Great Lakes Regional Chili Cookoff

Linda and I attended the Great Lakes Regional Chili Cookoff today in Plymouth, MI.  It's been a long standing tradition in downtown Plymouth for more than a decade.

From the GLRC website:

Winners of the Great Lakes Regional Chili, Inc cook-offs qualify to compete at the International Chili Society (ICS) World's Championship Chili Cook-off.  The ICS is the largest food contest, festival organization in the world.

We sampled five different samples from various cooks. We tried a mild chili with ground beef and beans that was obviously made for sampling only since it didn't follow the rules for ICS. It was similar to what we make at home.  There was a medium hot traditional red chili with tri tip and a relatively hot (for me anyway) traditional red chili with tri tip. We also sampled two chili verde offerings with a lot of green peppers and chicken for meat.

My favorite chili from a contest perspective was the traditional red sample of hot chili, but if I was going to eat a big bowl for supper, I would lean toward the chili verde with chicken.  A contest sample isn't the kind of thing you can sit down and eat a bowl of.

For People's Choice I voted for MM Chili.

And if you want to try your hand at contest chili, Chili.org has a listing of recipes from the winners of the last several Terlingua International Chili Championship events.