Elizabeth Bennett’s hobby has netted her thousands of dollars, a ceramic burger sculpture and 25 pounds of cheese.
In her spare time, the Mill Creek woman enters cooking contests, more than 100 in the past several years. Using only her creative mojo and the contents of her well-stocked cupboards, she invents recipes such as oyster quesadillas and triple grande cafe latte bundt cake.
“I usually just throw open the spice cupboards and see what I happen to have,” said Bennett, a 37-year-old event planner.
Even weeknight dinners are a chance to tinker with new flavor combinations and ingredients. She’s experimenting right now with Chinese-style hot mustard and molasses. Husband Michael gamely eats the results.
“He’s a good sport for as picky an eater as he is,” she said. “He’ll eat my successes and my flops.”
Her successes have been good enough to win or place in the finals in 10 contests. Most recently she won the regional semi-finals of the Tillamook Macaroni and Cheese Recipe Contest in Seattle, taking home $1,000 and vouchers for cheese.
Her creamy, savory Pacific Northwest macaroni and cheese featured smoked salmon, red onions, several cheeses and a crunchy topping of crushed garlic bagel chips. She’ll compete Dec. 7 in the national cook-off for $5,000 and other prizes.
When it comes to cooking contests, Bennett has plenty of culinary company.
In the last decade, the popularity of cooking contests has grown faster than yeast in warm water. Cooking Contests Central, an online meeting site for contest enthusiasts, receives 40,000 page views daily, said Betty Parham, editor of the site and a former food writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Web site lists upcoming contests and not long ago, cooks might have four or five national contests a month to choose from. Now, they can enter dozens of contests monthly, Parham said. That doesn’t include the hundreds of regional and local contests across the country.
In many ways Bennett, who enjoys trawling grocery stores for unusual ingredients, fits the profile of the creative home cooks who pursue cooking contests as a hobby, Parham said. Many are lured by the competition. And some, like Bennett, emerge as standouts with a knack for ending up in the finals.
“Many of these people are home cooks, and the recipes are fantastic, they are equal to any professional chef,” she said.
Cooking contests have been a part of American culture since the pioneer days. They started at the county fair when a savvy New England promoter began calling for the best jellies, jams and pies to encourage more women to attend, Parham said.
Fair prizes then and now don’t garner much cash but a blue ribbon at the Iowa state fair comes with considerable cachet.
Modern cooking contests often come with both prestige and money. One of the best known, the Pillsbury Bake-off, offers a million-dollar cash prize to its grand prize winner.
Half a dozen other national annual contests offer prizes in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. Hundreds of others provide winners with smaller pots of money, trips and other prizes. Nearly all of the major contests come with televised cook-offs.
The companies offering all the goodies have plenty to gain, Parham said. Without much investment, the companies that sponsor the contests connect with consumers, generate positive press and acquire dozens of recipes for their products that can be used for marketing.
First-time entrants win these contests frequently, Parham said, attributing it to beginner’s luck. But there is also a core group of repeat winners.
“These people seem to know how to write a recipe,” she said. “They’ve got this sixth sense of what judges are looking for and they are just very skilled.”
If you choose to use another recipe as a starting point, the thinking is it’s not yours unless you’ve made three or four major changes, Bennett said.
She advised following contest directions to the letter and carefully proofreading recipes. In her early contest attempts she remembers goofs that got her disqualified such as listing “3/4 teaspoon salt” in the ingredients and using only 1/2 teaspoon in the directions.
Still, even she isn’t sure why some recipes make an impression on judges and others don’t.
“That’s a mystery to me,” she said. “If I could figure that out, I might have more success.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com
@1. List Subhead:Contest tips
There are no secret ingredients to winning a cooking contest, but a few things do hold true, said Betty Parham, editor of Cooking Contest Central, www.recipecontests.com, a Web site devoted to cooking contests. Her suggestions:
Follow the rules: Not following the rules to the letter can get an entrant quickly disqualified. For instance, if the rules call for a recipe written on a 3-by-5 card, don’t substitute and think it won’t matter. Use the products that are called for and get the entry in on time.
Play the name game: The recipe needs a creative and unusual name. Descriptive words that capture the feeling of the dish add to its appeal. A pizza contest recipe might be Celebration Pizza, South of the Border Pizza or Patriotic Pizza.
Know the hot food topics: Read the food magazines and keep on food trends. If Southwest flavoring is hot, consider adding a Southwest twist. Even a tried-and-true family favorite might benefit from a trendy twist, and judges seem to favor those that do.
Keep it simple: Make sure ingredients can be found at most markets. Complicated recipes don’t often win.
Appearance is important: It might taste delicious, but if it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t have a chance.
Pie contest
Know how to make a plate-licking good pumpkin pie? Enter Kusler’s third annual pumpkin pie contest.
Bring your pie and the recipe to Kusler’s, 700 Ave. D, Snohomish, between 1:30 and 2 p.m. Saturday.
Judging starts at 2 p.m.
First prize is a $300 gift certificate to the store.
Entrants should call the store ahead of time at 360-568-7787.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
