Pots will be bubbling and amateur chefs will be in search of glory in downtown Okotoks Saturday. The annual chili-cook off is returning and for veteran participants Andrew Smith and Scott Barnes, the preparation is almost as enjoyable as the event itself.
“We’ve got our Friday night ritual in how it’s made,” Smith said of whipping up the chili, “We get together and hopefully there’s a football game on. We watch that, slow cook the chili and have a few beers.”
Smith and Barnes are well known locally on cook-off day for sporting decorative sombreros and are often singled out as the most enthusiastic team by event voters. The taste effect the duo strives for in their chili lies somewhere between hot and sweet.
“The reason I can’t tell you what’s in it is sometimes its changes,” Smith said when pressed for his team’s recipe.
He explained there is a high level of improvisation and negotiation involved in the cooking process. Heated verbal exchanges over a heating pot of chili are a tradition with the pair and in the past it has proven to be a winning formula.
“He like it more savory,” Smith said of Barne’s chili taste preference. “And I keep telling him I know what the people want. The year we had our biggest argument we ended up winning.”
Perennial contenders to take the honor of best chili will likely face more than a few new contenders in the annual chili cook-off Saturday. The event gets going Saturday morning at 11 a.m. adjacent to the Elk’s Hall in downtown Okotoks. Taster tickets are just five dollars each and entitle bearers to sample all the entered chili and have their say in selecting the winners in different categories.
The Foothills Humane Society is again hosting the cook-off due to having very positive experience doing it last year.
“It was very easy event to pull together for the amount of money we made,” the society’s Krysta Milligan said.
Milligan hopes animal lovers and chili lovers alike will be out once more to support the event Saturday.
“Right now it’s helping us to get a building,” she said of the funds generated by cook-off registration fees and taster tickets. “A lot of people don’t know this, because they still don’t know we exist but, we don’t have land, we don’t have a building.”
The sooner those things are in place the sooner the Foothills Humane Society can get into the important practice of temporarily sheltering local animals in hopes of placing them in loving new homes. They would join the already in place Pound Rescue of Okotoks currently providing those services locally.
The prospect of a local humane society facility will hopefully be closer to reality after a lot of people belly up to sample the culinary wares of local chili masters this weekend.
Returning cook-off contestant Smith revealed he and Barnes are anxious to do well at the event once again. He confessed they are not afraid to do more than a little shameless promotion to increase their chances of being the people’s choice for best chili.
“I have no problem asking people for their vote,” he said.
