About Betty:
Chef Betty’s love for cooking came from helping her mother in the kitchen. She treasured assisting her mom cook and it was a great way to escape her older sisters’ bossing her around. Good thing too or her amazing DRUNKEN PIG CHILI may have never been born.
She has been in the restaurant business for over 30 years and loves it. In her years managing several million dollar accounts, it never dawned on her to compete in food competitions. Although she enjoys cooking in her spare time, she just enjoys sitting on the beach near her San Diego home and reading food magazines. It was her husband who kept telling her to enter one of her original recipes in a cook-off, but she never considered doing so until June, 2009, when she stumbled over an ad for a Chili Cook-Off. Her husband was sitting with her and pointed out the ad and, as usual, said she ought to enter the competition. Was it by accident that she spotted the ad or did her husband plant it? It was an ad for the 30th Annual Ocean Beach Chili Cook-Off!
Two weeks before the competition, she had made 4 different batches of chili totaling over 100 gallons! Although each batch was mouth-watering, they lacked the distinct flavor she was looking for.To quote Chef Betty, “The distinct flavor is what people will remember, and it shows by their facial expression when they first taste it.” She finally found the right combination: pork tenderloin blended with 5 different chilies and soaked in Corona Beer (shhhhh…the secret ingredient). DRUNKEN PIG CHILI was born!
A few weeks later she took 2nd Place Judges Choice in her very first chili cook-off. A month later in her second cook-off, the International Chili Society’s Western Regional Finals in Del Mar, CA., Betty’s DRUNKEN PIG CHILI was voted #1 after 3,500 votes were cast!
