Chili Cook-off Voting Ballots and Scoresheets
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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. This year's party will be fun as always, especially with our brand new chili cook-off party printables collection. I'm really looking forward to all the yummy chili recipes that I'll get to sample from our friends.
The most important element of a chili cook-off (besides the chili!) is the voting system. There are many different ways to choose a chili cook-off winner, including ballots and scoresheets. We've tried different voting systems over the years, and have come up with four different chili cook-off voting system ideas to share with you.
System #1: Simple one-vote ballots
This is by far the easiest system to set up and execute, and works great for cook-offs with large groups of casual tasters, and only a few chili entries to be judged. After sampling all the chilis, judges will take a voting ballot and write the number of their favorite on the ballot. The ballots are placed into a marked container and counted at the end of the sampling period. The chili with the most votes wins! You can even give 2nd and 3rd place prizes to the chilis with next highest votes.
These ballots are available in printable PDF form as part of our complete chili cook-off party printables set on Etsy.
System #2: One-at-a-time chili scorecards
If you have more serious judges who want to score chili entries on multiple criteria, and they don't necessarily want to sample every chili available, our one-at-a-time chili scorecard system is perfect. Using one scorecard per tasted chili, the judge will write the chili number at the top, score it 1-5 for each criteria, then put the total score at the bottom. Judges can sample as many chilis as they like, and there's no pressure to choose an overall favorite. When completed, the scorecards are placed into a marked container. At the end of the judging period, choose the winner based on which chili has the highest average score. You can also use the individual criteria scores to award extra prizes for such as Most Creative or Spiciest.
These scorecards are available in printable PDF form as part of our complete chili cook-off party printables set on Etsy, and there's even an editable Word DOC version included if you want to change the criteria to suit your cook-off.
System #3: All-at-once chili scorecards
This system is for the most serious judges who want to score all entries at once in order to choose a winner. This works especially well for cook-offs with very few judges and lots of chili entries. Each judge is given a single scorecard on which all entries are to be judged. As each chili is sampled, the number is written on the card, and scores are given for each criteria. The totals are added up, and the winner is the one with the highest score.
These scorecards are available in printable PDF form as part of our complete chili cook-off party printables set on Etsy, and there's even an editable Word DOC version included if you want to change the criteria to suit your cook-off.
System #4: Category voting ballots
This system works great if you want to have multiple categories of prizes, and want the judges to choose which category each chili falls into as well as score it for its taste. Because each chili is scored individually on its own merits, this works well for cook-offs with large numbers of entries (so many that most judges won't be able to sample them all). As each chili is sampled, the judge uses one ballot to choose which category it fits into, then gives it a score on overall taste. At the end, you separate the ballots into categories, then choose the one with the highest overall score in each category. This approach lets you award the "Most Creative" and "Best Traditional Chili" awards to the entries that fit those categories AND taste great too.
These ballots are available in printable PDF form as part of our original chili cook-off printables collection available on Etsy. It even comes with an editable version and also has an accompanying spreadsheet that makes all the score calculations easy.
22 comments so far:
Thank you for making the invitations, chili entry numbers on the cute pots and tally sheets. 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!
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 :)
Your site is great, i'm getting so many ideas and the voting ballots are super cute. I do my cookoff on Labour day and insist that everyone wear white. Its the last day off the year to wear white and everyone has fun with it because it is such a messy cookoff:)
Julia, that is so funny! I can't imagine what would unfold if my friends dressed in white and tried to keep chili spills at bay. Our friend Rita in particular would have a terrible time! :)
Hey thanks so much for the GREAT ideas on the chili cook off. We are going to be having one at work and this is such a great way to bring it all together! Whoot I cant wait.
How fortunate I was to stumble across your site. Your templates are adorable and the scoring method is a real time saver that will be attractive to attendees. I can also see that there are other areas for me to explore after I get my ladle out of the chili! Mucho Thanks!!!
Thank you so much! The templates are by far the cutest I have seen. Love your site.
I was looking for ideas on how to have people vote if their own dish is in the cookoff, i.e., vote for your own plus one other?
Amy, we usually ask people not to vote for their own chili. If you think your guests might be too sneaky to comply, then just ask them not to vote at all. :)
Have you ever conducted a chili contest by just asking guests to vote for their favorite chili by putting a bean in a little cup next to the chili instead of going through this ballot process? The chili with the most beans wins the trophy and the chili with the second most beans is the runner-up? What do you think?
Connie, we have done a similar voting style before but opted against it because we felt like having the votes visible in the cup ruined the surprise of who won. It's definitely an easy system, though, so give it a try!
Hello - just wondering if anyone has creative ideas on how to label the pot's that are vegetarian or vegan?
Julie, you could easily edit the customizable chili pot labels in our chili cook-off printables kit to say "vegetarian" instead of a number, then use those to label appropriate entries.