In 2020, I was on a camping trip with my Swedish friend, driving through Carrbridge – a village in the Scottish Highlands about two hours from where I live in Aberdeenshire – when we passed a sign saying “Welcome to the Home of the World Porridge Championship”.
It triggered a vague memory of seeing the competition on the news as a child. When my friend looked it up, he found out that the last few winners had actually been Swedish. He started teasing me, saying: “We’re better at making porridge than you.” So I thought, “We’ll see about that.” Two years later, I ended up entering the competition myself.
I work as an app developer, but I’m a decent cook. I’m self-taught – I had a bad bout of food poisoning from a restaurant about 20 years ago, when I was 26, and didn’t fully trust anyone else’s cooking after that. In 2020, I even started a YouTube channel where I cook on camping trips. However, I had no idea what I was getting into when I entered the competition.
It was set up in 1996 to raise the profile of Carrbridge and of porridge as a healthy food. It pulls in people from all over the world, from India to Australia. Anyone can apply, and then the competitors are randomly picked from a ballot, as there are only 30 spaces. It’s entirely run by volunteers from Carrbridge – they’re really proud of the event and work on it for about 10 months of the year. It’s a wholesome and welcoming community.
There are two parts to the contest. The first involves making “traditional porridge”, in which you’re only allowed three ingredients: water, oats and salt. Then, there’s a speciality competition where you can make anything you like as long as it contains oats. You have to make them simultaneously on a camping stove, and with only half an hour on the clock.
There are five heats of six people, and a grand final at the end of the day with the best six people. The judges’ criteria are based on taste, texture, colour and seasoning, but they don’t give feedback so it’s hard to know what they like and dislike.
The first year I entered, I didn’t get through my heat. Afterwards, I thought that if I took it a bit more seriously, I could probably do pretty well. So I started experimenting with different blends of oats and salts. I entered in 2023, and got to the final.
By then, I had the porridge-making bug. Ahead of the competition last year, I started looking at the process more scientifically. Oats are 60% starch, so I did some reading and discovered that starch starts to go through a process called gelatinisation between 60C (140F) and 92C, where it absorbs the most water. But the research I found suggested that above 92C it starts to burst, which creates a sort of wallpaper paste texture. So I used a thermometer to keep my porridge under 92C – I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before. I also used Himalayan pink rock salt, as it has a slight sweetness to it.
Much to my surprise, I won. Adam, who had won the year before, was the first to come up and congratulate me. It’s a really supportive community.
It’s also a much bigger event than I realised. There are a few hundred spectators in the village hall where it takes place, and thousands watching via a live stream. People cheer and chant like it’s a football match.
Being the world porridge-making champion is slightly strange. I often get people talking to me about it in the pub because they recognise me from the local press. There is even a film about the competition, The Golden Spurtle, which comes out this month.
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This year’s championship is in October, and I’m preparing to defend my title. I’ve been practising my speciality porridge – I’m trying to make a vegan cheese fondue out of oats. I’m also messing around with different salts for my traditional porridge – I may try to blend some Bolivian pink salt with some Himalayan pink salt.
It’s amazing what you can do with porridge. I used to think it was gloopy and bland, but all the competitors taste each other’s, and no two are the same. It’s remarkable the variety in something with so few ingredients. There’s more to porridge than people realise.
As told to Daniel Dylan Wray
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