NC State Fair Home Chef Challenge holds Brunswick stew contest

Eleven different home chefs lined up behind a horseshoe counter in the North Lobby of the J.S. Dorton Area, each carrying a pot of Brunswick stew that had been pre-cooked off-site and brought to the table one by one. The scene on Saturday, Oct. 24 marked the “Stew-pendous” Brunswick Stew Challenge at the N.C. State Fair, dailytarheel.com reported, bringing together regional culinary tradition and competitive recipe tweaks.

Tradition Meets Creativity in the North Lobby

The competition forms part of the fair’s Home Chef Challenge, an 11-day event where a different food topic dictates the daily menu. Ruth Toole designed this year’s categories to highlight regional agriculture, incorporating staple crops like sweet potatoes and peanuts into specialized contests like the SweetPotato Showdown and the “Nutty by Nature” Peanut Candy Challenge. My goal is to try to make it related to North Carolina products, Toole said. And sweet potatoes and peanuts, those are two primary agricultural products grown here in North Carolina. Additional contests take a broader approach, such as the “Delightful Dips” Challenge and the “Layer it Up” Lasagna Challenge, which simply mandate the preparation of a designated food.

For the Brunswick stew contest, eleven participants presented variations ranging from spicy to sweet, drawing on a dish with roots in Georgia and Virginia. Announcer Fabrizio Bianchi kept the room engaged between rounds by delivering trivia about regional stew origins while judges ate and rated the dishes. Bianchi introduced the trivia after noticing dead air during his first weekend on the job, opting to fill the gaps while scores were tallied. I did it last weekend and it would just be like, after I finished announcing the recipe, just five to ten minutes of silence, Bianchi said. And I thought, okay, it’d be nice to spice it up.

Scoring and Standings on Saturday

Judges evaluated entries on a 30-point scale measuring flavor, creativity, and presentation. Earning the top spot was Lisa Brescia and her dish called “Squirrels are Safe,” which combined duck, smoked sausage, garlic, onions, bone broth, Worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, hot sauce, and smoked paprika. Jennifer Currie, who drove five hours from Clyde, N.C., placed third with her family recipe dubbed “Savory and Bold,” which incorporates a cayenne-pepper kick passed down through generations. I’ve had Brunswick stew many times in my life, but there were so many different varieties here that I never expected, Jenkins said.

Cash prizes of $250, $150, and $100 reward the top three winners in each daily category, though many participants return year after year for the tradition itself rather than the payout alone. The competition continues across the remainder of the fair’s run, pairing amateur and professional home cooks against one another in front of public crowds.