Just thinking about it made a cowboy hungry. Whenever the cook fixed up his own special brand of chili, especially if it was a cold and windy day, a whiff of it was enough to start the whole outfit ridin' for the chuckwagon.

Back during the trail driving era of the American West, the chuckwagon was the center of life for the cowboy. During spring round-ups, trail hands would fan out from the chuckwagon in the mornings and return to it in the afternoons. By that time they'd all be powerfully hungry and nothing satisfied a cowboy's appetite like a good bowl of shore 'nuff real chili.

Back then there were as many ways of makin' chili as there were chuckwagon cooks. Every cook swore by his own chili makin's and the best thing any one of 'em would say about some other cook's chili was, "That's purt' near chili."

Arguments about the best way to make chili have been going on for as long as there have been chuckwagon cooks and cowboy appetites. It's been made every which way imaginable--with no beans, with nothin' but beans, with meat in chunks or ground up, with fresh peppers when cooks could get 'em or with chili powder that felt like fire whenever a cowboy would flick it on his tongue. But no matter how it was made, it was all "purt' near chili" and it fed a lot of hungry cowhands.

Things haven't changed much since those good ole days of yesteryear as far as chili is concerned. It's still made a lot of different ways, only nowadays it's enjoyed by a lot more different kinds of folk than just cowboys. From coast to coast it's the latest culinary rage. You're just as likely to see it being enjoyed by an uptown urbanite in some fancy Manhattan restaurant as you are by a trucker in a roadside cafe in Amarillo. There's probably more than a thousand different ways of fixing chili these days. Chili making has become more or less a creative process, limited in scope only by the creator's imagination.

So, pardners, roll up your sleves and shake the trail dust from your aprons. Here's some of the best chili recipes that ever put the dampers on a Texas norther, and lots of terrific serving ideas to boot. To check 'em out, just click on the recipe links at left.