Chili Dip

By

Rodcrafter

Thanks. I had never heard of it, although I can remember a couple of times a bowl of chili seemed like a brick in my stomach!

By

kvd2241

A method of marketing commercial chili in the days before widespread home refrigerators was "brick chili", in the production of which nearly all of the moisture was squeezed out to leave a solid substance roughly the size and shape of a half-brick. Wolf Brand was sold in a brick before switching to a canned product. Commonly available in small towns and rural areas of the American Southwest in the first three-quarters of the 20th century, brick chili has largely outlived its usefulness and is now difficult to find. http://www.dolorescanning.com/canning/cb.html

Chili bricks seemed to be history and over and out!
"1850 - Records were found by Everrette DeGolyer (1886-1956), a Dallas millionaire and a lover of chili, indicating that the first chili mix was concocted around 1850 by Texan adventurers and cowboys as a staple for hard times when traveling to and in the California gold fields and around Texas. Needing hot grub, the trail cooks came up with a sort of stew. They pounded dried beef, fat, pepper, salt, and the chile peppers together. This amounted to "brick chili" or "chili bricks" that could be boiled in pots along the trail. DeGolyer said that chili should be called "chili a la Americano" because the term chili is generic in Mexico and simply means a hot pepper". Nowadays they also sell chili in square packs and call it "brick" but it's not the old style brick chili. It's kept cold in the meat department.

By

Rodcrafter

What is a brick of chili?