If you are what you eat, that explains the stampede of Durango’s party animals at Saturday’s Snowdown Safari-So-Good Chili Cook-off.
Hurting yourself can be lots of fun. The crowd lip-smacked its way through 140 gallons of meat and enough corn, soy and gluten to inflame all 32 acres of the La Plata County Fairgrounds plus the bowels of a couple hundred ticket-toting revelers.
This year’s annual chili cook-off raised about $7,200 for Durango’s premier winter festival, one 50-cent sample at a time, thanks to more than 27 teams of cooks who competed for $2,500 in cash and prizes donated by Sunnyside Farms Market, Ska Brewing Co. and Bent Urban Sports Bar, event coordinator Greg Yucha said.
Chili of every color, consistency and style was served safari-style by passionate cooks and costumed lions, tigers and bears – oh, my!
Charles Rigby, arguably Durango’s chili king of the jungle, again walked off with top honors for his signature green chili. By his estimation, Rigby has competed in as many as 600 regional and international sanctioned chili competitions since 1989, but has stepped back in recent years from the demanding travel schedule required to compete.
Saturday’s green chili recipe, featuring chicken rather than pork, “evolved over several years,” said the broker and co-owner of Remax Pinnacle.
“I’ve had some pretty good success with this recipe. I actually made the finals in the International Chili Society World Championship,” Rigby said.
Substituting chicken for pork made the recipe “just blossom,” he said.
This year’s top winning red, a mildly-seasoned chili con carne made by Durango Coca Cola’s Kim Tracy, blended beef, sausage, bell peppers and jalapeños with seasonings for a “more meat and less beans, Tex-Mex style chili,” she said.
My son Nicholas and I were among the dozen judges of this amateur cooking event who have earned reputations for culinary expertise because we’ll eat just about anything.
Just about anything is game, too, when it comes to making chili, especially at a non-sanctioned, mostly-for-fun-and-bragging-rights event. Still, there were some rules, but typical of Snowdown events, most were made to be broken.
Ever try peanut butter chili?
Inspired by a Miller Middle School project, 13-year-old Ben DeBelina, son of Steve and Mary DeBelina, asked his buddy Joseph White to join forces so he could enter the red category with his peanut-butter-laced creation.
“I studied the foreign country Benin,” DeBelina said, adding that making a food delicacy for the class was required.
How, among all the choices in this big wide world, did you come up with Benin, I asked young Ben, trying to pretend I knew where on the vast continent this peanut-butter-eating country might be hiding.
“My name,” was his answer.
Got it.
Lamb, beef, turkey, five kinds of beans, tomatoes, seasonings and a jar of peanut butter went into the treat.
The African style stew won no prizes but had plenty of fans lining up at Ben and Joe’s African Peanut Butter Chili stand.
Last year’s red chili winner, Jenni Bennett Gross, said good chili is all about blending good ingredients. She starts with a roux of onions, garlic, jalapeños, red or orange peppers, celery and carrots “to get in a little sweetness,” but she finishes the pot with a splash of oregano and lemon juice, she said.
The Michigan transplant has tweaked her mom’s standard Saturday dinner recipe over the years to add some Southwestern heat.
This year, Gross traded her prior win for a second-place in the fresh salsa category, offering a balanced, sweet tomato and spicy blend of aromatics. Gross, an apple farmer’s daughter, often grows and cans goodies from the garden to use in her chili and salsa.
While judges cleansed their palate between samples – mostly with tequila or beer – no one blew their nose as much as I did. Some of the reds were hotter than the greens, but gone are the days when chili cook-off wins are awarded to the hottest pot in the contest. Tender meat, full-bodied flavor and a balance of chile peppers rule.
Judges leaned toward the traditional in considering aroma, texture and taste, except for giving a first place nod to a green, zippy blend of lime, cilantro and chunks of avocado salsa made by Durango’s Michael Billy.
Cinnamon, cloves, pinches of sugar and unblended chili powder raised judges’ eyebrows. Liquid smoke puzzled some but won approval from others, while chunks of potatoes, corn and carrot were anathema, prompting cries of “soup, but not chili.”
Perfectly seasoned and flavorful brisket cooked in red chili got approving nods: “Carne adovada, but not chili.”
The vegetarian category had fewer, but better tasting entries, judges agreed, prompting speculation about how meat-like textures were achieved.
Fort Lewis College professor Betty Dorr has been ladling up a kid-friendly version of vegetarian chili at the Snowdown cook-off for years.
“It’s a lot of fun. What could be better than feeding people in a great atmosphere?” she said.
The hula-hoop bedecked cook said she noticed four years ago that there wasn’t much for youngsters to eat. So she began making and serving her vegan daughter’s favorite recipe.
Until this year, she never thought about entering what her husband called “a one-horse race.”
The tofu made to look like hamburger fooled the meat-eating judges enough that they awarded Dorr a first prize.
Traditional chili isn’t health food, no matter how many antioxidant aromatics duke it out with the beef, chicken and pork. Beans raise the nutrition bar, but no one here was counting calories or looking for a cleanse.
Farmington chili lovers Mason and Patti Warren wowed the crowd with Mason’s first-place People’s Choice Green Chili and Patti’s Girls Gone Wild Bloody Mary.
The Warrens roast green chiles from Hatch, Blanco and Sutherlin Farms and combine them with sauteed onions, garlic and a variety of peppers to create gallon bags of green chili to keep in their freezer. Mason, who also competes in barbecue competitions, estimated he makes about 30 gallons of green chili each year, freezing and overnighting it to his son who is stationed in the Coast Guard.
People’s Choice winners were selected by votes cast through tokens collected from the crowd for favorite red and green recipes. Durangoans James Chavez, Ron Williams, Henry Gonzalez, Deb Roster and Mike Billy all walked away with trophies or prizes.
Winners were generous with their recipes. Charles Rigby summed up the sentiments well:
“You can cook my recipe, but you can’t cook my chili.”
kbrucolianesi@durangoherald.com
