The new season of Chopped debuts on Food Network next week, and if you haven’t seen this culinary competition before, despite its short comings it is fine entertainment on most nights. The premise of the show is intriguing; hosted by uber-nerd Ted Allen, Chopped has four chefs competing for $10,000 by having what is in essence a cook-off in three rounds, appetizer, entrée and dessert. The contestants are usually pretty skilled and handle themselves well. Occasionally one of the typical emotional basket cases that seem to populate reality TV sneaks in, but overall I have been impressed with the caliber of the contestants. This is mostly because the trick of the show is that in each round a basket is presented with ingredients that must be used in the dish. This can be great fun, watching some obsessive-compulsive chef who is used to running a restaurant try to make an appetizer out of unsweetened chocolate, jumbo prawns, and clamato never loses its appeal.
What makes Chopped annoying is the judges. Each one tends to be overly dramatic in their criticism, and their outrage is usually disproportionate to the crime. They have the same level of anger towards someone who double dips their finger in the sauce or serves a dangerously undercooked turkey dish as they do the person who fails to coherently make gummy bear encrusted chicken. A typical comment will be something like this: “I would be ashamed to serve this gummy bear encrusted chicken if it were my restaurant.” You don’t say. Perhaps you should get up and try your hand at it. I’ve seen Aaron Sanchez on Chefs vs. City. He seems to spend half the show running around, I don’t seem to recall him being presented with a basket containing starfruit, ostrich, and instant grits and being forced to make something delicious.
One of the worst of the judges is Alex Guarnaschelli. Below is a photo:
While I’m certain that in life Ms. Guarnaschelli is a fine human being, she comes across particularly shrill. You would think she would have a word with the editors and ask that they not make her look like a complete bitch every show. The funniest part about this is that now Ms. Guarnaschelli has her own show, Alex’s Day Off. I have a great idea for an episode, someone should drop off a basket containing plantains, frozen scallops and Cheese-Its and then berate her for coming up with a less than perfect dish.
Will the annoying judges be toned down next season? Who knows, odds are Food Network will find a way to botch it even more, or have some stupid event where Bobby Flay takes on pastry chefs and the basket coincidentally contains ancho chilies, Kobe beef and fingerling potatoes. I will still check out the newest episodes and see if Chopped remains worthwhile viewing. I sure hope so, Food Network is becoming unwatchable, and Chopped is hanging under the cleaver itself.
Let me start by saying that I love Taco Bell. There’s just something about it. In my eyes, it is by far the superior choice for fast food. A grilled stuffed burrito with extra baja sauce and a chicken quesadilla was my go to breakfast/lunch/dinner for years. In high school and the early years of college, there was nothing better than 2 A.M. trips to Taco Bell. They even flew me to their test kitchen to educate me about their company and menu.
Taco Bell does a great job at mixing up their menu. The classics will always be there, like the Mexican pizza, but there’s usually a new “test” item that sometimes makes the menu if the people buy enough of it. This strategy has brought us such deliciousness at the Volcano menu and the Crunchwrap. Great success. The only thing about this is usually it’s just multiple items using some new sauce or similar concepts. It can get redundant.
Upon browsing my favorite food blogs this morning, I noticed that WIBIA broke a world exclusive. Taco Bell is now offering shrimp tacos for $2.49. These tacos contain 6 marinated shrimp, lettuce, pico and a ranch based sauce. Observe:
Picture was thieved away from WIBIA
Seriously, Taco Bell? Shrimp? You can’t just take two delicious things and combine them. It doesn’t work that way. Mashed potatoes and peanut butter do not go together. Neither do cookies and gravy. Then again, for some reason I want to try both of those combinations. Back to business, this is a terrible idea. I have no desire to ever try this. Taco Bell and seafood just don’t mix. Remember those stories of Taco Bell using grade D meet, which has lower standards than animal food? I’ve been able to put that behind me. Seafood? Just can’t do it.
This is by far the worst idea Taco Bell has EVER had. I am unable to find any information regarding this new menu item, but it appears to only be a regional thing. Kudos to WIBIA for the find.
2nd Place, 2006 Central Illinois International Chili Championship! Matt (in Red) and Todd (in Tigers hat) along with Chili judges and first place winner (on far left). It was rigged!
It’s about time I fessed up. Back in 2006, my friend Matt and I entered the Urbana Beer and Chili Festival (Urbana, IL – my old stompin’ grounds) in an attempt to unseat the hitherto unbeaten Champaign County Democrats. Otherwise known as the Central Illinois International Chili Championship, this competition invites amateur and restaurant competitors to duke it out in the greatest of drinking and chili eating venues – the downtown Urbana, IL parking garage. Set on a windy, mid-fall Saturday, this environment adds the perfect garnishes to the classic, fall football weekend: Chili and lot and lots of beer.
College students handing out beer samples to their friends and taking purchased tickets. If that isn't a conflict of interest, then I don't know what is
For those of you poor souls who haven’t attended a Chili cookoff, they typically begin with competitors checking in, setting up their booths, passing health inspection, and finally – making their chili in a set period of time. We had 4 hours to prep and cook, in which we were to make 4 gallons of chili for attendees to sample along with several hundred types of beer bought with donations from local business. A portion of the gate went to charity (it’s good to give back! – name that movie quote).
Although I’m not bitter…*whatsoever*, the competition functions in the following manner, year after year after year: 1) Competitors make their chili. 2) Around 1000 people sample the chili. The chilis that run out quickly are clearly the crowd favorites, since everyone makes roughly the same amount. 3) The judges then go and pick the best chilis. 4) At this point, the judges write the names of the best chilis on a piece of paper. 5) That piece of paper is then set on fire, after which the judges piss on the will of the people, and again give the victory to the Champaign County Democrats (the two party system? “The after party is the one you really want to attend”). Year after year, people! For Godsake, their chili tastes like its been blended! BLENDED!! Who does that?! We ran out of our chili in like 2 hours, and they were still trying to unload their mush practically until dawn! Anyway, we came in Second. Booo! Now that I got that out of my system…
Making good chili, especially 4 gallons of chili, is a long process. First, you’ve got to practice – you must refine your recipe. In the case of chili, this can be expensive, depending on the type of meat you want to use. We got ours from the University of Illinois meat lab. That’s right – for those of you who live in the U.S. near land grant schools (state colleges that have agriculture programs), many animal science programs have meat labs where they train students to butcher. This is an awesome place to get a rediculous amount of meat for cheap.
Sometimes, the word “ridiculous” can be relative. For the competition, we got around 16 pounds of bottom round steak. 16 pounds – that’s 256 oz of delicious steak. Even Joey Chestnut couldn’t put that down. Only problem – it came somewhat frozen.
Todd’s Chili Lesson #1: DO NOT try to cut 16 pounds of slightly frozen steak into 1 inch cubes with a dull knife. Or any kind of knife. Just throw your hand in front of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick – it will happen faster and feel the same.
My recipe [which I will reveal for the first time to the world in a future post – so stay tuned!], also calls for a lot of diced vegetables. During a Chili competition, when many groups quadruple (or more) their normal recipe sizes, this means a LOT of diced vegetables. When you’re in an outdoor booth with crapola, dull Ikea knives…surrounded by shit talking competitors…with a huge cooler of beer waiting for you after prep – dicing is no longer fun. At all.
Todd’s Chili Lesson #2: Find a restaurant supply store and purchase bagged, pre-diced vegetables. This is usually still legit to use in the competition – you can’t pre-cut any veggies on your own and bring them in your own bag, but you can bring pre-cut veggies in a package from a store…damn health inspectors. Hatred is crying into the blisters you got from dicing veggies, while watching (out of your one, remaining good eye) the guy next door slowly pour a giant sack of perfectly diced onion into his Chili, as he enjoys a tall, cool Budweiser.
Now that we’ve prepped the Chili – it’s time to get cookin’. At our competition, we had to bring our own cooking devices. As we were both poor college students at the time, we bought 3 portable electric burners off of Amazon.com (3 massive pots=about 4 gallons). Many of the characters we were competing against simply brought turkey fryers and a few propane tanks. We later realized that those people were very, very, very smart. That’s right: Competitors = Smart. Todd = Dumb.
Todd’s Chili Lesson #3: Test your cooking devices. Having an electric burner is actually a fairly smart idea. You can leave it on for several hours without having propane problems. It’s also a really really cheap alternative. HOWEVER – be sure to understand the electrical network on which your burners will rely. We found out about 15 minutes into cooking that two of our burners were not heating up enough. We were basically maxing out the system. That’s right – the Chili competition was reliant on TWO circuits for our entire section. Whoops! Got it figured out, but it killed our momentum, our confidence, and our buzz. Would have helped to know more ahead of time.
In the end, the competition went incredibly well. After our few preparation hiccups, we got things cooking and our well devised recipe and practice preparations served us well. Have confidence in your burners. Chili has to be a certain temperature to be served to the public. We spent the first hour worrying if we could even get it hot enough to serve – the electrical problem didn’t help! After things heated up, we were almost worried that our chili would get TOO hot. Things might have been worse if we hadn’t been cooling off with a steady stream of liquid anxiety treatments…
Todd’s Chili Lesson #4: Bring ample libations. You’re cooking chili, not curing polio. If you don’t have enough confidence in your chili that you can’t cook it slightly fuzzy faced, then you just haven’t done your homework. You let down yourself, your competitors, and most of all…your Chili.
The final lesson in all of this – it’s all in the marketing. Give your chili a personality. Give it a brand! Make it unique and people will want to come to your booth to try it. If they like it, they will make their friends come and try it too. And, as we all know – after everyone has 2 or 3 or 8 beers in them, they will certainly want to try a lot more. This gives us our final lesson:
Todd’s Chili Lesson #5: Decorate! Decorate your booth, decorate yourself. We did not do this. After quickly following lesson #4, we might have THOUGHT we decorated (liquid confidence). In reality, however, we certainly did not.
Second place team. Other than our award winning personalities, we brought no decorations. You must give your Chili a persona!
This sore sight contrasts heavily with the third place team (also people’s choice winners) who really justified their decorations by making one of the spiciest chilis that I’ve ever tasted. They were also right next to us, which is why there is all that caution tape in the background of our photo. Brilliant!
Third place team. Personality, decorations (even brought chili plants!), and one hell of a spicy chili! Unfortunately, this team also actually blended their chili – something that was strangely uncomfortable to watch. Maybe that's why their booth was wrapped in caution tape…
