On January 11th, Russellville High School hosted the first ever RHS Culinary Contest. Nine Russellville High School students competed to win $1,000 scholarships. There were 3 judges:
Brad Ray - Principal at RHS
Vivian Nicholson from Arkansas No Kid Hungry
Ken Dempsey - the Arkansas Governor's Executive Chef
The culinary students were tasked with developing, preparing and plating a delicious, nutritious, and creative vegetarian lunch recipe.
The contestants were also required to incorporate two of three secret ingredients into their dishes! These secret ingredients were not revealed until the start of the contest, adding new variables to the already challenging contest. The secret ingredients were yellow squash, arugula, dried cranberries, and radishes! Interesting right?
The contestants took on the challenge skillfully, and created flavorful, savory dishes such as stroganoff, mushroom burgers, rice bowls, tostadas and more.
The top 3 winners all received $1,000 scholarships to go towards their educational journeys.
The students and their winning dishes were as follows:
1st- Top Chef Award - Katelynn Land (senior) - Mushroom Burger with side of apple salad
2nd - Iron Chef Award - Emily Parker (senior) - Vegetable Stroganoff with side of fruit salad
3rd - Chopped Chef Award- Lucy Sweeney (sophomore)- deconstructed vegetarian rice bowl
The other contestants did amazing work as well with two participants landing a tie for 5th place!
These students are as follows:
4th- Angel Lung
Tie 5th- Garren Skartvedt and Judit Morales-Mora
6th - Maddie Estep
7th - Constance Calahan
8th - Kathy Alverez
Congratulations to all of the students and thank you to the District’s food service company, Aramark, for making this event possible for students!