Downloads
If you’re ever seen our collection of ideas for hosting your own chili cook-off party, then you know how much Jo and I enjoy having a cook-off each year. I’m hosting such a party this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to all the yummy chili recipes that I’ll get to sample from our friends.
I decided to make new voting ballots this year that were simpler, easier to use, and way cuter than anything I’d used before. I also thought it would be a nice addition to my growing collection of matching chili cook-off printables that also includes chili cook-off invitations and chili pot labels. I made an easy download to share so you guys can print your own, too!
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Download our Chili Cook-off Voting Ballots |
Here’s what you need to know about this download:
- It’s big and contains lots of pages. There are pages with the crockputs numbered 1 through 32, which will match up nicely with the entries in your cook-off, assuming you label the chilis with the chili pot labels I shared with you previously. There’s also a page with no number, in case you need more than 32 or don’t want to number the chilis.
- The first item on the ballot asks the judge to classify the chili as either “traditional” or “creative”. I find there are merits to both classes of chili, so I like to award prizes for sticking to the classics as well as innovation. Each chili will be classified in the category most people choose for it, and the best one in each category will win.
- The next item on the ballot asks the judge to rate the chili’s taste, from “Amazing” (5 points) down to “Bad” (1 point). The chili with the highest average score in each category will win!
Once you have an estimate for how many chili entries you’ll have, you can print out just those numbers. Be sure to print enough copies so that each of your guests can vote on each chili. Then just cut the ballots out and they are ready to go.
That is, of course, unless you want to take it a step further, and I always want to take it a step further!
I decided to make the ballots into little notepads so that each guest can just grab one and a pen and easily vote on his or her favorites.
The first thing I did was to separate my ballots into stacks, with one of each numbered page in each stack. Then I cut some ordinary chipboard into pieces the same size as my ballots. If you don’t have chipboard on hand, you could use extra cardboard or cereal boxes.
Then I started stacking my papers and cardboard, one after the other, until I had them all in one giant stack.
Then I grabbed the whole stack, put the top edge down on the table, and tapped it firmly until all the tops of all the pages were nice and smooth and flat. I then secured it all together with a couple of big rubber bands near the top edge.
To make these loose pages and boards into one giant notepad (don’t worry, I’ll split them up later), I reached for my trusty padding compound. This stuff is a great way to turn any paper pages into a notepad quickly and easily! It’s pretty hard to find locally, so we sell 2oz bottles of padding compound in our Amazon store, to make it easier on ya.
As we described in our notepad tutorial, just brush the padding compound onto the edge of the paper and let it dry. I find setting it on the edge of the table while it dries helps avoid making a mess.
Once the glue dries, you’ll have a nice smooth coat on the end. If you tapped the ends down firmly enough, you’ll have a giant notepad with all the sheets attached.
Now I couldn’t have everyone working off a single pad, of course, so the next step was to cut the individual pads apart. To do this, I just grabbed the top set of sheets and chipboard, lifted it up, and gently slid a thin paring knife underneath. I ran the knife along the glued edge, cutting that pad free from the stack.
I’m not sure why exactly, but this was the most satisfying part of the whole project for me. It’s so fun to have all the little notepads appear so quickly!
During the chili cook-off, I’ll just let each guest grab a pad and a pen and go about their tasting and scoring throughout the evening. They will get to classify each chili as either traditional or creative, and then rate how good it tastes.
My cook-off will have two prizes — one for “Best Traditional Chili and one for “Best Creative Chili”. When the voting is over, I’ll just look at all the ballots for each chili and then determine based on the votes whether a chili goes into the traditional or creative category. Then I’ll add up the taste rankings (5 points for Amazing and 1 point for Bad) and the chili with the highest average score in that category wins!
To make it even easier to add up the scores, I created an Excel spreadsheet that does the math for me. Download our Chili cook-off score sheet and open it on your computer at home for some quick vote tallying!
13 comments so far:
Thank you for making the invitations, chili entry numbers on the cute pots and tally sheets available. They saved me a lot of time and will make our cook off much more festive.
You’re welcome, Teddie! Have fun at your cook-off
I am an apartment manager throwing my first chili cook off with all of our residents and I just have to give you a big ol THANK YOU for making things so much simpler! Your templates and spreadsheets and experienced advice have been a huge, huge help and made me really excited for our upcoming cook off. You obviously put a ton of time and effort into this site and all of the info and I wanted you to know it hasnt gone un-noticed! Thanks again! ~ Katie Parks
Thanks so much for your comments, Katie. Good luck with your cook-off, and let us know how it goes!
Planning my first Chili cook off for Super Bowl at my local bar and all these ideas and spreadsheets are SO helpful thank you soooo much for sharing this…..
Thanks so much for these great ideas and tools! Just one question on voting – what do you do if there is a tie?
Denise, we’ve never had a tie so I’ve never even thought of what to do! I guess either you could ask your guests to do a tiebreaker vote, or maybe the host could cast the deciding vote?
Thank you so much for your site.Our pastor of 43 years was retiring and we had a big celebration planned,everyone was asked to bring in some ideas to make this a fun event. Will i opened my mouth about doing a chill cook-off,had no idea how to even begin,and then one day i stumbled upon your site and what a Blessing. Everything that i needed was there. Thank you so very much.
So glad we could help you throw a fun party for your pastor, Clara!
We do a different cook off each year. Meatloaf, pasta sauce, chili…. The cook off product is the main ingredient for dinner.I host serving the sides and setting up the “theme”.
We use themed music (Meatloaf for meatloaf, Italian for pasta sauce, Red Hot Chili Peppers… you get the idea).
We do a blind taste test putting all the entries into tin chafing pans purchased at the $1.00 store and kept hot by sterno. This way no one recognizes each other’s dishes, pots or slow cookers. We have a “professonal” judge who cooks the least but eats out the most. She’s aided by the crowd who does a taste test before dinner.
After our blind taste test the entries are relabeled with everyone’s name and brought to the table for a giant family style dinner.
Once dinner is over we have a trivia contest using the subject as our theme. “What’s the biggest meatloaf? 300 lbs.” Get it?
We then give our awards. Our First Place prizes rotate from one year to the next. For best food item the prize includes a chefs hat (signed by all previous winners and their cook off product), and the Golden Spoon (a wooden spoon, sprayed gold and mounted in a gold sprayed can. The winner also gets a large gift basket full of all kinds of themed items.
Second Place gets a smaller basket and finally a basket for the trivia winner. This makes it interesting for the non-cooks in the crowd.
We usually have our event in March or April the time of the year that everyone is just waiting for the weather to break. Thanks for an enjoyable site. It was fun sharing.
What a fun idea, Jean! I love all of your ideas, and thanks so much for sharing them with us
Thanks for all your work on this and for sharing it all! I can’t get the link to the “chili cook off score sheet” to load. Is there another place I could try? Thanks again!
Tina, we’re happy to share and glad you are enjoying these party ideas! The scoresheet download is an Microsoft Excel format, so you’ll need Excel or a compatible program that can load a .xls file in order for it to load. If you have Excel but it’s still not loading, try right clicking on the link and choosing an option to save the file to your computer, then open it from within Excel. Hope that helps!