The saga of Texas chili and Terlingua | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Life/Travel

The saga of Texas chili and Terlingua | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Life/Travel: "When chuck-wagon cooks first began stewing beef with hot peppers in the late 1800s, they probably never dreamed they were helping to create the state dish of Texas. Nor, it is likely, did the chili queens of San Antonio, who were ladling their specialty from cauldrons nightly on the city's downtown streets about then. Neither group could have foreseen that their humble fare one day would be the focus of hundreds of culinary competitions, and two of the biggest would be held annually in a tiny ghost town on the edge of Big Bend. Also Online Prize-winning Texas chili recipes Frank X. Tolbert's chili recipe LBJ's Pedernales River Chili recipe They'd never have imagined that grown men would throw such hissy fits that they'd need two competitions – one of them 'behind the store' – to separate the warring factions. And then there are the three chili societies jockeying for supremacy."