Chili is easy, once you understand what it is. Cheeba mentioned so many wonderful flavors, but really too much flavor for a chili if you ask me. I know my chili, it's an American cowboy staple, made with beens and noodles in almost equal parts, tomato(halved, chopped or paste) and enough heat to not have to worry about flavor. Everything else is extra, even your choice of meat is not neccesary to make a chili. Stay away from fruits berries and nuts, these will officialy make your chili not a chili. Cook it slow like a stew.

Habeneros!!!!!(If you got the guts)

If you want to use the hottest hellfire motherfucking peppers in the world get those little Vietnamese ones, sometimes known as Ot Hiem(or just Ot with a long "o"). But be warned: if you even touch 'em to your mouth your whole face will feel like you've been hit with a frying pan. It will put you on your ass.

http://www.whiteonricecouple.com/rec...-devil-pepper/

Of course the kids in SE Asia chew 'em like candy, go figure.

I wasn't hungry before reading this, but damn now I want some chilli. Only Hot things I have are jalepenos and cayenne pepper. Good enough. 1 day I'm gonna do the jabeneros.

On further investagation I find out I was wrong. A good friend and culinary graduate friend of mine gave me the run down on some award winning chili recipes that include sugar, honey and/or berries(for natural sugars). So ya Cheebs, you are the chili master.

Arrrh, I keep seeing this thread, that's it, I'm making chillie for dinner tonight.

Apparently most Chili cookoffs ban the use of beans, deaming them as unnecessary filler!

I always use beans because I don't use meat. I use red lentils, generally kidney beans, but i had some black eyed beans and pinto beans in the cuboard so I'm going to use them tonight.

I got a nice selection of chillies from the asian grocer near my place.

Kidney beans are AMAZING!!!

Sounds awesome, I rarely use meat either, a good mix of beens like you described tastes better to me. I also like to use big chunks of tomato and little watered down tomato sauce. I'm f*@#*n hungry .

Ahh, that chillie tonight was pretty damn good... hmmm, it put me in a daze.