Calling all MCO home chefs: Share your alcohol-infused recipes with us and win!

Since the Movement Control Order (MCO) was declared some two months ago, some of us may have found ourselves doing things we’ve never dreamt of doing before, like writing e-mails in our undies, pursuing the arts (and crafts), or finally caving in and downloading TikTok. Heck, you might even find yourself actually using that treadmill you bought five years ago, and not just as a place for the laundry you’re too lazy to fold.

But perhaps the most common activity Malaysians picked up during the MCO is cooking your own food, since deliveries are expensive, and it burns off at least two hours off of your day. Plus you can use the buying groceries excuse to go out shopping. For many, the MCO presented the opportunity to explore new culinary horizons, either by trying out new recipes or innovating on existing ones.

Some may be content to slap a slice of cheese on their Maggi curry and call it the next big gourmet sensation. Others may be more adventurous in their cooking, using spices only known to the most aunty of aunties, or applying cooking methods that can only be pronounced in French. Granted, not every dish that comes out of this will be good, but once in a while, you’ll end up with something so delicious, it will bring tears to your eyes. And not just because of all the onions and chili.

We’re all about these deliciously innovative creations, so Cilisos, together with Chivas Regal, would like to see what kind of culinary delights Malaysians came up with during the MCO… through a contest!

Tell us your best alcohol-infused recipe, and stand a chance to win sos and booze!

In case you haven’t heard of Chivas Regal before, they’re an international blend of scotch whisky under the Pernod Ricard company, and during these pandemic times they’ve started some initiatives to help out, like repurposing their distilleries to make hand sanitizer and running local campaigns to help out businesses in need, among other things.

Which brings us to the theme of the contest: recipes that include alcohol. Alcohol can be an intimidating ingredient for beginner cooks. However, if you’re brave enough to try it, alcohol can raise your cooking game to a whole new level, either by adding and concentrating the flavor of sauces, tenderizing meat, or simply by giving you the extra patience to wait for the onions to caramelize.

For example, you can always just make a simple caramel sauce to drizzle on your ice cream by boiling some sugar and butter together, but adding whisky to the recipe will make for a fancier late-night ice-cream experience. All the better if the whisky you’re using has its own complementary flavor profile, like maybe using Chivas 18 for a touch of buttery toffee and dark chocolate aroma.

The possibilities are as endless as the kinds of alcoholic beverages out there, so you can submit recipes that call for any kind of alcohol, be it beer, rum, vodka, whisky, or even cooking wine. As for what kind of recipes, it’s up to your innovation and creativity. You have to be 18+ and non-Muslim, to enter, though, for obvious reasons. If you pass those criteria, we’ll accept any dish or cocktail recipes, as long as it uses some form of alcohol in it! But if you use whisky from Chivas got extra points la *wink wink*.

But wait, you might say. What do I get out of this? Well, we’ll be choosing five of your best submissions to publish into an article, and those who make the cut will each receive a set of exclusive, super spicy Cilisos-sos that you can use in your next recipe! But that’s not all. On top of the Cilisos-sos, the recipe we like the most out of the five will also get a bottle of Chivas Regal 12 worth RM238, which you can also buy from Chivas’s official store here !

Cool! And if you don’t have a recipe ready, don’t worry. The contest will be open until 31 May 2020, so you still have some time to experiment (and have some fun while you’re at it). But if you already have a dish or drink in mind, what are you waiting for? Fill up the form below now!