I heard yesterday, for the first time in my life, that Frito chili pie is a regionalism and that if you’re not in or from the Oklahoma/Missouri/Arkansas region, you probably don’t know what a Frito chili pie is. Hard to believe. So the question of the day is, where are you from and are you familiar with this particular indulgence?
Really? I thought it was easy cheap TX-MX college food? Will be interested in the answers.
I assumed at the very least it had Southwest-based Tex-Mex history.
I mean the company started in San Antonio around 1930….frito pie and chili with fritoes have been around since the beginning of dirt.
Here’s their site:
http://www.fritolay.com/about-us/history.html
You’d think since then they’d have migrated to the rest of the country. But apparently not.
I’ve never heard of it, though I am not surprised by it in the least. I am from California, but have family in Arkansas and Texas.
That does make it seem regional, although the way Calif. draws people from all over the country, I’d have guessed nothing is still foreign to the state.
Well, I can say I’ve had beer battered, deep fried pickles down in Paso Robles, CA. Great tasting, in my opinion, but completely unhealthy. I think they said it was a southern specialty. But who knows.
Nothing beer battered and deep fried is going to be healthy, but it will probably be really, really good. Such are choices we humans must sometimes make.
Everyone in Texas surely MUST have heard of Frito (Chili) Pie. Way back (in the 70’s) when my kids played little league baseball, the snack that winners got at the concession stand was called just Frito Pie. Eaten with a plastic spork (or Foon) and made by pouring a bit of chili into a 10 cent bag (then it was 10 cents) of Fritos that had been slit open along it’s length to create a ready made bowl.
They were around in Oklahoma for about as long as I can remember. And we’ve always called them Frito chili pies, although Wikipedia and you call them simply Frito pies. What you describe is exactly the way Wikipedia says they originated (pour chili into the bag), but there seems to be some disagreement about where they originated. Santa Fe? San Antonio?
Heard of it of course, but never ate one. Which, come to think of it, might be why I’m still alive at my age.
This made me wonder about Frito chili pie’s nutritional characteristics, which have to be a Bloombergian nightmare, and that led me to discover Health.com’s “50 Fattiest Foods In The States”. Turns out that Frito chili pie is attributed by that site to New Mexico. Missouri’s is Hardee’s 2/3 Lb. Monster Thickburger. Never had one of those either.
LOL! Yep, nobody ever claimed this as health food. But doggone it, enjoying life means sometimes throwing caution to the wind and indulging in something just because it tastes good! Bloomberg would go to town on the “50 Fattiest.” Please don’t suggest that to him!
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it called that before, but it looks on (Google Images) an awful lot like my “improvement” to the “chili cheese fries” my family in L.A. introduced me to. I much prefer the taste and crunch of corn chips over mushy french fries, and the chip size is easier to deal with than tortilla chips. 😀
Oh, now, see, I think the two are completely different. Chili cheese fries — whole different dish. Yours truly is reluctant to adulterate good french fries with anything more than salt. I can’t help it; I’m a purist. Corn chips, however, regardless of their shape or size, were born to be drenched, drowned, and dunked in as many delicious and evilly sinful toppings as possible. Yes, the crunch is important, but I’m not averse to burying a baked potato in chili and cheddar cheese and, if available, sour cream and onions.
(I have made myself sooo hungry with this discussion! But I don’t think I have any chili or chips or potatoes in the house right now. 🙁 )
I’m hungry now too PT. I just saw a Rally’s ad for seasoned fries covered in meat, cheese, and peppers, but the only parts of that I have on hand is hamburger and frozen seasoned fries! 🙁
I have plenty of food in the house; it’s just that now I’m set for chili and I don’t have that. Drat.
Born and raised in Indiana. Never heard of Frito Pie until I moved here to New Mexico.
I suppose if I’d ever craved it when I lived in the NE or Atlanta, I’d have discovered how regional it really is. On the other hand, being able to buy Fritos and chili at any supermarket wouldn’t have proved anything.
Love it, but it’s been years…. and now I’m on a salt-free diet :-((
It’s definitely junk food. On a salt-free diet, you probably can’t even look at a picture of it. 🙁