Tag Archives: Recipe

Contest

Who Won the Fry Sauce Competition?

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I learned many things from BenSpark’s Ultimate Fry Sauce Recipe Contest. A Little about my friends, a little about my readers, a lot about Mayo (I am sick to death of the smell now) and mostly about how to run a crazy contest like this.

Set Limits

I was smart about the limit to 10 fry sauce recipes. While I only received 9 recipes and didn’t really need the limit, it was still smart to have it in place. This made the creation of each recipe more manageable. If I had accepted over 10 entrants I would have been swimming in Fry Sauce, even more so than I was. And also the total cost to me would have been even more.

I got the 64oz suckers!

Know what you are getting into

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. I had set the rule that only Heinz Ketchup and Hellman’s Mayo were to be the base ingredients, that saved me from buying many different kinds of ketchup and mayo. But what about the ingredients that were added to each recipe. They could have been anything (except a blue Halls cough drop, Stephen) and that meant secret costs. If you ever do a recipe contest where you have to buy all the ingredients make sure that you don’t have any surprises, I was lucky.

Kitchen too small

Know how much you are making

I did take each recipe and break it down into “parts”. The parts would work as I made 2 cups of each sauce. That was still way too much Fry Sauce. Make a test batch to gauge how much you really have to make. I ended up with about 2 gallons of fry sauce in total. I made all ten sauces (#10 was my own creation, not in the competition) and had so much left over that I was a little sickened by the waste. Had I been smarter I would have made about a cup of each of the sauces. that would have been a little more manageable. Or if you make as much as I did make sure you have enough judges to taste test.

Wasabi!

Share Your Vision

One of the best things about doing this was that I was able to share my vision as well as something I found tasty with many different people. The judges all found at least one sauce that they enjoyed. The competitors each shared their favorite recipe. I’ll be sharing all recipes with all of you. That is what was so fun about running this competition.

So, who won?

Check back November 10th to find out who won.

Photo-A-Day

Lazy Susan was Busy Tonight…

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Lazy Susan was Busy Tonight...
Photo-A-Day #1303

Today was the day that I spent making Fry Sauce for The Ultimate Fry Sauce Recipe Contest. I started the morning making my list of ingredients and trying to convert every recipe into something that broke down into “parts” i.e. one part mayo 2 parts ketchup. I got my system down and headed to the store.

I spent about an hour and a half shopping because not only was I trying to get everything for the contest I also had to do some personal shopping and I had to make sure that I got all the cold things at the end so there was a bit of scrambling around the store and backtracking. But in the end I found what I needed.

I came home and made sure that I photographed everything for the video and the Fry Sauce post. I was about ready to get to work but decided that lunch would be a good idea and then one episode of Smallville. I had the time and we are still on Episode 3 of this season, so close to getting up to speed. Around 1:30 I started making all the sauces.

Making the sauces was fun, I laid each recipe out on the counter, measured all the ingredients and then filmed an into about each one. Then I would mix it in the Magic Bullet. The Magic Bullet works awesome, we got it for our wedding and this is my first chance to take it for a spin, I hope to use it much more in the future. Then I would wash everything and then repeat the cycle for the next recipe. It was time consuming and along the way there was a mishap with a measuring shot glass. It was shattered and I had to wash absolutely everything very thoroughly and pick up all the glass. But in the end I completed 10 Fry Sauces. then I let them all sit in the fridge.

Around 6:00 friends started arriving. We had seven judges, plus myself, tonight. I made an abundance of sauce, about 2 cups of each kind, and will bring the rest to work to have more judges weigh in with their opinions. Allison made up scoring sheets that had rankings of 1-5 for many different criteria. We decided on Store Bought Steak Fries as a control group to use for tasting. They were inexpensive and tasted great. There was some lively conversation about each of the sauces and everyone had a different opinion on taste so we got a really nice mix. I’m happy with the results.

When we were done with all the fries and Tater Tots (Thanks Stephen’s A.) We had a chocolate cream pie with cinnamon sugar meringue that Andrea made, delicious. Then we hung out till 11:30 swapping stories. It was a good night.