At Last: My Much-Needed Overhaul For Scoring Cooking Contests

I get invited to judge food contests a lot. I have even done a couple of Burger Bashes (although for some reason I can't grasp I don't get invited back anymore.) But I've done lesser versions of the same event, and even competed in a few of them. Like competition barbecue, they are a noble idea undone by their judging system. I want to reform all cooking contests everywhere, and give you a good template for your own contest. And that's what I've done.

Most cooking contests use some variation of the following system: 2-9 points for taste, 2-9 points for tenderness, 2-9 points for originality, and 2-9 points for appearance.  Can you believe how dumb this is? I'm going to bracket out the idiocy of separating taste from texture, since texture influences how you taste food in more ways than you can ever know. But, even setting that aside, taste is obviously far and away the most important thing you can look at when considering food. It is the work of a mindless moment to think of three or four categories and set them aside each other on the same scale. But these contests have been going on for years! And appearance scores continue to weigh equally with taste.

As for originality, don't even get me started. Originality is a completely neutral value when it comes to food, and the reason is obvious: people have been eating for a long time. Therefore most of the good things to eat have already been invented. Which means that most of the new things are bad. (In biology, this fact accounts for why so few mutations are passed along to future generations.) Moreover, the effect of novelty is so strong on the human mind that a truly original dish will generally seem a lot better than it is.

So when given the opportunity to create a new burger contest for Baldor Foods, I jumped at the chance. My criteria are as follows:

Enjoyability (1-10 points): How good is it, strictly in terms of flavor / texture / temperature? Because all three of these things are important, and it's asking too much of a person eating a dozen hamburgers to separate out sensations no human being would ordinarily be conscious of.

Edibility (1-5 points): How well-constructed is it? Does it fall apart? Are all the elements present in each bite? Is it a huge nasty mess, or a clean, compact, well-thought out dish?

I feel that this is the single most overlooked part of sandwich cooking, and cooks need to be penalized / rewarded for it far more than they currently are. Typically, a judge will take one bite of a burger, and will do the cook the favor of arranging the elements into that bite. Forget that! A big unwieldy mess that falls apart the second you look at it is a discrace and deserves to be a contest-killer.

Integrity (1-5 points): Is this burger good because it's a really well-made burger, or because it has other elements (foie gras, pastrami, etc.) that you like? A burger that was just beef on bread would get a 5; a huge dagwood that has a shrimp patty at its center would be a 1.

Again, this is something I don't think is looked at enough. The spirit of these events should be ignored at their own peril. In competition barbecue, the cooks frequently make ribs or chicken that are closer to pudding or stew than barbecue, but that's what the degenerates recruited to judge these events like. This category would put an end to this perversion of cookery.

Highest score is the winner; and judges are allowed to choose their favorite in event of a tie.

I'll be judging the Baldor Burger Battle of the Club Chefs (don't ask), but these criteria will fit any contest, from the White Castle Cook-Off to the Bocuse d'Or. If you see some kind of chili faceoff in your future - and you should, because they are super fun - I would urge you to give my system a try. I'm going to take a run at convincing the Burger Bash, but I doubt they will heed my advice. I'm a radical, a revoutionary, a rebel. But you have to give me points for originality.