Sorry for the paucity of blog posts the past few days, but I was in Charleston, W. Va. competing in the World's Championship Chili Cookoff, where T-Rev's Stiff Willi Chili took first place in the People's Choice competition!
While your competition recipe must contain no beans, the People's Choice batch has to. This is the version that is sampled by all the partygoers at the cookoff, and the recipe I made came straight from the back of my spice mix bottle (so if you haven't picked up a bottle yet, what are you waiting for!?).
I had two fairly lofty goals for the world championship, and those were to win People's Choice and to make it to the finals table with my competition batch. Alas, my chances of winning the cookoff itself expired on the preliminary table, something that I struggled to understand given the fact that my chili turned out as well as I could have hoped and a couple judges who sampled some leftovers at my tent after I turned it in told me it would have been Top 3 at their respective tables, which would have gotten me to the finals table.
However, I think it's pretty much luck of the draw when it comes to the judges you get upfront. You never know what any particular judge will like in a subjective contest such as this, so I guess you win some and lose some. Who knows? The ball just might've bounced my way with the judges at the DC101 cookoff that I won back in May.
So, it's never fun to lose but at the same time I was up against some pretty damn good chili cooks, many of whom have been at this for decades. And by the way, Georgia Weller, the defending world champion, didn't even make it to the finals table yesterday either. So there you go.
In a nutshell, I may not have gotten the love from a few random chili judges, but I'll sure as hell be taking pleasure in the fact that hundreds of everyday chili lovers in the crowd -- I made about six gallons of chili that was gone in one and a half hours -- voted my chili their favorite. So to all of them, thanks very much -- you're what this is all about!
And last but not least, HUGE THANKS to all my friends and family who showed up to cheer me on and helped to serve chili and sell t-shirts and spice mix. You made this experience one for the books!
Stay tuned for all the crazy pics -- I'm hoping to have them posted by tomorrow night.
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