It is said that Walt Disney liked simple, comforting food and one of his very favorite things was a good bowl of chili. This recipe is his own personal family recipe and it makes a large batch of classic, hearty chili. While there’s a few suggested tweaks you can make to change the flavor, this is the kind of chili that has approachable flavor and is a true crowd-pleaser. In fact, it’s so well loved that it’s still served in the Carnation Cafe at Disneyland today!

What Ingredients Do You Need for Walt Disney’s Family Chili Recipe?

You’ll need:

• Ground beef.
• Onions and garlic.
• Some neutral oil.
• Celery. (An intersting addition.)
• Chili powder, paprika, and ground mustard.
• A large can of whole tomatoes.
• “Pink beans.” (Better known as pinto beans these days.

Walt also suggests that you can add any of the following for some ‘extra zest’: a small yellow Mexican chili pepper, coriander seeds, turmeric, chili seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, cloves, cinnamon, ground ginger.

How do You Make Walt Disney’s Family Chili?

Walt calls for using dried beans here, so the first step is to soak those beans in cold water overnight. When you’re ready to cook, you just drain them off, and get them in a pot with some water and onions and simmer them until they’re tender, which he says should take four hours.

While the beans are simmering, you brown the ground beef in oil in a separate large pot and then add the celery, chili powder, paprika, mustard powder, and tomatoes and let it all simmer for an hour. At that point, you add in the (now soft) beans and let it cook about a half-hour more.

How Would You Change Walt Disney’s Family Chili?

It’s a great question. I’ll say that this is a very good basic chili as it stands — the kind of chili flavor you imagine when you think of chili — but there are a couple of modifications you can make for ease and flavor.

First, using canned beans. Sometimes, you just don’t think far enough ahead to do an overnight soak on beans and you want that chili now! You can easily substitute in canned beans here; you will need 3-4 cans of pinto beans. To do this, simply brown the onions with the beef and garlic in oil, and then add in the canned beans as the original recipe calls for in the last 30 minutes of simmering. It simplifies the process greatly without sacrificing flavor.

Second, play around with the flavor! Walt only calls for one teaspoon of chili powder here, and that is NOT a lot of chili powder for two pounds of ground beef. I upped mine to about a tablespoon, which gives it a lot more flavor.

However, he also calls for adding any number of extra spices for ‘extra zest,’ such as cinnamon, coriander seeds, cumin… which is really to say that you can season this to your liking. The cinnamon really gives this chili a signature quality and rumor has it that that’s just how Walt made it. Enjoy!