Chili Cook-off 2013

2 years ago, my friend Josh and I entered a Gumbo competition.  Neither of us had ever made a gumbo before, but we threw one together and won the competition.  This year, we entered again, made our gumbo even better, and won again.  A month or two ago, we found out that there would be a chili cook-off.  Neither of us had ever made a chili before.  So, of course we entered.

Our Gumbo is known as Heart-Attack Gumbo.  It's got lots of bacon in it.  We wanted to go for the same theme with our chili, so we named it "Artery Clogging Chili."  It involved an entire package of bacon.  Also, a big hunk of beef, 3 or 4 cans of tomatos, some Guinness, some Jameson, some dark chocolate, some onions & mushrooms, some garlic, and various seasonings.  And we chopped up a little orange pepper thing...I don't remember what kind of pepper it was.  I can't stand spicy things so I didn't pay attention to that part.

Big pan of bacon cooking.  My apt. smelled pretty awesome!

We cut up the meat into cubes and rubbed it and a bunch of beef bones in some seasonings.

The meat got to take a nice bath in Guinness and Jameson.  It was like a spa...for meat.

I set the crockpot on low and let it cook all night long.  It got turned off about 12 hours later, before I left for work the next day.  I added 2 squares of dark chocolate at that point.  The chili took all day to cool off, and I put it in the fridge when I got home from work that evening.  

This is what I found when I took the chili out of the fridge this morning.  Grease much?

How bout a big pile of skimmed-off grease?

There were 17 chilis to taste.

Ours was by far the best.  And one of about 3 that didn't put me in severe pain...

Some happy tasters.

 Unfortunately, we only came in 2nd place.  We couldn't remember particularly liking the chili that came in 1st, but oh well.  Everyone has different tastes.  Maybe ours wasn't spicy enough for most people.  It was spicy enough for me to taste it...any spicier and I wouldn't have been able to eat my own chili!  

We'll be back next year, with an even better chili and hopefully win.  

We want to be gumbo champions AND chili champions!

Heart-attack Guinness Gumbo

Last year, a friend and I decided to enter the annual gumbo cook-off at the Pub.  We got up early that day, cooked all morning, showed up, and won.  Lots of fun.  So naturally this year we had to do it again.  This time, we started cooking at 8 PM the night before.  Since we were making it even awesome-er than last years, it took longer.  I didn't get home til 2 AM.  Good thing we didn't try to make it the morning of...it wouldn't have been done in time!

Here's a picture of last year's Heart-attack Gumbo:

Here's a picture of this year's Heart-attack Guinness Gumbo:

(there really is Guinness in it...yum)

Interesting that they are the same color...we spent way more time on the roux this year.

I'm not entirely sure how long it took last year, but we definitely did NOT spend an hour and forty-five minutes on it like we did this year.  

That's right, we whisked our roux non-stop for an hour and forty-five minutes. True dedication.

I was a little bit disappointed when I woke up this morning and my right arm hadn't doubled in size from that workout.

I can't give you our recipe or top-secret secret ingredients, but I can give you lots of pictures because I was having fun with my new camera.

meet Meg:  the only witness to the gumbo-magic

The Cooking

the chicken...heavily seasoned

The seasoning mix, thrown together by yours truly.  There was absolutely no measuring involved.

I threw a bunch of stuff into this bowl, and the bowl got dumped into the gumbo.

mushrooms, green peppers, onions, celery

some of the seasonings

BACON!

chicken thighs, cooking away in their bacon-grease bath

browned chicken waiting to go into the gumbo

Somehow our roux started out orange. The colors are a bit skewed here, but it looked a lot like tomato soup.  It eventually turned a very light brown, and then sloooowwwly darkened.

whisk...whisk...whisk some more...

The Cook-off

The tasting.  

There were only 4 entries this year.  They were all good and the rankings were pretty close, it got a lil tense as we watched the points coming in, but our gumbo pulled through and won in the end.

I think there ended up being 15-20 tasters.  They each got a tray with the 4 samples and gave each one a ranking from 1-4.

4: Deliciousness in your mouth

3: Yuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmy

2: Good

1: I'll eat it

All the points were added up and the gumbo with the most points won.   

Ours ended up with sixty-something points I think.

We each had a bowl of ours after the competition.  

We played countless dart games this afternoon, needed something to do while we drank our Guinness and waited for the results of the cook-off.

Looking forward to next year, when we will win for the 3rd year in a row!  

Nope, I'm not modest at all.