How to Win a Chili Cookoff and/or an Election

You've got to have a strategy. You've got to be a madman.

This past weekend, my neighborhood held its annual fall festival. It’s one of my favorite events of the year—a chance to meet new neighbors, enjoy some yard games, and let the kids run around like mad while we enjoy a live band.

There’s also a chili cookoff.

As soon as my nine-year-old son—who becomes intensely competitive any time there’s a prize on the line—found out about there being a gift card for the winner of the cookoff, he committed himself to the idea of competing and winning in it. I love the idea of him cooking with me, so I happily agreed to enter us as a team.

Of course, this wouldn’t be my first rodeo.

I love making chili—it’s one of my absolute favorite things to cook, and we’re at the perfect time of year for making it.

I understand that “chili” often means different things to different people, though.

If you’re going to win a chili cookoff, you have to have a plan.

You have to be a madman, that is.

I’ve touched on this theory in the past, but it’s become a full-fledged strategy for me. You cannot expect to win a chili cookoff on simple merit; you have to play to win.

This seeds of this theory were laid for me nearly a decade ago, the first time I competed in an office chili cookoff. I made an excellent chili that year, one that drew heavily from the way-too-extra methods espoused by then-Serious Eats writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. I ground my own meats. I rehydrated dried chiles and blended them into a paste. I snuck in all sorts of umami bombs and other special ingredients to make a thick, rich, meaty, absolutely banging pot of chili.

I swaggered in to the office that day ready to blow everyone’s minds with my award-ready chili… and promptly lost to a coworker who’d combined chili beans and a tube of beef from Ron Swanson’s Food And Stuff.

I’m not still mad about this.

(Okay, fine, maybe a little mad.)

It took years to hone a winning strategy.

I realized a fundamental truth—you have to stand out.

If there are ten Crocks Pot lined up on a card table, and you bring a “normal” chili? Well, you’re probably going to fade into the background. But if you do something a little out of bounds, you get attention—and that opens a path to victory.

“What if people don’t like what you did, though?”, my son asked, intrigued but wary as I explained this theory on our way to the grocery store.

“Look at it this way. If there’s ten chilis, and half the people hate what you did, but three or four of them like it? That’s enough to win if the other nine chilis are all competing for the other six or seven votes.”

(I did not explain to him how heavily this theory was influenced by the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. I can’t say I’m thrilled by where that experience led us, but hey: there’s lessons to be learned wherever you look.)

Together, we forged a plan.

We would make a version of a chili I first made last winter for his Boy Scout pack’s Pinewood Derby. It’s a dish that’s nearly the polar opposite of that Kenji-inspired one I worked so hard on: it’s intentionally quite mild, so as to appeal to kid palates. It comes together easily, in less than an hour of work.

Oh, and it has noodles in it.

I know this is controversial.

I have a well-established reputation for enjoying Skyline Chili, the Cincinnati-based variant of chili that puts a thin, Mediterranean-spiced meat sauce over spaghetti. It’s an incredibly divisive dish, and one I’ve frequently sang the praises of in these pages.

In Defense of Weird Regional Foods

I assure you: this is not that.

Cincinnati Chili is its own thing, a flavor profile so different from most chilis that it really deserves to be discussed a separate dish entirely.

No, I’m putting noodles in traditional-ish chili, a thing that is somewhat common around Louisville, Kentucky (where I live), and a thing that some people like.

You know: a constituency.

We worked diligently together that morning, my son playing an enthusiastic hand in chopping, browning, stirring and spicing the chili. We carted it over to the party in our wagon, and as we placed it amongst the dozen or so other Crocks Pot simmering away, it stood out. There were a couple other outliers—a vegan chili, a white chicken chili—but the majority were of a very-similar, highly-traditional type.

I sampled each (I had to maintain the pretense of impartiality), and most were good, but ultimately I had trouble remembering which was the best.

Did I like H? J? F?

They were so similar, I couldn’t pick a frontrunner—I was proving my point without even truly meaning to.

The votes were tallied, and in the end, my son and I won.

He screamed and hugged me and tried to pick me up (good luck, pal: I’ve eaten a lot of chili), and then ran around high-fiving the other neighborhood kids.

In retrospect, I think he’d whipped all those kids to vote for our chili, which itself was a tried-and-true electoral strategy: tapping into the low-propensity, lesser-educated voters that traditional polling often overlooks.

(In this case, fourth graders.)

Now, am I saying you should make this chili to win your cookoff?

No.

I mean, maybe, yes?

You should absolutely try to stand out, but this might not be the direction you want to break from the pack in. Really, you have to assess the electorate you have, and figure out what’s going to win them over.

Fortunately, I have a little bit of something for every voting bloc.

You see, I’ve rolled out a new and different chili recipe every year the ACBN has existed, and that gives plenty of options for the would-be chili competitor.

If you’re appealing to kids, or spice-averse eaters?

Then yeah, make this year’s version:

RECIPE: Scout Dad's Chili

Got meat-free eaters to please? Knock their socks off with my Thicc Vegan Chili, a recipe that avoids both meat and fake-meat substitutes but delivers something as thick and rich as any meat-based one:

RECIPE: Thicc Vegan Chili

Conversely, if you’ve got some resolute meat-eaters? You could go for my beef-forward Smashburger Chili, or a Beef and Sausage Chili that doesn’t pull any punches:

RECIPE: Smashburger Chili

Beef and Sausage Chili

Don’t know what kind of crowd you’re cooking for? Throw all caution to the wind, and make my Heretic’s Chili, a red chicken chili that I designed specifically to bend the traditional rules of chili-making without actually breaking any of them:

RECIPE: Heretic's Chili

(They’re all good chilis.)

Of course, I’m not the Pope of Chilitown.

These five recipes represent just a tiny fraction of the possibilities out there. Chili is a democracy, and we all deserve to have our voices heard. Do you have a recipe you’re especially fond of? I’d love to hear it, and I’m sure your fellow readers would too.

If you’re willing, please share them in the comments!

And remember: we’re all winners when it’s time to eat chili.

(Some of us just got that sweet, sweet gift card to show for it.)

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)

PS: Here is the Scout Dad’s Chili, photographed in its natural habitat: being eaten out of a paper bowl in my neighbor’s driveway. Is it traditional? No. Was it good? Yes.