Hoover Sweeps to 2010 World's Chili Championship!

There's a new world's chili champion! He's Tom Hoover of Columbus, OH. Tom has been competing in chili cookoffs for more than a quarter-century and made the biggest score of his life on Oct. 3 in Manchester, NH. These weekend cookoffs are absolutely a laugh riot, fun-for-all family affair, and with a little more publicity (OK, a lot more), many more folks would get involved. Food and drink, music, crafts, the great Carroll Shelby, and the hostess of all ICS' World's Chili Championships, Carol Hancock.
Below is a story on Tom and the cookoff written by his hometown newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch.



Local chili chef pockets $25,000 prize
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 11:54 PM
By Jeffrey Sheban

The Columbus Dispatch
One of the most successful chili cook-off competitors in the nation has added a world championship to his resume - plus $25,000 to his bank account.

And he lives in Victorian Village.

Tom Hoover Jr., 64, placed first Sunday in the 2010 World's Championship Chili Cookoff, conducted this year in Manchester, N.H.

"I'm excited," he said of his first world title in 25 years of regional, state, national and international competition.

"This is the big one."

The former restaurant owner turned residential mortgage broker beat 157 other cooks for the honor.

Participants had to win at least a regional competition to qualify.

Hoover has won top honors in Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Utah and other states; and is a two-time winner of the Mexican national championship.

His chili is tomato-based with beef cubes. He describes his winning recipe as "extremely spicy but not hot."

"People just kind of go nuts over it," he said.

He sells a slightly tamer version of his spice blend, featuring eight types of chili peppers and other seasonings, under the Happy Trails! label.

The chili mix is available in central Ohio at Bluescreek Farm Meats in the North Market, the Hills Market in the Worthington area and Rife's Market near Grandview Heights; and at www.happytrailschili.com.

jsheban@dispatch.com

Super Bowl Chili Party Time

This has been a long time coming! Glad to be back on the chili trail after a few months hiatus ... Last post was to preview the ICS' World's Chili Championship in Charleston, WV. Now we have our winners, and I'd like to congratulate Maureen Barrett of Willow Springs, IL. Not only did she pull a major upset in the chili world with her victory, but she was so gracious in chatting with me late into the evening without really being sure who the heck she was talking to. Now she knows. And if I'm ever looking for a house in Illinois, she's the realtor I'm calling. All the winners can be found on the ICS' Web site at chilicookoff.com.





And now, on to something new _ and old:

Recently, I came across an article I wrote several years ago, and would like to share it with you. I think you will find it timely, and hopefully helpful.

Throw a real party for Super Bowl Sunday
Posted to: Around Town
© February 3, 2006
By RICHARD ROSENBLATT Associated Press (ASAP)
Takeout pizza? Off limits. So are wings, and we mean it!
If you're planning on tossing a Super Bowl party -- and who isn't? -- we absolutely know you will agree that nothing goes better on Super Sunday than a good ol' bowl of chili.
Yes, a blessed bowl of chili, chile or chilli (depending on where you live), with its welcoming aroma, rich flavors and soul-satisfying warmth. Mmmm.
Team trailing at halftime? No worries. An infusion of chili, and say a Margarita or Corona or two, and we're sure you'll be energized for a second-half comeback. Or you can just keep eating and watch the commercials.
Stirring up a chili party for your Super buddies couldn't be easier, either. We know, because we wrote the book on chili.
I am the co-author of ''The All-American Chili Cookbook'' (Hearst, 1995), the official cookbook of the International Chili Society (ICS). My wife, Jenny Kellner, co-authored.
We persuaded hundreds of ICS members, including founder Carroll Shelby (yes, he's the guy who invented the Shelby GT), into divulging their recipes. And now, a few days before the Super Bowl in deep-freeze Detroit, we've come up with a party plan of favorite recipes that will make you a big winner on Sunday.
A few notes about ingredients:
--We're talking Texas-style chili, here, which means NO BEANS!
--For meat, there's sirloin tip or tri-tip (a wedge-shaped hunk of beef at the end of the bottom sirloin) if you're ambitious -- and cost doesn't matter. Or go with coarsely ground meat (tell your butcher it's for chili). Turkey, chicken, venison, pork, antelope, buffalo and rattlesnake all have been used in chili, too.
--Cumin (a musky spice) is a must
--Onions, the bigger and sweeter the better. We suggest Vidalia or Walla Walla.
--Chili Powder. The easy route is to hit the spice section at the market and grab a few jars (Gebhardt's is the best, but any other brand will suffice). Chili powder, by the way, is a premixed blend of ingredients including cumin, garlic, oregano, salt and ground dried chilies. How much of each depends on the powder you pick.
And away we go:
___
Tarantula Jack's Thundering Herd Buffalo-Tail Chili (this was the 1989 World Championship winner)
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3 pounds beef, cut in small cubes
2 medium Walla Walla sweet onions, chopped (about 1½ cups)
3 large cloves garlic, minced
2 cans (10½ ounces each) chicken broth
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce, Hunt's brand preferred
1 can (15 ounces) tomato sauce, Hunt's brand preferred
7 tablespoons commercial chili powder, Gebhardt's brand preferred
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
Salt to taste
1. In a skillet, heat oil and saute beef until no longer pink. Drain off fat. Put beef in your favorite chili pot and simmer with onions, garlic, and chicken broth for 1 1/2 hours. Keep the lid on and your hands off!
2. Add tomato sauce, chili powder, and cumin. Stir, replace the lid, and continue to simmer until meat is tender.
3. About 15 minutes before eating time, take the lid off and enjoy the aroma of the greatest chili ever to slide into a Melmac bowl. Add the Tabasco, put the lid back on, and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add salt to taste.
4. Now it's ready to serve. Give out Pepto-Bismol samples to all small children and women who wish to eat your chili ... Comb your hair, straighten your hat, and practice being modest before you receive applause.
Makes 6 to 8 servings (triple the amounts to feed 20-25)
___
Of course, there's more to this than just chili. If you're really ambitious, the accouterments:
Colleen's Version of Debbie's Salsa
3 cans (28 ounces each) Redpack crushed tomatoes
1 medium red onion, chopped
1/2 bunch scallions, chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
4 fresh jalapeno peppers, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and black pepper to taste
Stir all the ingredients gently together and let them get acquainted for a couple of hours. Serve with nacho cheese-flavored chips and frozen strawberry margaritas.
Makes about 10 cups
___
World's Finest Guacamole
2 very large, very ripe avocados, peeled and cut in chunks
2 dead-ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced
1 can (7 ounces) peeled green chilies, finely chopped
4 ounces bacon, fried and crumbled
Juice of 1/2 lime
Using a potato smasher, combine all ingredients except lime juice until well mixed but still chunky. Just before serving, stir in lime juice
Makes about 2 cups
___
Eastern Corn Bread
4 cups sifted all-purpose flower
2 cups sifted cornmeal
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
4 large eggs at room temperature
3 cups whole milk, at room temperature
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/3 cup melted butter or margarine
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12 X 8-inch baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, stir together eggs, milk and oil. Add to dry ingredients, stir briefly, then add melted butter. Stir again until mixed.
3. Pour into greased baking pan and bake for about 1 hour, or until top is lightly browned and a knife inserted into the center come out clean.
Makes 12 servings
___
Long Island Margaritas
4 6-ounce cans (24 ounces) frozen limeade
4 empty limeade cans (24 ounces) tequila
4 empty limeade cans (24 ounces) water
2 empty limeade cans (12 ounces) Triple Sec
Working in batches, fill a blender with ice to the top, add ingredients and blend until slushy.
Makes 24 servings
Recipes from ''The All-American Chili Cookbook'' (Hearst, 1995)
___
Think your chili is the best? The ICS invites to compete in one of hundreds of regional cookoffs with the winners qualifying for the World's Championship Chili Cookoff. There's been one since 1967, when it all started at Carroll Shelby's ranch in Terlingua, Texas.
Last year, about 10,000 chiliheads showed up in Omaha, Neb., where Doug Wilkey of Shoreline, Wash., won first prize of $30,000. Doug is a friend, too -- we judged the ''Miss Budweiser'' beauty contest on a memorable night in Newport Beach, Calif.
Here's the winning recipe he calls ''Dog Breath Chili'':
6 ounces regular breakfast sausage
2 teaspoons Wesson Oil
3 pounds tri-tip beef, cut into small pieces or coarse ground
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 can (14½ ounces) beef broth
1/4 teaspoon oregano
3 tablespoon cumin
7 gloves Gilroy garlic
2 tablespoons Gebhardt chili powder
1 tablespoon hot chili powder
1 tablespoon mild chili powder
5 tablespoons red chili powder
1 can (8 ounces) Hunt's Tomato Sauce
1 can (10 ounces) Ro Tel Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies
3 Dried California chili peppers, boiled and pureed
5 Dried Cascabel chili peppers, boiled and pureed
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 can (14½ ounces) chicken broth
1 teaspoon Tabasco Pepper Sauce
1 teaspoon brown sugar
Juice of one lime
Salt to taste
Brown the sausage, dry and set aside. Heat oil in a pot, and brown the beef. Add the cooked sausage to the pot. Add the onion and beef broth to cover the meat. Boil for 15 minutes. Add oregano and half of the cumin. Reduce heat to a light boil, and then add the garlic. Combine the chili powders into a mixture, then add half of that mixture, and cook 15 minutes. Add the tomato sauce and Ro Tel with the puree from the fried peppers. Add the chicken broth for the desired consistency. Cook for one hour, stirring often. Add the remaining chili powder mixture and the remaining cumin, and simmer for another 25 minutes on low to medium heat. Turn up the heat to a light boil, and add the Tabasco, cayenne pepper, brown sugar, lime juice and salt.
___
Find it online:
http://chilicookoff.com/
___
Richard Rosenblatt is the AP's national horse racing writer, and co-author of ''The All-American Chili Cookbook (Hearst, 1995). He's been judging, organizing and competing in chili cookoffs for years.
___

Chili Championship

The International Chili Society will stage its 43rd World's Chili Championship this weekend in Charleston, WV _ the first time the California-based organization will stage its fabulous event east of the Mississippi. Chili lives on the East Coast, too.
Check out the following story about the cookoff, and former champion Doug Wilkey and his wife, Cathy Wilkey, yet another world's champion chili cook.

Georgia Weller won the title last year, and she appears in the photo above. Good luck to all!! And perhaps you will want to head to Saratoga in 2010 and compete in the soo to be reinstated Saratoga Chili Cookoff (stayed tuned for details!)

World chili cook-off will be held in Charleston Oct. 9-11

By John Raby
Associated Press Writer

CHARLESTON — Frog jumping and armadillo racing were among the activities Doug Wilkey and some college buddies stoked their competitive fires with over the years.

Chili cook-offs outlasted them all.

Wilkey won his first chili competition nearly three decades ago and is still going strong. Success is the driving force, and Wilkey has the approval of judges’ taste buds to prove it, including the International Chili Society’s world championship for his version of traditional red chili.

“Anytime you pick something to do besides your profession, you like to excel at it,” Wilkey said. “To win the world championship is proof of that. It’s a pretty big deal.”

The Shoreline, Wash., dentist will be among nearly 400 competitors who plan to travel to Charleston for the ICS world championship Oct. 9-11.

This year marks the first time in its 43-year history that the competition will be held east of the Mississippi River. Typically the cook-off has been in California or Nevada.

Wilkey has competed all over the map, a nod to his youth when he rode show horses and was a member of the University of Washington’s crew team in the late 1960s.

Several years after earning his dental degree in 1972, Wilkey and other former athletes started looking for fun things to do.

They raced armadillos in Idaho. In 1981, they had eight frogs flown in from Louisiana, each as big as a size-12 shoe, to compete in the famed Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee at Angels Camp, Calif. Their best finish was ninth.

Wilkey started chili cook-offs in 1980, defeating about 80 other competitors for the Washington state championship. The next year, he won Canada’s national chili cook-off.

“When I found chili, I didn’t have to play softball anymore,” he said.

He met his wife, Cathy, at a cook-off in 1994. She had won the ICS world title for red chili the year before. Doug Wilkey earned his world title in 2005.

The world championships involve red and green chili categories, along with salsa. Competitors must first win a regional title from among dozens held around the United States, Canada and even the Cayman Islands.

A “last-chance” cook-off will enable 10 previous nonqualifiers in the red chili category to get into the finals. Defending champions get a free pass into the finals.

Reigning red chili champ Georgia Weller of Rockton, Ill., started in chili cook-offs in 1989, winning her first regional competition in 1990 in Louisiana.

Initially, Weller teamed with her husband, Jim. Eventually the couple started competing individually and both won world titles: Georgia in 1996, and Jim in 2000. The couple has traveled as far as Hawaii and Alaska to compete.

“At first we weren’t concerned about winning,” said Georgia Weller, who works in accounting. “Once you became a little successful, that made you want to do it a little more as well.”

The ICS has its roots in a competition that started in Texas in 1967. Eventually the group that ran the contest splintered and a new group, the ICS, was formed in California. The Chili Appreciation Society International Inc. is holding its 43rd annual world championships in November in Terlingua, Texas.

Carol Hancock, owner and CEO of the San Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based nonprofit ICS, awarded the world championships to Charleston after a city group came up with a host venue and several sponsors.

Mother Nature is the sole reason the championships haven’t come east before, she said.

“It’s just not really a good idea for us to take a chance that we’re going to get blown away on the East Coast when the West Coast has perfect weather in October,” Hancock said. “I’m taking a huge chance and the reason I’m going east is they have the money.”

Because of the recession, Hancock anticipated a drop in interest at chili competitions and she even scaled back the minimum number of cooks required at regional qualifiers. It turned out that wasn’t necessary.

This year a record 167 cooks are expected to be entered in red chili. According to ICS rules, red chili is made with meat, spices and red chili peppers. Beans and pasta are prohibited.

Some $40,000 in prizes will be handed out at Charleston’s Appalachian Power Park, including a $25,000 first-place check to the red chili winner.

Chili cooks have a three-hour time limit to stir their pots. And because no beans are allowed, the final product usually bears little resemblance to a version they whip up at home. The judges look for the proper blend of spices, meat and peppers; color; and consistency.

Doug Wilkey said it’s all about bringing the right flavors together at the right time for the judges.

“I believe it is a three-hour chemical reaction,” he said.



Wish I could be there. Have a grand time you chiliheads!

Welcome

Welcome to the The All-American Chili Company, where you can turn to for everything you'll ever want or need to know _ and stuff you never even thought you'd want or need to know _ about chili, chilli, chile. Basically, chili is a simple dish, yet there are millions of chiliheads who have dedicated their lives (OK, a good part of their lives) to cookin' up the perfect bowl of blessedness. Our friend, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dave Barry, actually shared his secret recipe with us for our book ``The All-American Chili Cookbook.''

Here it is:

1. Get some chili
2. Get some beer
3. Eat the chili and drink the beer.

LOL.

Even we know there's more to it than that, and we will show you the whos, whats, wheres, whens, hows and whys of the chili world in the very near future.

Stay tuned.