The competitive edge

On your mark, get set, cook

By Ashley Griffin Gartland

September 24, 2007

Do you devote your free time to cooking fanciful meals? Do you tune into every episode of “Iron Chef”? Do you consider cookbooks redundant, because you always make up your own recipes?

Have you considered entering a recipe contest?

Recipe contests have been an American institution since the 1800s, when agricultural fairs started hosting cooking competitions as a way of attracting female fairgoers. Today, millions of hopeful cooks enter the nation’s more than 100 national and locally sponsored contests every year, as well as the countless smaller contests hosted by state and county fairs.

Creative recipes can win more than a place in a box.

Contest thresholds range from low (entering a recipe in an online contest) to high (elaborate face-to-face cook-offs with other competitors in a big city). Some contests limit entry to industry chefs or home cooks, although few make stipulations about the age, gender, or geographic location of participants.

Competitions may cover multiple courses (such as the online contest held by Allyson’s Kitchen in Ashland, Oregon, boasting categories for appetizers, soups and salads, entrées, desserts, and à la carte dishes) or narrow their parameters to recipes using a specific ingredient (chicken) or certain brands (California Ripe Olives).

A third version limits the contest to a single dish, requesting the best possible version of favorites like cleverly topped burgers or chewy chocolate-chip cookies. Dish contests are popular with magazines, such as the competitions hosted by Better Homes and Gardens, Cooking for 2, and Cook’s Country.

Once upon a county fair, recipe contests handed out blue ribbons and kudos. Today’s competitions reward winners with everything from T-shirts and recipe publication in local media to kitchen remodels and trips abroad.

The contestants vying for these prizes constitute a large subculture of cooks who avidly scour websites and magazines for upcoming contests. Being a good cook alone is not enough, as the key strength of culinary competitors is creativity within familiar flavor parameters. If you simply cannot cook without a recipe to guide you, then recipe contests are not for you.

Successful cooking competitors must not only be interested in cooking but also harbor a drive to succeed, an ability to handle rejection, and a love of good food. Their interest often mushrooms out of cooking habits absorbed in childhood. “When I was growing up, I used to spend summers at my grandparents’ farm in Warrenton, North Carolina; they raised their meat and grew everything,” says Cheryl Perry, a soon-to-be caterer in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, who has entered more than 300 contests over the last three years. “I watched my grandma throw together awesome meals for the farmhands that worked for them and our large family. I thought it was creative the way she could do it and I wanted to do it, too, so she taught me a lot.”

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A background rich with culinary experience generally assures that competitors have mastered basic cooking skills, making for an easy transition to creative cooking. Competitors often try their hands at a broad range of cuisines, though others sometimes specialize in a single genre, such as baking. Some even narrow their focus to a particular dish, developing top talents and winning prizes with a practiced competency.

Such was the case for Cleveland-based competitor Carole Resnick, a 62-year-old retired woman who hails from a long line of bakers and sent more than 50 entries to the Pillsbury Bake-Off this year. (Also known as “the big dance” among competitors, the Pillsbury Bake-Off is the apex of recipe contesting, drawing contestants from all corners of the nation with its impressive $1 million prize.)

“My grandmother and her four sisters would hold their version of the Pillsbury Bake-Off every Sunday afternoon. Each Sunday we would meet at rotating homes for a coffee,” Resnick recalls. “Each sister would bring some type of baked good to the table. They would each feel, smell, and taste each of the offerings. Then each would proclaim herself the winner for no prize but boasting rights. So competitive cooking was instilled in my blood at a very early age.”

Contestants at the 2006 Pillsbury Bake-Off. The grand prizewinner, Anna Ginsberg of Texas, is on the right.

But contestants need not be longtime competitive cooks like Resnick to go on the recipe-contest circuit. Contesting experience is less important than cooking talent and, above all, the ability to focus on the fine print, since every contest has precise rules that must be strictly followed. Rules typically address the contest categories, the number of entries contestants can submit, and the proper submission method. Contestants who submit previously published recipes are usually disqualified immediately.

The gateway resource for recipe competitions is Cooking Contest Central, also known as the CCC. Former food journalist Betty Parham founded the CCC a decade ago, back before food blogs and the Food Network had taken over our virtual kitchens. Today, the CCC website, which Parham runs from her home in Lafayette, Colorado, boasts a regularly updated list of contests and, for an annual $25 membership fee, provides an online community for competitors.