Have you ever been in a cooking contest?

qualitygal · ‎10-04-2010

All these competition shows about cooking, right on down to cupcakes. If you did, what did you make and did you win, or what was your prize?

scotnovel · ‎12-31-2013

I've been in a few chili cookoffs. One was a large company one with dozens of entries by employees who came from all over the country. Our team did not win anything. I've also been in a couple of smaller community type chili cookoffs with just individual entries (no teams). In one I came in second.

I've entered baked goods in state and local fairs and have won some blue ribbons. Have always wanted to do one of the large ones like national Bake Off type or similar but the timing has never worked out so that is still on my bucket list.

sfnative · ‎03-10-2010

Clarification: I did not participate in a cooking show competition or bake-off or cook-off.

However, I did enter my German Quark Coffee Cake in the San Francisco County Fair. There were about 10 categories and I chose the non-yeast rise coffee cake. Having never entered such a competition before, I had no idea what would occur during the elimination process. It was extremely interesting. One of the joys in this case was that the judges, of which there were 8, were all quite famous. When I saw who was sitting at the judging table, I felt very small.

There were three elimination stages of judging. In the last stage, the judges were given, in our category, larger slices of the 10 top coffee cakes out of 300+ entries. We watched them look at the bottom of the cake, grab a small piece and roll it gently between their fingers, smelled the product more than the first or second round and then ate the larger piece.

I was very fortunate to win and have my photo and recipe published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Also received $250.00 and an Italian cookbook.

Toppers · ‎01-01-2015

That sounds fascinating, sfnative. I have wondered what it would be like to enter a baked item in one of our fairs. Thanks for the explanation. Now I know! Smile

chickenbutt · ‎03-09-2010

Done a few things in the way-past but nothing major.

My husband is always saying, especially when we are watching some sort of cooking competition show on tv, 'you should be on that show - you'd beat them all'. Uh, not so much. I could not possibly do that as I'd be like 'don't rush me'. ha! Plus, because of my extreme food neuroses, I can't cook with ingredients that I find repugnant.

So, he says 'then you should be a judge'. Uh, no! I could not taste food that has ingredients I don't like. They'd have to put a bucket next to me. hehe

I'm amazed at what people do, especially in some of these cooking competition shows. I'd crack under pressure big time, although I can cook with the best of them. I just have to have ideal conditions.