(Seguin) — Visitors from all over the state will again be stirring the pot this weekend in Seguin during the 52nd annual Texas Ladies State Chili Championship Cook-Off. The chili competition is the world’s second-largest.
The competition has been held in Seguin for the last 32 years.
Excited about welcoming over 150 teams to Seguin is Beverly Maricle, one of the organizers for the event. Maricle says Seguin this weekend will no doubt be home to some of the best chili cooks in the state. But to be named the best, the organization must first have judges. She says anyone in the community is invited to come out and put their tastebuds to work.
“We can always use judges. Usually, 250 to 300 judges are what it takes to pull this off and the more judges we have, the more opinions we have. Right now with our enrollment numbers, the top three will qualify to cook out at Terlingua. So judging is number one. If you don’t want to judge, if you don’t eat chili, you can come out and shop. We have a lot of local vendors that are going to be out here. We have 13 vendors and a food truck. So you can support us by judging, cooking, or just come shop the local vendors,” said Maricle.
Maricle says the judging portion of the contest will consume most of Saturday afternoon.
“If you want to judge chili, you can go on to our website and sign-up that way or just come on down to the park. Turn-in is at 1 o’clock and so we would like our judges to arrive at 12:30 so we can start seating them and getting ready for the first round and we do have — Saturdays is ladies only and then we have a junior competition for young ladies age 7 to 17 and that turn-in is at noon. So you can either come at 11:30 and judge the little ones or you can come at 12:30 the ladies and we usually go about five or six rounds so if you can’t make it right at 12:30 (p.m.), come on down anyway because we will certainly work you in,” said Maricle.
Maricle says the event which will be set up under the big pavilion at Max Starcke Park East brings more than just great cooks to Seguin. She says it brings in dollars as folks shop and eat in Seguin. She says folks arrived on Thursday and will continue their stay until Sunday.
Maricle says the group every year not only applauds the community for coming out to judge and shop but for helping sponsor the event.
“Our sponsors help us pull this off by helping to pay for all of our expenses. This year, we picked up a couple of new sponsors. We have GVEC. We have Fiesta Spices. We have Four Eyes Winery. Mark Herbold from State Farm graciously wrote us a check as well as Westerholm Koehler Insurance. So with these sponsorships, we can give a pretty good donation to our charity which is the Guadalupe Valley Family Violence Shelter. They have been our charity of a couple of years and they’ve been very appreciative of what we can do for them and by having community support, we are able to do that,” said Maricle.
Vendors and music gets underway at 10 a.m. To sign up to be a chili judge visit TLSCCO.com.