Anybody Want Some Championship Chili?

Good...I Have It Coming Out Of My Ears...


Long story short even longer (hey I'm writing a blog and I have to have something to write about, RIGHT?)

My regular readers may remember when I got into the competition chili cooking business a couple of years ago.

Since then it's been a strange combination of death and illness and hyperventilation and finally near perfection and success, but I digress...

The first year, 2008, found me sitting on St. Simons Island with an invitation to supply the recipe and cook with my good friend and fellow Georgia Tech alumni--restaurant owner John Howton--representing his Blackwater Grill ( http://www.blackwatergrill.com/ ) restaurant in the "Rotary Red Hot Chili Cook off."

Problem was, I got sick and spent most of the month of February in the hospital, and then the week before the event one of John's Chef's got killed in an auto accident on the causeway leading from the mainland to the island.

The funeral was in Albany, GA and was the same day as the Chili event, and in light of John's need to attend and pay his respects and me limping around like a three legged dog barely able to hold my head up longer than fifteen minutes we reluctantly had to withdraw from participating.

Turns out the weather sucked and I needed the rest any way so I just stayed home and kept cooking Chili.

Then last year, in spite of having moved away from our little Island to Knoxtown, John called and re-extended the invitation to be the guest chef and bring my recipe, and we said not yes but "Hell Yes" and drove south, spending five glorious days with good SSI spring weather building a front end of our booth and putting together about fifteen gallons of chili based on Top Round Steak.

Here's a look at things on that Saturday morning as we unloaded the Chili Ingrediants first and then proceeded to build my rendition of a "Bayou Cajun Fishin' Shack":

(click on the images to enlarge if you can stand it...I'm the giant guy with the ever greying, ever balding head/pony tail in the overalls...)

That whole thing is actually built out of "blue board" foam insulation like you use on a new house, supported with lightweight wood framing and designed to be transported in a single trip in a Ford Explorer and stored in a garage or storage building in a minimal footprint.

Pretty Cool Huh?

I cooked the giant pot(s) of chili back behind in the back and the rest of the team stood behind the porch wall and reached out and served the chili tasting cups out of the door and windows giving a nice effect.

Any way, when the dust finally settled we ended up claiming "Second Prize-People's Choice" out of 31 teams, which was really equal to first prize because we came in second to the Glynn County School System Team which, as you can imagine, had everybody with a kid in school voting for them by default.



(That's John and Rhonda and Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup and I celebrating after a LooOOOG Day)

We're re-using the Bayou Chili Shack again this year but I'm going to re-paint it to look a little more colorful...sort of a Cajun meets Jamaican or Bohemian/Key West with some pastels and and other brighter colors just for fun.

I might even wear my Dreadlocks wig this year at the risk of scaring the women and small children in the process...

The thing about making competition chili is that you're torn between making something which people could sit down and eat a bowl full of, and just falling back to dumping some meat and beans into the pot and a few thousand pounds of hot peppers along with spices which will somehow get the judges attention over all of the other crap cooked that day in giant pots by a bunch of drunks who have been up all night partying.

I'm not being arrogant when I tell you that there is some crap cooked at these events that tastes like what it looks like...CRAP. How in the world people can show up and waste their time not having a clue what they are actually producing and how it will taste is beyond my spiritual and intellectual understanding.

I make a dedicated effort to cook serious, edible chili which doesn't rely on Napalm for effect and doesn't taste like raw kidney beans and Kerosene when I'm finished. I think that our recognation from the crowd last year justified my efforts and makes me want to do an even better job in 2010.

Just like last year when I based my recipe on Top round steak and home made beef/chicken stock (most people just use ground beef and canned stock), this year's "Green Butt" Chili recipe is going to be based on Boston Butts, slow cooked down and hand processed into shreds and chunks.

I just got through eating the last of this week's effort--the third cooking of the basic recipe--yielding about 3/4 gallons which took two days to put together and then sat simmering on and off another couple of days on the stove top.

The rules for the event say that you can cut and prep all of your ingredients before the morning of the cook off, so we start on Thursday making stock and slow cooking the meat, then we bring everything down to the waterfront park on Saturday morning in giant covered plastic and stainless steel tubs and light the propane fire about 8 AM in preparation for having something available for the "Judges Random Tasting" about 11 AM.

I don't see any way a person could compete in this process without owning or being associated with a restaurant or other commercial kitchen because the quantities of food and the sizes of the containers is beyond what I want to own and buy on E-Bay.

So any way, as is usual with my cooking efforts, the first time I put things together this year was the best texture and flavor so far, with the second and third pots being very edible but falling short of my semi-professional "Green Butt" standards.

I think that it's down really to adjusting the cooking time and possibly fine tuning the chili powder/spice mixture in order to keep the meat from falling apart too much giving a "mushy" mouth feel when you eat a spoon full.

I wish everyone could come over to St. Simons Island on March 6th, enjoy our beautiful little slice of the Atlantic coast, and have a taste of our chili and help raise money for charity, but in any event I know many of you will be there at least in spirit cheering us on.

There's no amount of money which can buy the opportunity to do stuff like this--last year we raised nearly $50,000--and I'm just happy to be able to contribute to the Rotary Club's efforts and have so much fun in the process.

Time to finish cleaning up the kitchen and get back to studying industrial hard chroming processes for my valve rebuilding project I guess.

Y'all have a Lovely DAY now, and somebody send up a flare if we get snowed in and you don't hear from me for a couple of days...