Autumn is the best time of the year for fresh chillies and when Karen Lott spotted a box of colourful fiery heat bombs she had a brainwave. The Nethercote Chilli Eating Contest was born!
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Ms Lott, of Sprout Café and the Nethercote Seasonal Produce Market, teamed up with John Wentworth, from Disaster Bay Chillies, to run a test competition at the recent autumn market.
Most festival goers didn’t have to think twice when asked if they wanted to enter a chili eating contest. They immediately answered “no way”. But when asked if they wanted to watch a chilli eating contest the answer was a resounding “yes”.
By mid-morning some brave contestants had volunteered. The rules of the competition were kept simple. Contestants would eat progressively hotter chillies until only one person was left.
Each contestant was poured a glass of fresh Tilba milk to help soothe burning mouths.
Mr Wentworth explained capsaicin is the ingredient in chillies that sparks the fire and that the casein in milk helps counteract the capsaicin and is more cooling than water.
The contest started with a Big Jim chilli. These chillies are large but their rating on the Scoville heat scale is 0. So far so good.
The second chilli was a mild Jalapeno with 5000 Scoville heat units and again the contestants managed fine, although there were a few gulps of milk.
Next up was a small Cayenne, of about 30,000 units that had contestants, as well as some onlookers, wincing.
After that came Aji Limon chillies. They are small, yellow, attractive and pack about 30,000 heat units.
Suffering from burn out, one by one contestants dropped out as the crowd gave them a warm round of applause.
Then came the Manzano, a red apple-shaped chilli. The crowd gasped as John explained these chilies have about 100,000 heat units. The remaining contestants by this stage looked like they were chewing red-hot branding irons.
Suddenly we had a winner. It was the end of the contest although there were still plenty of hotter varieties of chillies to try.
The chilli champion, Ange Le Spina of Kiah, won a hamper of Disaster Bay products and $50.
He was also given a Carolina Reaper chilli to take home. Carolina Reaper chillies are in the Guinness Book of Records as having over 1.5 million Scoville heat units.
There is no doubt this was the hottest competition in the Bega Valley Shire and it is going to become an annual event at the autumn market.
However, next year it will be run more in line with other chilli eating contests and entrants will not be allowed any soothing milk!
