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.

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.

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.

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.