At the regional competition on March 17, our high school team won the Mise En Place award for their original recipe of Vegetable Chinese Dumplings. This award goes to the team that shows exemplary teamwork, order, and professionalism in addition to being the winning recipe from among seven other high school teams in the competition. The competition challenged teams of 3-5 students with their coach to prepare a dish in 90 minutes and encouraged them to use an original recipe highlighting local and seasonal ingredients.
OUR JR IRON CHEF STUDENT TEAM
Our team included Mia Houston and Solvei Eisenman (9th grade), Nicholas Coughlan (10th grade), and Leyi Zhang (12th grade). Our school has competed eight times, and this is the second year the school has won this award (the first LCWS high school Jr Iron Chef team to win was in 2015). The students chose the idea for their recipe in early February and worked to perfect it over six practices to ready themselves for the competition.
One of the judges, a local chef, came over and praised their work as a team and told them their dish was a “restaurant-quality appetizer,” in addition to other high praise for the components of the dish.
I have coached teams from the high school every year but one since 2010 and love seeing the students get comfortable in the kitchen and learn to troubleshoot and work together to make their dish the best they can.
— Melendy Comey, Coach and Handwork Teacher at the high school
ABOUT JR IRON CHEF VERMONT
The mission of Jr Iron Chef VT is to empower Vermont students to develop healthy eating habits through the use of whole local foods. April 11, 2008 marked the launch of the very first Jr Iron Chef VT event. The project began as a collaborative effort between two leaders in the Farm to School movement: the Burlington School Food Project (BSFP) and Vermont Food Education Every Day (VT-FEED). Over the past eleven years, over 3,000 Vermont students have crafted original recipes that highlight local and seasonal ingredients and inspire school meal programs.