On Thursday, Feb. 10 in the Demonstration Kitchen at the Elizabethtown College Bowers Center for Sports, Fitness and Well-being, Joni Eisenhauer, myself and five others participated in the “Soup-er Bowl.” In this presentation Eisenhauer showed us how to cook two types of chilies representing the two teams in this year’s Super Bowl. For the LA Rams we were shown how to make a vegan chili out of black and kidney beans. For the Cincinnati Bengals we learned to make a traditional Cincinnati chili recipe.
Ever since it’s opening in 2019, the Bowers Center has hosted different cooking demonstrations. In these demonstrations participants can learn how to make all sorts of interesting dishes. These lessons are also in part kitchen safety and food preparation courses. These courses help students to think outside the sandwich when cooking. Eisenhauer offers a variety of courses from quick 10-minute lessons to hour and a half long behemoths. In her 10-minute lessons, Eisenhauer presents simple recipes to students and sends them on their way. The Soup-er Bowl however is no such lesson. Every month Eisenhauer picks out a dish that is relevant to that month to do a long form one and a half hour lesson on. This February, that is the Soup-er Bowl. In the Soup-er Bowl the two teams competing this year in Super Bowl 56: the Rams and the Bengals show off their skills.
“Cincinnati is known for a specific type of chili which I think is different than perhaps if you grew up in Pennsylvania,” Eisenhauer said. And different it really is. When eating the Cincinnati chili, erase all your conceptions about what chili is. For starters this chili is served like a sauce on pasta, which was a really weird experience. The Cincinnati chili therefore did end up tasting much more like spaghetti than chili, however the chili taste was still unmistakably there, in the rather chunky nature of the sauce and the beans that were present. The cinnamon in the dish also provided an interesting, sweet flavor. One student said, “I really like it, it definitely didn’t taste as I expected it, but it’s really good, and I’d have it again.” I’d have to agree with her.
Due to Los Angeles’s warm climate, soup isn’t a traditionally significant food. So Eisenhauer had to get a little more creative in her interpretation of the city’s signature chili. “We are going with vegetarian, actually vegan chili because they have the highest rated plant-based diet,” she said. As with most vegetarian food I’ve eaten, Los Angeles’s chili is far waterier. However, in comparison to the Cincinnati chili, the soup still felt more like a traditional chili.
Although it was hard to pick a winner since both chilis were so radically different on the conceptual level, Cincinnati did win. However, everyone there said that both chilis were worth trying. The Cincinnati chili was a watery mix of ingredients more than a consistent soup. But, the lack of any meat in the LA chili did leave out what might be an essential for chili taste wise. The LA chili did still feel like chili though. Personally I’m very lazy and probably wouldn’t have given either chili a chance when the ol’ reliable chili I was raised on still tastes good. But that said, I’m glad to have tried them both. I do recommend trying both of them in case you might like them. But all in all, in a unanimous vote of six, Cincinnati won Eisenhaier’s Soup-er Bowl with a unique spin on what makes chili a chili. It’s a shame they couldn’t produce that unique spin on the 13th.
