THINGS are starting to heat up ahead of next month’s Great Dorset Chilli Festival.

This year organisers are hoping to find the best chilli cook in the county. The team is hosting the regional heat of a national chilli cook-off competition on the Sunday of the weekend festival at Wimborne St Giles. Teams have four hours to cook a gallon of chilli con carne (or vegetarian chilli) from scratch, using their own combination of ingredients and spices.

The winner goes forward to the national finals of the World Food Championships in Las Vegas.

Festival visitors will also get to taste the entries by paying a donation to the CLIC Sargent children’s cancer charity in exchange for a sampling spoon.

Amateur chilli plant growers are welcome to enter their plants for either the open class or the Numex Twilight variety class, while the pros, namely Dorset-based chilli and vegetable seeds specialists Sea Spring Seeds, will be displaying the best examples of this year’s crop.

The festival at St Giles Park, home of the Earl of Shaftesbury, runs from 10am to 5pm on August 2 and 3.