My Adventures as the Simon Cowell*** of Chili
A few weeks ago, my office did a number of activities for Harvest for Hunger, which is the annual campaign drive for The Cleveland Foodbank. One of these events was a chili cook-off, wherein my colleagues had the opportunity to bring in a pot of chili. A modest cash prize would be handed out to the maker of the best chili, and everybody else would have the opportunity to buy a bowl of chili for $1, with the proceeds going to charity.
I admit that I thought about entering that contest. I thought about it for a good long while, but ultimately I decided that with 850+ employees working out my company's world-wide headquarters, the odds of me making the best chili was pretty marginal. There have been various cooking contests previously at work, and I've been continuously impressed by the dishes people come up with. In particular, a coworker I'll call the Big Man because he's a taller, broader version of The Big Man has been known to bring the heat in previous chili cook-offs. While my chili is very tasty and has been known to blister paint at 50 yards (there's no truth to the rumor that it left scorch marks), a focused batch of the Big Man's chili ignited the gas tank of every car within 250 yards. And he didn't even win the last cook-off. Obviously, with that much competition I would be better served to find another way to contribute.
As it turns out, that way was easy to find. There at the bottom of the announcement email was the sign I'd been looking for: "Judges Wanted." I quickly volunteered my services, figuring that any intestinal distress I'd suffer would be a small payment for a free portion of every chili entered in the contest. My services were accepted, and on the duly appointed day I met with the four other judges. The cook-off organizer had organized a relay of people to bring us every judge a small bowl from each of the 24 entries. The entries were numbered; the organizer knew who had submitted them but none of the judges did. We also had crackers, milk to calm our palate, and a 6-pack of Miller Light for moral support. I'm not normally one to drink beer, but sometimes work requires you to step it up.
The boss laid down the rules. We would rate each chili from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) in four different categories. The first three (taste, aftertaste, appearance/texture/smell) would be used to determine the overall winner. The leader in the fourth category, heat, would be given a special prize, not to mention their very own fireproof jumpsuit for future cook-offs. Properly instructed, and fortified with some alcohol, we braced ourselves for what we deemed to be the inevitable fiery spice blast.
And... it never came. We proceeded to wade through a morass of chili that ranged from average to bad. Almost none of it was spicy. Several batches were flat out inedible. We were stunned. And lest you think that it was my own excessively high standards that sabotaged the ratings, let me assure you that each of the four other judges had similar complaints.
To give you an idea of how bad some of this chili was, the absolute minimum score that one judge could assign was a three. 3 of the entrants managed to get a 3 from at least one judge, and quite a few more had 4s or 5s, total. An absolute perfect score would have been 150; I think two of the entrants cracked the century mark. Naturally, this led to a certain amount of mocking on the part of my fellow judges. An entry was compared unfavorably to Hormel. The senior judge speculated aloud how well he would have done if he had bought a bunch of chili from Wendys and entered it. We agreed that it certainly would have made the top 10, and quite possibly the top 5. At least two of the entrants were so bad that I gagged when tried the sample. One judge smelled one of the entries and flat out refused to try it. Most damning of all, out of the 24 contestants only three had an average 'heat' rating higher than 5. My score sheet didn't include a 9 or 10, had only a single 8, and fewer than five 7s.
Almost every kind of chili you can imagine failed. We had traditional meat only chilis, white chilis, vegetarian chilis, chilis with turkey, chilis with beef, super traditional green chilis with pork and probably some others that I've blotted out of my memory. By and large, these were not very good. Oh, there were a few acceptable ones - a white chili ended up winning the whole thing, and the three chilis that had at least a moderate heat all were in the top 7. It was a poor payment for the 6 hours I spent in the bathroom the remainder of the day.
The moral of the story? Next time we have a chili cook-off at work I need to enter. I might not win, but if this contest was any guideline there's no way that I'd finish out of the top ten, and I might have won the heat category outright. All I'd have to do is follow the first rule of chili: "Keep Adding Chili Powder Until It Looks Like Too Much... Then Add Half as Much Again. That Makes Mild Chili."
***It should be noted that I've not watched a single episode of American Idol in my life, so I have no idea if this statement is correct.
I admit that I thought about entering that contest. I thought about it for a good long while, but ultimately I decided that with 850+ employees working out my company's world-wide headquarters, the odds of me making the best chili was pretty marginal. There have been various cooking contests previously at work, and I've been continuously impressed by the dishes people come up with. In particular, a coworker I'll call the Big Man because he's a taller, broader version of The Big Man has been known to bring the heat in previous chili cook-offs. While my chili is very tasty and has been known to blister paint at 50 yards (there's no truth to the rumor that it left scorch marks), a focused batch of the Big Man's chili ignited the gas tank of every car within 250 yards. And he didn't even win the last cook-off. Obviously, with that much competition I would be better served to find another way to contribute.
As it turns out, that way was easy to find. There at the bottom of the announcement email was the sign I'd been looking for: "Judges Wanted." I quickly volunteered my services, figuring that any intestinal distress I'd suffer would be a small payment for a free portion of every chili entered in the contest. My services were accepted, and on the duly appointed day I met with the four other judges. The cook-off organizer had organized a relay of people to bring us every judge a small bowl from each of the 24 entries. The entries were numbered; the organizer knew who had submitted them but none of the judges did. We also had crackers, milk to calm our palate, and a 6-pack of Miller Light for moral support. I'm not normally one to drink beer, but sometimes work requires you to step it up.
The boss laid down the rules. We would rate each chili from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) in four different categories. The first three (taste, aftertaste, appearance/texture/smell) would be used to determine the overall winner. The leader in the fourth category, heat, would be given a special prize, not to mention their very own fireproof jumpsuit for future cook-offs. Properly instructed, and fortified with some alcohol, we braced ourselves for what we deemed to be the inevitable fiery spice blast.
And... it never came. We proceeded to wade through a morass of chili that ranged from average to bad. Almost none of it was spicy. Several batches were flat out inedible. We were stunned. And lest you think that it was my own excessively high standards that sabotaged the ratings, let me assure you that each of the four other judges had similar complaints.
To give you an idea of how bad some of this chili was, the absolute minimum score that one judge could assign was a three. 3 of the entrants managed to get a 3 from at least one judge, and quite a few more had 4s or 5s, total. An absolute perfect score would have been 150; I think two of the entrants cracked the century mark. Naturally, this led to a certain amount of mocking on the part of my fellow judges. An entry was compared unfavorably to Hormel. The senior judge speculated aloud how well he would have done if he had bought a bunch of chili from Wendys and entered it. We agreed that it certainly would have made the top 10, and quite possibly the top 5. At least two of the entrants were so bad that I gagged when tried the sample. One judge smelled one of the entries and flat out refused to try it. Most damning of all, out of the 24 contestants only three had an average 'heat' rating higher than 5. My score sheet didn't include a 9 or 10, had only a single 8, and fewer than five 7s.
Almost every kind of chili you can imagine failed. We had traditional meat only chilis, white chilis, vegetarian chilis, chilis with turkey, chilis with beef, super traditional green chilis with pork and probably some others that I've blotted out of my memory. By and large, these were not very good. Oh, there were a few acceptable ones - a white chili ended up winning the whole thing, and the three chilis that had at least a moderate heat all were in the top 7. It was a poor payment for the 6 hours I spent in the bathroom the remainder of the day.
The moral of the story? Next time we have a chili cook-off at work I need to enter. I might not win, but if this contest was any guideline there's no way that I'd finish out of the top ten, and I might have won the heat category outright. All I'd have to do is follow the first rule of chili: "Keep Adding Chili Powder Until It Looks Like Too Much... Then Add Half as Much Again. That Makes Mild Chili."
***It should be noted that I've not watched a single episode of American Idol in my life, so I have no idea if this statement is correct.