The York County Current

SC 4-H Youth Cook Like a Chef at Annual Summit

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Students learn to prepare nutritious blueberry quesadillas at the South Carolina 4-H Cooking Like A Chef Summit held Saturday, March 1 in Chapin. Courtesy of Stephanie Martell

By Ivy Prince

CHAPIN 4-H prepares youth for the future by teaching important life skills including cooking. South Carolina 4-H held its annual Cooking Like a Chef Summit on Saturday, March 1 in at the Center for Advanced Technical Studies in Chapin.

Middle and high school 4-Hers from eight South Carolina counties worked together in teams with professional chefs in a commercial kitchen to prepare a multi-course meal.

The Cooking Like a Chef Summit is used to teach important culinary skills and promote nutritious eating. Youth learn food safety, knife skills and techniques from professional chefs, extension workers and Clemson graduate students. This summit brings youth from across the state of South Carolina together through a love of food. 

Menu

Veggie Waffles
Holiday Honey Crisp Salad

At the summit, youth explore different flavors and textures. Some find surprisingly delicious recipes, and some find what they don’t like. It’s important as a chef to know what you like and what you don’t like, and most importantly, how to make it better. 

The youth prepared and ate a full course meal. They prepared sweet and creamy blueberry quesadillas for a delicious snack. They made a sweet and tangy Italian fruit salad and a holiday honey crisp salad that highlighted the use of apples. For a side, they made an acidic tomato soup and pimento cheese sandwiches.

Youth learned new ways to modify recipes to make them more nutritious. For the pimento cheese sandwiches, youth learned they could use Greek yogurt in place of mayonnaise as a healthier modification. Other items on the menu were pasta with greens, chicken and beans; turkey spinach sliders with cranberry and mozarella, and Mexican stuffed bell peppers.

There was also a competition simulation where students worked in teams to follow a recipe while being judged. The teams created chicken, broccoli and velouté sauce in a skillet.  

Youth also took home a recipe book filled with meals they can make at home and teach to younger students during Cooking Like A Chef camps this summer.

Activities

The summit lasted from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. During this time, county teams participated in activities that trained them to cook like a chef and learned about nutrition, recipe modifications, kitchen safety and cooking techniques.

Youth began the day working in teams to create a full course meal. They took rotations to help with multiple aspects of the meal. Once the meal was ready, one youth from each team presented a dish they helped to make. They described the process it took to make the dish and its ingredients. Then, the participants had the opportunity to try each dish and critique it with the people at their tables.

One of the favorite dishes was the zucchini brownies. After eating, it was back to work. The group split up, sending four teams back into the kitchen to do the simulated competition and the other half to learn about recipe modification and nutrition. After about an hour and a half, they both switched.

The simulated competition was a practice round for the real state cooking competition coming up on April 16th in Florence. Each team had a score sheet and a judge watching them. The judge would watch for proper food safety, knife skills, understanding of the recipe and its nutrition values.

L-R Ivy Prince, Maddie Lorey and Anna Kahn, second from right, of the Horry County team present their plated meals in the simulated cooking competition with Chef Chad Carter of the Clemson Cooperative Extension Food Systems and Safety Team, center, and student judge Evie Martell of York County during the Cooking Like A Chef summit in Chapin. Courtesy of Rome Prince

Students had one hour to complete the recipe and have it plated. They must be creative when plating to make the food look appetizing and uniform. At the end, the judges gave constructive feedback, giving tips on what the teams should work on before the state competition.

Alex, a grad student at Clemson University who will be graduating in May in hopes of becoming a dietician, presented a lesson about recipe modification. She explained the different reasons why a recipe might be modified, such as dietary restrictions, religious or cultural reasons, nutrition and affordability.

The youth discussed how the recipes they made had modifications to improve nutrition. They learned they should be eating 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day and different ways they can make that happen like adding zucchini in your brownies or shredded vegetables in your waffles. 

4-Hers participated in this training to prepare for the State Competition and to run cooking camps for their respective counties during the summer.

L-R: Dr. Margaret “Marge” Condrasky, 4-H Healthy Lifestyles Program Specialist, congratulates Natalie Estes, Addie Page, Evie Martell, Dacy Freeman and Kolby Allen of York County upon completion of the Cooking Like a Chef Summit in Chapin.