The first thing I thought was... "White Chili??? What the heck is white chili?" It intrigued me, and this friend of mine has not steered me wrong with food yet. So, I went and got the additional ingredients required... a large onion, a couple pounds of chicken breast and a can of green chilies... The box calls for mild green chilies, but I couldn't find one with a heat rating.. so I just got a small can of green chilies from the Mexican Food isle... they did not turn out to be what I would call 'mild.'
As I started making it, I thought to myself... "This isn't chili at all." In Texas, or at least a little deeper south, this would be considered a 'bean' dish. that got me to thinkin' 'what IS chili?' Have you really ever thought about it? Some folks say that chili is a type of stew. That's what I originally thought, but then I thought of the difference in consistency of chili and stew. Although you can have a stew with a thick gravy, most of the time, they are much thinner than your typical chili. Good chili has a thick, almost porridge like consistency... but does the consistency matter?
Some people I've known will put chili powder in left over spaghetti sauce, and eat it as chili. Is that chili? If you take spicy spaghetti sauce and put it over spaghetti is it spaghetti and meat sauce or is it Cincinnati's famous 5-way chili?
One web site mentioned that chili was once described by a travel writer (that's what they called bloggers in the 1800's) named J.C. Clopper on a trip to San Antonio. He mentioned that the poorer residents of the town had to make their meat go a long way. It didn't matter what they got that day... beef, chicken, you name it... they would chop it into a fine mash and stew it.
There are definitely regional differences when it comes to chili. A Mexican friend of mine, years ago, after I explained what Texas chili was, said "oh! That's chili beans!" I was expecting her to say "Chili con carne," but she said "chili beans," and, having been raised on a number of southern bean dishes, all having some sort of meat floating around in them, and most having a very think porridge-like consistency, that's what I was thinking when I sat down before my fragrant bowl of Buckeye Beans & Herbs White Chicken Chili. "I'm gonna have me a bowl of beans!"
Oh, how wrong I was... even today... several years after the fact... I remember the flavor pouring through my senses when I took that first bite... the green chilies were some of the hottest I've ever eaten, but the heat did not overpower the flavor. The heat was also the perfect complement to the seasonings of the chili. Being made with chicken instead of beef added to the uniqueness. I've had some good chili in my day, but they all sort of merge together in my memory. None stand out, but I can remember this bowl of white chicken chili... and I remember thinking that it was one of THE best bowls of chili I ever had.
