Chili is in my blood. It is part of who I am.

Of all the dishes my mother made for our family, it is her chili that I remember with the most fondness. Of all the dishes served for lunch at my high school, it is the chili that I remember as most edible.

It is, for me, the ultimate comfort food.

When I first moved to Texas, a new colleague who soon became a fast friend held a dinner party to welcome me. He served chili.

To be specific, he served hot chili. Volcanic chili. He thought it would be entertaining to offer Yankee Boy a bowl of tongue-searing spices.

I gobbled it up and asked for more while the others were still dripping sweat over their first bowls. I was sweating, too, but not as profusely. I think. At any rate, I passed the test. I was accepted.

Chili has that kind of power, that kind of status. It is the type of food you bond over; arguments can be placated with a good bowl of chili.

And in the days when roadside diners ruled the landscape, the one dish you could be certain to find everywhere was chili. And it would be good.

There may be as many ways to make chili as there are people who make it, but it is always good. Chili is impossible to make badly.

For my own little chili fiesta, I started with a version of that hair-blasting stuff I had way back in Texas. I’m not as young as I once was, so I tempered it a bit and made it ever so slightly less fiery. But it’s the kind of chili that adapts easily to differing levels of heat by changing the kind of peppers you use to make it.

I used ancho peppers — they’re poblano peppers that have been roasted and dried — which have a bit of a bite to them but are still fairly mild. They can be anywhere from about half as hot as a jalapeño to almost as hot as one.

Of course, the recipe also calls for a cup of jalapeño slices from a can or jar. These have been pickled, so they are not as hot as they would be when fresh, but the chili is still going to pack a fair amount of heat no matter which variety of dried pepper you use.

The recipe comes directly from Dan Puckett, the same friend who initially served me the chili and who now lives back in his hometown of San Antonio. He makes it the traditional Texas way, with small cubes of beef (or venison when he can get it), and then he mixes in an equal amount of hot sausage.

In another Texas tradition, he adds a bottle of beer. Dan didn’t specify this, but I will: Use a regular, mass-produced American beer for this chili, or possibly a Mexican beer. Those craft brews with overpowering hops or notes of raspberry marmalade will only ruin it.

I also made a version of white chicken chili that I cook only once in a very great while because it goes straight to your arteries.

You first make a roux, which is bad enough (and also good enough, if we’re talking about flavor), but then you mix in a lot of half-and-half, sour cream and shredded Monterey jack cheese.

Some people dispute that white chicken chili even qualifies as chili because it is not one of the two officially sanctioned chili colors (reddish brown and brownish red). But I disagree. It has chili powder in it, and it is a soupy liquid. To me that means it is chili.

Besides, it is incredible, and this particular recipe is more incredible than most.

Which brings us to Cincinnati chili. Certain people, perhaps even most people, will deny that Cincinnati chili is chili at all.

But Cincinnatians will actually look at you squarely in the face and insist that not only is it chili, but it is also the finest version of chili known to man.

I happen to be from Cincinnati, and I am here to tell you that Cincinnati chili represents the pinnacle of all chili varieties and is the ultimate expression of chili evolution.

Just don’t think of it as chili in the sense of any other chili you have ever known.

First of all, it is less a soup than a sauce. It is spread on top of a bed of spaghetti and then topped with a mound of shredded Cheddar cheese. A thin layer of chopped sweet onions or kidney beans — or both — is spooned out by request between the meat and the cheese.

The chili, or what we Cincinnatians call chili, is seasoned with cinnamon and cloves and, often, chocolate (you won’t really taste it, but your mouth will be glad it’s there). Some versions add allspice, as does mine, and others go for nutmeg. But that’s just weird.

The story, possibly apocryphal, is that a hungry man stopped into a Cincinnati restaurant more than 90 years ago and asked for a bowl of chili. The owners, two brothers from Greece, had never heard of the stuff and asked the man to describe it.

He explained it as well as he could, and then they made what they thought that sounded like — but using the spices common in Greek cooking that they were familiar with, such as cinnamon and cloves.

The result became instantly popular around the region, but really nowhere else. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I consider it the nectar of the gods.