Chili just needs to be hearty and filling. Meat and beans are great for this purpose. Having an appropriate ratio is important and the types of beans is also important (doubly so in vegetarian chili). Meat should be on top but shouldn’t overpower everything else.
I, as a chili bean lover who made their chili based on beans, understand this completely.
Chili should (if not vegan chili) be based around the meat. The meat and flavors should be #1 and the accoutrements should be secondary.
If vegan chili (which my mum makes and it’s SO DELICIOUS), this rule can be ignored.
Counterpoint: I’ll put whatever I want in my spicy slop and the internet can be mad all it wants, beans are going in there.
That is hella based
But I’ve tried with a lot of different things and it always comes out best if I do the meat as a base (if I’m not making vegan chili)
Chili just needs to be hearty and filling. Meat and beans are great for this purpose. Having an appropriate ratio is important and the types of beans is also important (doubly so in vegetarian chili). Meat should be on top but shouldn’t overpower everything else.
Full agree. If it’s meat chili, the easiest way to do that is to use the meat base.
But you’re 100% correct, you can absolutely do it different ways, especially if you’re making non-meat chili.
I would argue the chiles should be #1, though the protein/umami source at #2 works fine.