American cooking Recipes & regional stories

Skillet & Sage

A culinary journey through the fifty states

The regional table / Wyoming

Bison Chili

Published September 23, 2026 · Wyoming

Jump to Recipe

In Wyoming, bison is livestock by statute. Cook it as what it is: a lean red meat that will not supply the fat a chili needs.

Start with the law, because it is unambiguous and most writing about bison is not. Wyoming's statutes define livestock in several places, and the bison clause is the same each time. Under W.S. 11-22-101, governing livestock markets, "livestock" means horses, mules, cattle, swine, sheep and goats, and then: "Bison are considered livestock unless otherwise designated by the board and the Wyoming game and fish commission." The brand-inspection chapter puts the exception the other way round, at W.S. 11-20-101: the livestock board "acting in conjunction with the game and fish commission may designate individual bison or identifiable herds of bison as wildlife." Wild is the special case that has to be declared. Everything else with a brand on it is stock, and the animal behind the package in a Wyoming grocery is a ranched one.

That matters at the stove because of what the Department of Agriculture's own numbers say. In FoodData Central, bison chuck shoulder clod, separable lean only and raw, carries 3.15 grams of fat per 100 grams, with 1.34 grams of that saturated and 119 calories. Ground beef at 85 per cent lean carries 15.0 grams of fat and 215 calories over the same weight. That is not a small difference, and it is large enough to have legal consequences: under 9 CFR 317.362, the federal rule governing what a meat label may claim, "lean" requires less than 10 g of fat, 4.5 g or less of saturated fat, and less than 95 mg of cholesterol per 100 g, and "extra lean" requires less than 5 g of fat and less than 2 g of saturated fat. Whole-muscle bison clears the harder of those two bars. Ground bison is where it gets interesting, because USDA's own two entries disagree: the older Standard Reference record for ground bison reads 15.9 grams of fat per 100 grams, while a sample acquired in 2024 and published in 2025 reads 8.88 grams. Both are honest; they are different grinds. So read the label on the package in front of you, cook for the lean case, and add the fat the chile needs yourself.

Why this version works

Brown short, simmer long. Lean ground meat browns in about four minutes and then starts drying out. Get colour on it fast over high heat, in two batches so the pan never floods, and then get it into liquid. The hour and a half after that is not there to tenderise the meat — ground meat has nothing to tenderise — it is there to let the chile, the tomato and the beans stop tasting like three separate things.

Masa for body, not flour. Without rendered fat the chili stays watery no matter how long it reduces. Two tablespoons of masa harina slaked in water and stirred in for the last fifteen minutes thicken it and add the toasted-corn note that belongs in the pot anyway. Cornstarch thickens and tastes of nothing; flour tastes raw unless cooked far longer than this.

Whole chiles, toasted and blended. Four anchos and two chipotles, toasted for a minute a side, soaked and blended with their liquid, give a purée with body and a dark sweetness that no jar of chili powder reaches. It also means you control the heat: anchos are mild and bring the colour, the chipotles bring the smoke and the sting, and you can move the ratio without changing anything else.

The chile needs fat, and the meat has none to give. Capsaicin and the red carotenoid pigments that give a chile its colour and most of its flavour are fat-soluble; water barely touches them. In a beef chili the rendered fat does that job unasked. With ground bison at eight or nine grams of fat per hundred, nothing pools in the pan, the chile purée goes in dry, and the pot tastes thin and faintly dusty. Two tablespoons of oil or bacon fat, heated before the chile paste goes in, is not a liberty. It is the recipe working at all.

Ingredient notes

Beans: two 15-ounce cans of pintos, drained, or three cups cooked from dry. Texas would leave them out and say so loudly; Wyoming has no dog in that fight, and the federal standard of identity for chili con carne at 9 CFR 319.300 does not mention beans at all — it only sets a floor of 40 per cent meat by fresh weight.

Bison: two pounds of ground bison. If the label says extra lean, or the nutrition panel works out under about 8 grams of fat per 100, add the full two tablespoons of fat and a third if you like a slick on top. If it is a fatty grind near the old Standard Reference figure of 15.9 grams, cut the added fat to one tablespoon. There is no single answer because there is no single grind.

Chiles: four dried anchos and two chipotles, or two canned chipotles in adobo if that is what you have. Stem and seed the dried ones before toasting — the seeds scorch first and turn the whole purée bitter.

Tomato: one 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, no salt added if you can get it, so the seasoning stays yours. Bison is not a loud meat and it is easy to bury it in salt without noticing.

Step by step

  1. Toast and soak the chiles. Stem and seed the anchos. Press them flat on a dry hot skillet 45 seconds a side, until they smell of raisins and smoke but before they darken. Cover with 1½ cups of boiling water and leave 20 minutes.
  2. Make the purée. Blend the softened chiles with the chipotles and about a cup of their soaking water until smooth. Taste it: it should be deep and slightly bitter, not sharp.
  3. Brown the bison hard and fast. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a heavy pot over high heat. Add half the bison in a single layer, leave it 2 minutes without touching it, then break it up and cook 2 minutes more. Move it to a bowl and repeat with the second half.
  4. Soften the aromatics. Lower the heat to medium, add the remaining oil, and cook the onion 7 minutes with a pinch of salt. Add the garlic, cumin and oregano and cook 1 minute more.
  5. Bloom the chile in the fat. Pour in the chile purée and cook it 4 to 5 minutes, stirring, until it darkens a shade and leaves a track behind the spoon. This is the step that makes the fat worth adding.
  6. Simmer. Return the meat and its juices, add the tomatoes, the stock, the beans and the salt, and bring to a bare simmer. Cook uncovered 1 hour 15 minutes, stirring every so often, until it has visibly tightened.
  7. Thicken and finish. Whisk the masa harina into ¼ cup of cold water, stir it in, and simmer 15 minutes more. Off the heat, add the vinegar, taste hard for salt, and let it sit 15 minutes before serving.
If the chili tastes flat and looks orange rather than brick, the chile never met enough hot fat — stir a tablespoon of oil into a small pan, add a spoonful of the chili, cook it hard for a minute and return it, and the whole pot lifts. If the meat has gone grainy and dry, the pan was too crowded and the bison stewed in its own water rather than browning; the masa and a knob of butter at the end will carry it. If it is bitter, that is scorched chile skin or seed, and the only cure is dilution: more tomato, more beans, a spoon of molasses.

Storage and make-ahead

Four days in the fridge and better on the second, when the chile has stopped being a separate flavour. Reheat gently and add a splash of water.

Three months frozen. Freeze without the masa if you can plan that far ahead, and thicken after thawing, because starch-thickened chili comes back slightly gluey.

What to serve with it

Cornbread, or the chuckwagon sourdough biscuits on this site. Something to mop with, because a lean chili clings to the bowl.

Raw white onion, lime and a hard cheese. Sour cream too, if you like, though it blunts the chile you spent twenty minutes building.

From the recipe box / Wyoming

Bison Chili

Ground bison cooked with a purée of toasted dried chiles and enough added fat to carry them, then simmered with pinto beans until it is thick enough to stand a spoon in.

Prep
25 min
Cook
1 hr 45 min
Total
2 hr 10 min
Serves
6
Calories
455 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Toast the anchos 45 seconds a side in a dry pan, then soak in 1½ cups boiling water for 20 minutes.
  2. Blend the soaked chiles and the chipotles with about 1 cup of the soaking liquid until smooth.
  3. Brown the bison in 2 batches over high heat in 1 tablespoon of the oil, 4 minutes a batch, and set aside.
  4. Soften the onion 7 minutes in the remaining oil, then cook the garlic, cumin and oregano 1 minute.
  5. Add the chile purée and cook 4–5 minutes, until it darkens and leaves a track behind the spoon.
  6. Return the meat, add the tomatoes, stock, beans and salt, and simmer uncovered 1 hour 15 minutes.
  7. Stir in the masa slaked in ¼ cup water, simmer 15 minutes, then add the vinegar and rest 15 minutes.

Nutrition

Fat18 g (6 g saturated)
Sodium930 mg
Protein39 g
Servingabout 1½ cups
Calories455
Cholesterol100 mg
Carbohydrates32 g (6 g sugar, 8 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Beans or no beans?

Your call, and no authority settles it. The federal standard of identity for chili con carne, 9 CFR 319.300, says only that the product "shall contain not less than 40 percent of meat computed on the weight of the fresh meat" — it is silent on beans. This pot runs well above that floor either way. If you leave the beans out, cut the stock to a cup and a half.

Can I use beef instead?

Yes, and it is easier rather than harder: drop the added fat to a teaspoon and pour some off after browning if it pools. Everything else stays. The recipe is built around an absence of fat, so putting fat back only asks you to take some out again.

Is bison healthier than beef?

Leaner, on the cuts, and by a documented margin: USDA figures put bison chuck shoulder clod, lean only and raw, at 3.15 g of fat per 100 g against 15.0 g for 85 per cent lean ground beef. Two things to keep straight, though. Ground bison is not the same as a bison cut, and USDA's own records for it range from 8.88 g to 15.9 g of fat per 100 g. And the iron claim people make for it does not survive the tables — ground bison reads 2.17 mg per 100 g against 2.09 mg for the ground beef, which is the same number for any practical purpose.

Is ranched bison the same animal as a wild one?

It is the same species and a different life, and Wyoming law draws the line by paperwork rather than by biology. Bison are livestock in the statutes unless the livestock board and the game and fish commission together designate a particular animal or an identifiable herd as wildlife. What reaches a butcher's counter is the livestock case: an animal raised on a ranch, branded and inspected like cattle.