Oat-standing: 4 Canadians in the running for world porridge prize
Scottish village draws best porridge makers in the world to timed cook-off
Thirty minutes, two burners, oats, water and salt.
That's the essence of the World Porridge Making Championship, which takes place in the small village of Carrbridge, Scotland next weekend.
No Canadian participants were to be found at last year's competition, but a CBC documentary about the event led to a surge of Canadian entries for the 2019 championship.
Four of the 30 contestants come from Canada this year; two from Ontario and two from Alberta.
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One of them is Barbra McCaffrey, a healthcare consultant who heard the Doc Project episode while driving around Edmonton last summer.
"I immediately had three thoughts: one, that sounds like fun, two, I've never been to Scotland, and three, I can make porridge!" she said Friday in an interview with CBC's Radio Active.
She has since learned making perfect porridge is more complicated than she thought.
For more than a year, McCaffrey has been researching past winners, running science experiments in her kitchen and asking friends and coworkers to sample her creations.
She didn't want to stand out as an amateur in a field that includes professional chefs.
"I'm going for fun, but I didn't want to go there without being prepared," she said.
How the competition works
Each competitor brings their own porridge pan and spurtle, which is a wooden stirring tool that traditionally resembles the Scottish thistle.
McCaffrey will be bringing a lucky maple spurtle made by her father for the competition.
Judges consider taste, consistency, colour and the competitors' hygiene during production.
The cook who produces the best traditional porridge wins the Golden Spurtle trophy, but a second award goes to the best specialty porridge. This is where competitors' creativity comes out, as they mix their traditional porridge with ingredients of their own choosing.
Past winners of the specialty prize have created a Scottish tapas platter, sticky toffee porridge, Nordic porridge with cloudberries, and pinhead risotto with lemon, thyme and parmesan.
Calgary's Catherine Caldwell won the specialty category in 2010 with her Canadian cran-apple crunch.
McCaffrey's top-secret recipe features traditional porridge (made from ancient grain organic steel-cut Alberta oats) topped with vanilla custard and a crumble of maple syrup-candied almonds and Saskatoon berries.
The competition takes place Saturday, Oct. 12.
With files from Sheena Rossiter