The Story of Pecos Red Chili

Some of my earliest memories are from chili cook-offs around Texas. New Braunfels. Terlingua. Anywhere with a parking lot big enough for fifty RVs and a stage for a country band. There were trucks and cowboy hats and KIKK stickers on everything. To this day, when I open Packet B, the smell of cumin takes me straight back.

Here's how we got here.

It Started with Brisket

In the early 1990s my parents — Jerry and Jo Ann Oakman — had just moved into a new house in Spring, Texas. I was a brand-new baby, my Mom was running on zero sleep, and my Dad saw a flyer for a neighborhood cook-off and announced he was going to cook in it.

My Mom's response: "You go knock yourself out. I'll take care of the baby."

So he went. And he won the dang thing.

Here's the twist: it wasn't a chili cook-off. It was brisket. But somewhere between the flyer and the trophy, my Dad got hooked — and he quickly figured out there were a whole lot more chili cook-offs in Texas than brisket cook-offs. He found a publication called the Goat Gap Gazette, the newspaper of record for the Texas chili circuit, listing every sanctioned cook-off in the state.

There was just one problem. We didn't know how to cook chili.

Red Lightning Chili

So my parents figured it out. They dug into recipes, read everything they could find about competition chili, and started entering CASI-sanctioned cook-offs straight out of the pages of the Goat Gap Gazette. Every cook-off, the recipe got a little better. Before long they were running the circuit as Red Lightning Chili.

My sister Erin and I grew up inside this world. We'd load up the RV and roll into a new town most weekends — sometimes camped at a nearby campground, sometimes parked right there at the cook-off. While the grown-ups stirred their pots and argued about cumin, we ran around with the other cook-off kids, touring the costumes and the tents and the setups. Chili cook-offs are a whole culture, and we were raised in it.

Funny thing: I didn't even like eating chili back then. I was a picky kid. Did not stop me from winning the Texas state junior championship one year.

They mailed me $200 in actual physical Treasury

bills. I'm pretty sure they're still in the safe upstairs.

The Best Chile Powder in New Mexico

Red Lightning did well on the circuit. But my Dad noticed something about competitions: even great chili doesn't win every time. Judging is judging. So he had a different idea — what if we made this into a product? Then people could enjoy the good stuff every single time, no judges required.

And if you're going to sell it, he figured, every ingredient better be exactly the best ingredient.

Some of what goes into chili is commodity. (There were many family debates about ground beef.) But the heart of any chili is the pure red chile powder, and the best chile peppers in the world are grown in New Mexico. That much is settled fact.

Now — the way my Dad told it: it's the mid-1990s, he doesn't know a soul in New Mexico, but the Santa Fe fire department is listed in the phone book. His logic: "It's not an emergency, so I'm not calling the police — but a fireman will know where the good chiles grow." One phone call later, he had the name of a lady who worked at the local elementary school and grew the best peppers around on her own land. He left a voicemail at the school. She called back. They struck a deal.

My Dad was a storyteller, so I can't swear to every detail. But I can swear to what matters: New Mexico chile powder went into the very first bags of Pecos Red, and it goes into every bag today.

As for exactly where we get it? Some things stay in the family.

The Chili Lady

Red Lightning Chili was our competition name. Pecos Red became our product. We still hit a cook-off now and then, but the focus shifted to selling Pecos Red at craft fairs and stores around Texas.

In the late 1990s, my Mom took over Pecos Red completely, and she's been "the chili lady" ever since. For more than twenty years she has made every bag by hand and shipped every package and case herself to our loyal customers.

The recipe is gram-for-gram the same as it was in the mid-90s. There's no reason to change it. It is damn near perfect authentic Texas chili.

Your Secret Is Safe with Us

Over the years we've heard from a lot of customers who buy Pecos Red and then go win their local chili cook-off — in Minnesota, in Sacramento, in a suburb of Chicago.

This is totally fine by us. We won't tell anyone your secret.

Please keep ordering. 😉

Four Generations

Pecos Red has now touched four generations of Oakmans. My Dad brought his mother Virginia to cook-offs — we have a photo of her in a Red Lightning Chili t-shirt. My Mom brought her parents. And today, my own kids eat Pecos Red at the dinner table.

This is our family recipe. It was argued over in RVs, tested on the Texas circuit, and made by hand for more than twenty years. When you cook a pot of Pecos Red, you're making the exact same chili we make for our own table — and as far as we're concerned, that makes you part of the story.

We're honored to share it with you.