maurice Thompson's 1900 historical romance set in the same Indiana town, whose eighteenth-century heroine would have known nothing of tin cans or chili powder. Chili mac is often said to date from the Depression, when pasta was one way to stretch a small quantity of chili across more plates, though the dish's origins are not firmly documented; it is associated chiefly with the Midwest, and Cincinnati has its own separate tradition of chili served over spaghetti. Its appearance in a camp-cooking book reflects a period when canned goods were treated as legitimate outdoor equipment rather than a compromise.