Red River, N.M. – A teacher friend, always hunting for cheap, eat-for-days recipes, likes to slam together batches of chili by browning meat and then dumping stewed tomatoes and pinto beans into the pot.
Her single-gal, kamikaze cooking style would bring tears to the eyes of serious chili people. But it wouldn’t be her speed or stovetop nonchalance that bothered them. It would be her ingredients.
Beans are considered “filler” by the Chili Appreciation Society International. That Texas-based umbrella organization oversees such cook-offs nationwide as the Four Corners Regional Cook-off & Music Festival, held the third Saturday of August in Red River, a one-road, Old West-style ski town outside of Taos.
A stroll through Brandenburg Park at the base of Red River’s crisscross ski runs revealed that serious chili cook- offs have little to do with eating and even less to do with chatting.
This scene is all about cooking, and competitive chili cooks tend to be tight-lipped about the business of the day. They rarely allow anything – not questions nor compliments nor peripheral entertainment – to distract them from their brew.
Denver’s Kristi Leonard hardly looked up from her propane stove as the hour neared for official CASI chili judging. Leonard, who has ribbons from previous chili cook-offs, encouraged her less accomplished cook-off sidekick, husband Brent, to talk for the two of them.
“You just hope you make the perfect pot of chili for this crowd on this day,” said Brent Leonard, whose own recipe is adapted from others used by previous champions at the Terlingua International Chili Championship held each year in Texas just north of the Mexican border.
In a move that characterized the no-nonsense approach chili-heads take to competition, Leonard cut the conversation short to dash off to the judges’ table with two Styrofoam bowls. That move might seem abrupt, but the seriousness with which the Leonards operated was nothing compared with the vibe around the judging table, where plates of palate-cleansing grapes and crackers sat next to buckets full of clean plastic spoons.
Organizers in Red River called on part-time town resident and full-time Texan Larry Saye to join in the judging.
“I tasted 10 out of 30, and two or three of them were excellent,” said Saye. The owner of a pest control company in Sherman, Texas, is an old hand at judging chili and barbecue contests.
“It’s all about the tenderness of the meat, the texture and the taste,” Saye said. But according to the official CASI judging sheet, winning a chili cook-off is about much more than that. Aroma, red color, consistency, taste and aftertaste are the five basic judging criteria.
“Fine chili should look good, smell good and taste good,” the tip sheet said. “Judge each chili on its own merit.”
Judges sat quietly, elbow to elbow, spooning one bite at a time from each entry, then trashing the spoon and passing the bowl to the next judge. Points garnered for winning a regional chili cook-off like this one help chili-heads qualify for Terlingua.
Tricia Muncy’s chili pot was empty by early afternoon but that failed to prevent a pair of bikers with “hogs” parked nearby from loafing near her tent. Muncy is another Texan. Reared in a family of chili connoisseurs that includes her mother, a Terlingua place winner, she took the whole day in stride.
“Just stick to your recipe,” Muncy said. “I never change anything.”
But one batch of chili is still going to taste different from the next, she added, even when the recipes are the same. Could be the pot. Could be the heat. Could be the cook’s love, or lack thereof. “My mother and sister cook the same recipe,” Muncy said, “and they never turn out the same.”
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-820-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
2 cook-offs to sample
Interested in seeing how serious chili people rely on simple tools and ingredients to bring highbrow flavor to this most straightforward of American comfort foods? Check out these chili association-sanctioned events: The Aspen Saturday Market Chili Cook-off in Aspen’s Conner Park on Sept. 10, and the Second Annual Mountain States Chili Cook-off at Mountain States Children’s Home in Longmont on Sept. 17. For details, go to chili.org/cookoffs.html.
