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" I used to be religious about chili. I had a favorite recipe, yellowed with age and stained with red. I had a dedicated pot. I had rules about no beans, and which meats, and how many of what kind of peppers -- and any violation of those rules rendered the offending chili something less than &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; chili. No matter how delicious.  I blame most of this fundamentalist claptrap on the fact that I lived in Austin for a couple years in the late 1970s. I don&amp;#039;t remember anything about Austin clearly, but I know that I moved there knowing and caring nothing about chili -- or chicken-fried steak, or the flame-haired she-devils from bayou country who&amp;#039;d rip your back bloody in return for a vaginal orgasm -- and I know that I left sure that I knew all there was to know about chili and much else.  Believing that you own the whole truth is the fundamental ignorance of fundamentalism, food and otherwise, but I did have a pretty good grasp of one kind of chili, and I ladled a lot of hot, sloppy bowls to a lot of folks over the years. I&amp;#039;d take all night to make a pot, getting drunker and higher as the hours went by and the chili boiled down. It was the only dish I had -- I&amp;#039;m no kind of cook -- and making it felt like an event of considerable devotion and significant magnitude. What a crock of shit. I mean, mine was fine chili, no doubt, and I&amp;#039;ve done dumber things drunk than fix it. But chili is a manifold god of joy worshipped in a boundless sanctuary of simmering delight and acid reflux. And I learn this fresh once a week -- usually on Saturday -- when the wife puts a pound or so of coarse-ground turkey in a big saut\u00E9 pan, adds some tomato sauce to it, stirs a packet of Nueva Cocina chipotle taco seasoning into the mix, and -- 20 minutes later -- serves up a mess that makes my neck sweat and my bowels shudder. Great stuff. But is it chili? You bet. It&amp;#039;s all chili, brother, right down to the tablespoon scraping the last lines off the bottom of the big blue bowl.  Point is, take salvation as it comes, even in the guise of heresy. It&amp;#039;s all chili. It&amp;#039;s all good. THE ESQUIRE CHILI COOK-OFF: RECIPES, FAVORITE BOWLS &amp;amp;amp; MORE  CONTESTANT #1: Slow-Braised Pork-Shank Chili  CONTESTANT #2: Wild-Boar Chili with Garam Masala  CONTESTANT #3: White-Bean-and-Italian-Sausage Chili  THE VERDICT: Daniel Boulud Picks the Esquire Chili Cook-Off Winner  BONUS RECIPE: How to Make Real, Award-Winning Texas Chili  PLUS: Six of America&amp;#039;s Best Bowls of Chili   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a5304/chili-cook-off-1208/>