Chili Cook-Off 2013

Friends of Fire Station 6 didn't win any awards at the 5th Annual Fire in the Park Chili Cook-Off held on July 20th. It was our first year entering the competition and we had a amazing time!

2013 Chili Cook-Off Team Left to R1ght: John Elkin, Mary Elkin, Jeff Zurschmeide, Anne McEnerny-Ogle

 We arrived at Esther Short Park at 7am and began setting up the booth and firing up the grill. John was our Pit Master and Jeff was his sous chef. Those guys can grill and smoke some amazing things and by 8am the park smelled heavenly.

20lbs of smoked tri tip

We decorated the booth with red and yellow tablecloths, pin-wheels, signs to promote fire protection and pictures of firefighters in action. We hung up our Friends of Fire Station 6 sign and were ready to serve chili by 10:45am. We even posted our recipe for all to see and handed out a few hundred copies.

FRIENDS OF FIRE STATION 6

SAFER 13 CHILI

 Just like its namesake, this delightful chili is made up of 13 brave and unique ingredients that blend together to complete the perfect bowl of chili.

 

Chili is a lot like staffing in the fire department.  If you were to delete ingredients to save money, the quality of your chili would suffer. A mediocre bowl of chili may not cause loss of life or property, but an inadequately staffed fire department can.

 

1.   1 ½ lbs smoked beef tri tip            8.  6 oz chicken broth

2.    12 oz beef broth                             9.  2 cups diced tomatoes

3.    ¼ cup chilies (of your choice)    10.  2 Tbsp chili powder

4.    1 Tbsp powdered onion              11.  1 Tbsp cumin

5.    2 Tbsp crushed garlic                   12.   1 Tbsp Sazon Goya

6.   1 Tbsp Buffalo Sauce                                 13.   ¼ tsp brown sugar 

7.   1/8 tsp kosher salt

  Stir well with a long tail-feather from a Phoenix for at least 2.5 minutes 

 

 

10 gallons of SAFER 13 Chili

We started serving up chili and people kept coming back for seconds and thirds! Anne was great at letting the people know what was in the chili and why it was so special! We ran out of chili just before the voting ended.

Congratulations to all the teams that participated and made this such a fun and rewarding experience! You can see a list of winners and participants here: http://www.fireinthepark.com/Fire_In_The_Park/Headquarters.html

Thank you to the IAFF Local 452 for putting on the event for the past years! It gets better every single year and so many people are touched by the generous donations raised at the event. Thank you to the organizers and Mark Dodd,  who was so helpful and made sure we had everything we needed to make this a successful event.

We will definitely be back in 2014!