Eating insects at the World Porridge Championships

In the village hall (standing room only) heats are being contested by 26 porridge-makers. An electronic clock ticks off the 30 minutes contestants are allowed to make and finesse their dishes. The Golden Spurtle has been held here almost every year since 1994 and in that time has caught the imagination of cooks across the world.

Throughout the day kilted volunteers are offering free tots of whisky to the audience. Any event that comes with a limitless supply of free drams deserves to succeed, but the Golden Spurtle doesn’t really need any assistance.

This event might initially have been hatched as a maverick idea to inject some giddy-up into the village economy at the end of the summer season, but it’s developed into something crucial. This is an authentic and culturally important Scottish success story and all of it achieved largely without recourse to the insidious embrace of a corporate marketing bureau.

Scotland – home of the deep fat fryer – is also being promoted as the brand leader of the world’s healthiest foodstuff.

I’m introduced to Roger Reed, the retired hotelier who created the event as a way of promoting Carrbridge. The story behind the birth of the Golden Spurtle has passed into local legend. “I was a member of the community council at the time, says Roger, “and the idea of the porridge-making competition occurred to me as I was walking my dog in the woods behind 
my hotel. I then went straight to the Ecclefechan restaurant, owned by my friend, Duncan Hilditch, and together we hatched the plan, involving a few basic rules. We would also be promoting a very healthy food in which Scotland has been specialising for hundreds of years.”

The rules are simple: Oatmeal. Water. Salt. Period. Yet the outcomes are gloriously diverse. A Speciality Porridge contest runs alongside the main one in which other ingredients can be added. Which is why the perfumed aromas of distant lands waft through the packed village hall.

Carrbridge is home to around 700 souls and it seems most of them are involved in this event. For several months each year, scores of volunteers are resolved to making this event shimmy. Yet, like the stalwart grain it celebrates, nothing much has been added in the 28 years of its existence; only its global renown.

Charlie Miller’s name badge tells me he’s on the Porridge Committee. “This is a proper community effort and always has been,” he says. “Our original sponsors were Hamlyn’s (the Scottish porridge-makers) and they have been with us ever since. There’s no contract and our agreement proceeds on trust and goodwill.

“They help us with promotion and PR and respect the integrity of what we do. Other larger brands have tried to muscle in over the years, but we’re not interested. This is not about making piles of money, it’s about promoting this place and encouraging people to eat a very healthy and very Scottish product.”

Charlie makes around 400 wooden spurtles each year, around 50 of which will be used by today’s competitors. He has no training or background in woodwork, yet there is genuine craft in the grooves and indentations that provide the consistency required of elite oatmanship.

Read More: Glasgow has lost out on Eurovision. So what?

They sell at a fiver a pop and I tell Charlie he could easily get £7.50 for them. But he’s a canny Highlander. “Perhaps,” he says. “But if you’ve got a tenner it’s sometimes less fuss just to buy two of them.”

In 2009, the community hatched another simple but inspired chunk of marketing genius: International World Porridge Day. Its purpose has been to encourage others to raise money for charity by organising their own porridge events. Mary’s Meals, the Scottish charity that provides 
porridge-based meals each year for almost one million of the world’s poorest children, is its chosen partner.

Lisa Williams, who won the 2022 Porridge World Championships (Image: Peter Jolly)

One of this year’s competitors is Izhar Khan, a former porridge champion and consultant kidney specialist in Aberdeen. “The health benefits of porridge are incalculable,” he says. “Countless studies have shown its benefits in halting all kinds of ailments and diseases, including diabetes, while its cholesterol-lowering properties are already well-known. I make a bowl every morning and the 20 minutes or so I spend making it alone are therapeutic. And all of this is achieved by a simple bag of good old-fashioned Scottish oatmeal.”

The day’s most heroic efforts, though, probably belong to the three judges who must munch their way through all of the entries, making notes on them all and choosing the ultimate Grain of Truth.

They are led by Neil Mugg, one of Scotland’s top chefs and include the food writer and 2022 Masterchef finalist Sarah Rankin and the New Zealand chef Kirsten Gilmour ,who owns and runs the renowned Bothy Bakery in Grantown-on- Spey.

So how many distinctive characteristics can there be in a dish that requires just water, salt and oatmeal, even though it be the king of grains? “Those six finalists,” says Sarah, “produced completely different-looking bowls: colour, texture, flavour, thickness, thinness. You would be amazed.”

According to Neil there are a few basics required to separate the wheat from the chaff. “Ideally, we’re looking for a golden colour and that comes from having good oats. We’re looking for a consistency that’s not soupy and we don’t want one that’s too thick. And you need to make sure it’s cooked out. They’ve all got 30 minutes to cook it and if you’re using a coarser oatmeal, then you need all of that.”

And then there’s the salt factor. I’m strictly a Saxa man myself, although I’m aware of chi-chi condiments like rock salt and sea salt. Neil mentions Himalayan salt, which surely must fall into the category 
of haut-cuisine. And there are porridge noodles. Of course.

“In the current economic climate, energy is becoming cripplingly expensive,” says Neil, “so people are reverting to simpler foods. I was told of a food bank where people were being choosy about the foods to take home, opting for those that required less time to cook. Porridge answers that need too. It’s a mother recipe: you can make it sweet; you can make it savoury. It’s a slow-release energy food that sustains you for the day.”

This year’s Golden Spurtle winner is Lisa Williams, who runs Stennetts Community Cafe in Suffolk, supporting people with learning challenges. She has been entering this contest for five years, though her family is steeped in the rhythms of this place. “My mum and dad had their honeymoon here and we’ve been holidaying here for years.”

I take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to solicit some free tips from a world champ. “My porridge often looks like the stuff you hang your wallpaper with. And sometimes it tastes like it too. Help me make it better, Lisa,” I implore.

She ventures to explain the science of the Spurtle, “Harry Potter’s Porridge wand,” as she calls it. “I use a 50/50 mixture of pinhead oatmeal and regular oatmeal. And I add soft sea salt. And then I make it low and slow, a method from the Swedes.”

I repeat her instructions silently to myself: “Low and Slow. Low and Slow.” And I resolve to scour Glasgow’s food emporiums for that soft sea salt.

And so I leave Anne to have her picture taken beside the packhorse bridge – the oldest in the Highlands – built over the River Dulnain. It’s a tradition mirroring the St Andrews Open golf champion being snapped on the Swilken Bridge. But this little ceremony is much more vital.