CRESTVIEW— An award-winning home chef has added a feather to her toque blanche.
Sherri Williams, who won Crock-Pot’s Crockin’ in the USA contest in December, started last weekend on a high note with a phone call from NBC.
“Someone from the ‘Today’ show called,”she said. “I had entered the Chicken Wing Cook-Off. She gave me a call and told me I was one of the three winners. I’ll be going up there on Jan. 31 for a live airing on Feb. 1.”
The contest — which the daily morning chat show ran Jan. 8-16 — asked cooks to submit their favorite chicken wing recipe. Williams was among three winners selected to go New York to share her recipe with a live national audience.
She won’t be entirely among strangers.
“The good thing about it is one of my foodie friends is one of the other winners,” she said.
After flying to New York, Williams will attend a rehearsal the afternoon of Jan. 31. The live show will be the next morning. Because she won’t do the actual cooking, she had to ensure the recipe was precise.
Reason enough to cook up another batch of wings“just to be sure,” she said.
“Their food stylists are going to do the actual preparing of the wings,” Williams said. “The recipe has to be exact when someone else is making them. If I was doing it, I could tweak them a little.”
The key ingredient to Williams’ Asian scorpion pepper jelly wings is Uncle Gary’s Gourmet Scorpion Pepper Jelly, bottled commercially by Williams’ friend Gary Langer from his father’s recipe. It gives the wings a spicy kick, said Williams, who wondered whether the “Today” hosts’ palates would be up to the challenge.
“I hope they realize they’re going to be spicy,” she said. “They’re pretty darn good. You can enjoy the flavor of the wing and then you get the heat in the back of your palate.”
Williams said her husband Roy isn’t fond of spicy food, but agreed the wings were outstanding.
Then the heat caught up with him.
“ ‘Oh baby, these are hot!’ ” she said he exclaimed.
“Even if you don’t want to use scorpion pepper jelly, you can use a mild pepper jelly,” Williams said. “The flavor is in the Asian spices. You can use any jam or jelly.”
Williams, who manages a condominium complex in Destin, said the NBC caller asked her how many recipe contests she’s won.
It was the first time she actually stopped to think about it.
“I never sat down and counted them,” Williams said. “It was like over 30 in less than 21 months. Most of those were won in 2012. I never realized how many I’ve won.
“I thought, ‘Oh goodness, I’m the crazy contest maniac,’ but I figure I’ve got to cook anyway so I might as well enter it in a contest. Cooking is my love and passion. I just enjoy doing it more than anything, and that’s the truth of the matter.”
Crestview News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes can be reached at 850-682-6524 or brianh@crestviewbulletin.com. Follow him on Twitter @cnbBrian.