Spice Drops

Hi,

Does anyone know what the underlying philosophies are of the spice drops used by competitive chili cooks?

It seems that they have an initial drop after the chili first hits a boil, the heat is turned down and then there are drops every 30 minutes or so for roughly 2 hours.

Anyone familiar with this? Is the first drop the basics (salt, pepper, etc), the second mild spices and the last serious spices? Is there a method to the layering?

Thanks!

Eric Devlin

At first, I thought you meant these:

http://www.candywarehouse.com/spicedrops.html

Well, I do add some dark chocolate, but that's as crazy as I get.


Eric

My guess is would be they cook down peppers and chilies to gather the oils. Maybe they add this in stages to maintain heat/flavor? I've never seen this done before, but it does tweak my curiosity now.