Chefs get cracking at Egg Fest
About 200 to 250 residents collected on the north side of Dot's Ace Hardware on Saturday, egg-specting to pay $15 for a variety of breakfast casseroles—and they weren't disappointed.
The most notable part of Texarkana's seven-hour EggFest wasn't the food, but what it was cooked in—Big Green Egg cookers.
For the third year since 2011, Dot's Ace Hardware, which sells the unique egg-shaped green cookers, hosted the celebration honoring these grills and the 14 cooking teams present at the event.
While six of the 14 teams were local, with other coming from such places as Dallas, Little Rock, Bentonville, Hot Springs, Austin and Garland, Texas, said Demita Torrens, Dot's employee and former Texarkana Chamber of Commerce board president.
“This year, we decided to hold the EggFest in March so we wouldn't be competing with other EggFests,” Torrens said. “We will probably keep hosting these annual EggFests from now on—in the early springtime period, if it doesn't rain.”
Torrens added that the purpose of EggFest is giving people a chance to sharpen their cooking skills while using the ceramic, egg-shaped cookers. Invented by Tucker, Ga., resident Ed Fisher in 1974, the cookers are still sold in hardware stores.
Big Green Eggs come in seven sizes, from mini to extra, extra large, said Nick Bianchini of Dallas-based Paragaon Distributing Co., which sells the cookers.
“You can bake, grill and smoke in these cookers,”
Bianchini said.
Torrens' son, Nicholas Liu, said his specialty is cooking candied bacon with brown sugar and a pepper twist.
“I love seeing people passionate about cooking with the Big Green Egg,” he said.