Jackson Hole Guide - Spicy and sweet
Sierra Fulton was about four hours into making her prize-winning chili when she decided to add it.
For weeks leading up to Sunday’s annual High Noon Chili Cook-off, this was the question among friends: Is Sierra going to add the pineapple?
Last year, Fulton explained in her Southern drawl, people – “evun mah nay-ber” – crinkled their noses at the idea of sweet pineapple chunks in a spicy, red, chicken chili. That was despite advertising her pot as Hawaiian chicken chili.
“Hawaiian” in any recipe seems to make pineapple OK.
This year, well, she still hadn’t decided.
In 2008, her chili won first place in the people’s-choice competition. Judges awarded her second. The year before, in 2007, she won first place from the judges, but the people gave her second.
This year was going to be her “hat trick.”
Fulton began thinking of her name last year. She settled on “Big Mamma’s Chili,” particularly fitting since she’s 34 weeks pregnant.
She went to the grocery store on Friday to get her ingredients. She bought almost a dozen peppers, five pounds of bacon, honey and cheese, among other things.
Nowhere on her list was fruit.
“Are you gonna add pineapple?” Fulton was asked around 9 a.m. on Sunday.
She’d already been preparing her pot on the Town Square for three hours and hadn’t made the call.
Friends delicately urged her to include it. They’d been tasting her practice batches every other week for the past few months.
They could always eat Sierra’s chili, they said. Have you had it, they asked. She’s the best cook, they said.
A Southern woman to her core, Fulton likes to make people happy through their stomachs. She’s in an ethnic cooking club and enjoys entertaining. She’s the type of person to make banana pudding from scratch as a thank-you gift.
Every summer, Fulton enters a pie in the Teton County Fair competition. And for four years, she’s entered the chili cook-off.
“I feel like if people don’t enter, then the events won’t happen,” she said. “Then if the events don’t happen, it’s not as fun to live here.”
At about 10 a.m., Fulton opened a few cans of pineapple and, when she thought no one was looking, dumped them in.
“Don’t write that down,” she told a reporter. “I’m just gonna do what I did last year.”
Admittedly a “psycho” about her recipe, Fulton sauteed her veggies and meat in bacon grease before pitching them into the pot. The only recipe she followed was the one in her head. She tasted and smelled the batch to determine what it needed.
When people weren’t looking, she sprinkled a bit of spices, most of them in steel jars that noticeably lacked labeling. She did add a hefty amount of Hungarian paprika; otherwise, flavorings were kept secret.
“I cain’t tell yuh,” she said.
In the end, Big Mamma’s Chili – a combination of tomatoes, peppers, onions, chicken, bacon and some thickening agents that cannot appear in print – rapidly boiled for almost two hours over a propane flame before it went up against five others in the amateur division.
Would she keep her trophy, the “Stanley Cup of chili?”
“It’s a little bit sweet and little bit spicy,” Fulton said as she ladled portions for the people who paid $5 a spoon to taste the 14 entries. “It’s got fresh veggies, corn, chicken.”
She never told them about it.
“Is that fruit in here?” a man asked.
Mmm hmmm, she said. It’s pineapple.
The five gallons disappeared within an hour. One woman, who came back for seconds, proclaimed it “the best damn chili I’ve ever tasted.”
Big Mamma’s Chili was popular enough among the crowd to took second in the people’s choice division, but judges gave her only fourth place.
Maybe they didn’t like the pineapple. Or maybe they’re just bananas.
By Cara Froedge, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
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