Championship Chili: Top Cookoff Winning Recipes at Chef2Chef

Presented are decades of the top winners of the leading national chili cookoffs, along with a veteran competitor and judge's tips on how to win a chili contest.

Included is an essay on the great Terlingua, Texas, chili feud, which spawned three dueling cookoffs.

About The Author
Compiled by Texas journalist Barry Shlachter, author of "Cordon Bubba Texas Cuisine." A portion of proceeds benefits the Big Bend Education Center, a Terlingua, Texas-based non-profit foundation that helped build the local high school and is working to establish a community library.

Reader Reviews
Championship Chili is one of ten chili books I refer to when I want to make chili differently than the two recipes I usually use. We have chili a lot in our house and both my Dad and my Mama have their favorite ways of cooking it. I grew up with their recipes and I have documented them in one of my "Amazon So You'd Like to Guides" and I hope you take a look at it. Both recipes are delicious, but when you've had them as often as I've had 'em, you sort of yearn for something a bit different. So, once a week, usually on Saturdays, I break out these ten books and search for a chili recipe I either haven't tried, or one I haven't made in a long time. Of course, like all cooks, I fudge a bit with the ingredients, but not all that much. I like to stick pretty close to the recipes, at least the first few times I make it, so I can get an idea of what the writer/recipe maker had intended. And let me tell you, you'd be surprised at the subtleties there are in a chili recipe. As they say, no two chile recipes were created equal, but the recipes in Championship Chili have never let me down. I've got a lot of chili books, have tried a lot of recipes over the years, but the recipes here, like the recipes in my other nine fave books, have been consistently good. You can't go wrong with Championship Chili. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)