IT Dept Chili Showdown, Year 2

And this time it's personal!

No, really, for the organizer, it is. You see, last year he asked us not to turn up the heat too much to spare our co-worker the brunt of a Capsaicin Assault. Our coworkers in turn complained that the chili was too weak, thereby painting the IT Department as a bunch of pansies who like wussy chili.

This lit a fire under our even tempered organizer, so he in turn, asked us to light a fire inside them, all but demanding we make people cry.

So the night before I've been humming the Canyonero song from The Simpsons, replacing the word "Canyonero" with "Habrenero". Like the two I chopped up and put in the Chili. I chopped a third one and bagged it up, in case the fire cooks out too much from the first two.

What's shriveled, orange, and makes people cry, eat more than one and you'll wish you would die? HabanerooooOOOOOOoooo... Habaneroooo...

Also, I used stew beef and a chopped pork roast for meat in the hopes that whole cuts would improve the texture. Added one or two hours before serving was a few chipotles and one more chopped Habanero to drive the heat home. Also the cumin and chili powder weren't added until here, as well.

So, how'd it go?

We'll our mission to add the heat back into the competition was a successes. The tough guys enjoyed it, and the more heat adverse people flocked to two or three entries that weren't punishing on the tongue.

We had nine entries this year instead of six. All of them were about evenly matched, unlike the year before where the quality between the top half and the bottom half was a wide as a trench (recap of last year's bottom three: Watery, Tomato Sauce with Beans, and Mediocre Town).

The voting was fairly evenly distributed, and I secured 2nd place for my name again: "Chili for Smart and Good Looking Folk", the 1st place winner in the name category was "Meat Your Maker."[sic] This year the prizes were thematic, and I won a bottle of Blair's After Death Sauce. Mmm Mmm! In the future, I think I'll be using more habaneros for my chili. That turned out pretty well.