No matter what dollar store I walk into, I always seem to walk out with some sort of chili. These things just happen. I’ve come to accept it rather than fight it.

It doesn’t matter which hockey team is winning, who’s running for president or what I ate last night. These cans of chili inevitably find their way into my hands.

And onto my plate for review. I’m no stranger to chili from a can. Previously, we’ve reviewed Hormel Chili w/ Beans. I’m somewhat surprised that’s the only real product review yet, not counting the posts about free Weinerschnitzel.

Anyhow, I’m going to run this review a little different. One thing that happens when you do a lot of reviewing (at least for me) is that you end up with a ton of different products that you’ve eaten but haven’t reviewed. If I was to review every single thing that came across my plate, I’d be doing 5 reviews a week non-stop. That’s too crazy.

So, what I often do is take notes. You’re going to laugh - just imagine me sitting with a bowl of chili, bread in one hand, pen in the other, and writing down my deepest darkest feelings about this lumpy, pseudo meat-bean product so they won’t be forgotten.

But the thing is - I WILL forget if I don’t write them down. For instance, I ate this Brooks Thick Chili with Beans almost a month ago. Without notes, I’d completely forget how it tasted. You can’t seriously expect me to eat several cans of this stuff in a month, right? Hm… I guess it would depend how cheap it was.

Anyhow, I’m just going to type in the exact notes as I scribbled them down furiously. You may or may not find this extremely boring, sorry if the former:

Brooks Chili

Overall: Surprisingly low salt(although 44% daily val sodium!), color nice red as chili shoudl be, a tiny bit gummy from the beans but OK.

Spice not too strong, I could have it stronger but suppose it’s better so can taylor [sic] it.

Beans: pinto soft cooked, nice, a little bland if you just eat it plain, pasty to some perhaps.

Ground beef: better than some, but nothing to write home about pretty much pureed, instead of large chunks - reminds me of J in the Balpha tacos.

Heat - barely there at the back of mouth. Could use Tabasco.

That’s the exact text. See, there’s nothing to being a food reviewer. Pretty much everything I wrote would have made it into the review. Oh, I’d dress it up so people might be moderately amused. Probably throw a joke in there about Texas. Maybe talk about some meeethane from the beans.

There’s one thing I omitted from the end of the notes. That is, “I ate this with a Nathan’s dog - that dog itself nearly overpowered the chili in saltiness. Puzzling.” I had picked up some Nathan’s Hot Dogs at the market because I’d never had them. They were excellent, I liked the snappiness and texture. But the salt content - dang, it’s no wonder we Americans have problems with sodium. Geez.

Anyhow, in summary I think Brooks is better than some other brands I’ve had before. Of course you could just make your own chili, but that’s the likely the subject of an upcoming article.

Price:$1.00 for 15 oz can
Found At:Big Lots
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10