Whenever there’s a contest that involves eating, drinking or any combination of the two, you can be sure this Insider team will be all over it. And when there’s an opportunity for us to judge one of these types of competitions, it’s really a no-brainer.
It should therefore go without saying that we were thrilled when we were contacted about judging the 2018 Healthy Solutions Spice Blends Recipe Challenge at Red Arrow Diner last Tuesday. The cooking-spice company teamed up with the diner to create a contest that aimed to determine which home chef across the country could produce the best recipe using some of the company’s spices.
Healthy Solutions has been around since 2013, and this was the first year of working with a restaurant to host the competition, Healthy Solutions owner Shelly Wolcott said.
“We would like to partner with Red Arrow to do it again,” she said.
The company put out the call to all home cooks across the country to create a relatively simple, healthy recipe that could be anything, as long as it featured a Healthy Solutions spice blend in it. Then, the top five recipes, as determined by Wolcott, would be given to the kitchen staff at Red Arrow to turn the recipes into actual dishes for a panel of five judges – this Insider among them – to determine an overall winner.
For the record, I was the only judge who wasn’t a chef, restaurant owner or professional food critic, so it goes to show how much prestige our Food Snob installments have around here.
The first dish was Roasted Chickpea Pita Pockets with Avocado Garlic Cream, submitted by Kim Banick of Salem, Ore. This was a small pocket sandwich filled with chickpeas and veggies. Not being a huge chickpea fan, I found it a strange thing to base a sandwich on, but it was pretty good anyway, just not exciting.
Up next was Chicken and Riced Cauliflower Stuffed Poblanos, from Darlene Buerger of Peoria, Ariz. This was like a different take on traditional stuffed peppers. The poblano provided a bit more spice than a regular bell pepper, and it was really loaded with tender chicken and coated with melty cheese. Not surprisingly, this barely lasted a minute on my plate before there was no evidence of its existence.
Next was Cheesy Chicken and Veggie Bake from Shanua Havey of Roy, Utah – last year’s champion. This was served in the type of small dish that baked stuffed seafood usually comes in, and it looked fairly similar. It was hot and tasty, though the chicken pieces were very tiny and it was hard to taste any of the spices in it – this dish used the poultry rub. It may have tasted better had we not just eaten a dish with significantly bigger chicken chunks and more spice.
Next came Turkey Meatloaf Stuffed Peppers from Kristen Heigl of Staten Island, N.Y. This was more like a traditional stuffed pepper, only it was a red bell pepper instead of green, and ground turkey inside rather than beef. It was good, if a little boring. There wasn’t much spice to be tasted, and the texture was pretty monotonous.
The final course was Chili Tacos Chocolate Granola Bites from Hidemi Walsh of Greenfield, Ind. Each judge received a plate with two small, dark brown morsels. These were dessert items, despite the fact that they were made with taco seasoning. Somehow, it worked pretty well, balancing the sweetness of the chocolate with the spice from the taco seasoning. Ultimately, though, they amounted to just a couple quick bites.
In the end, each judge gave the highest score to the stuffed poblanos – I gave it 8 for taste, 8 for visual appeal, 7 for creativity and 7 for crowd appeal for a total of 30 out of a possible 40. The Cheesy Chicken and Veggie Bake came in second and the Turkey Meatloaf Stuffed Pepper third.
Thanks to all of our hard work, the winner will get a $500 check for her recipe.
Go to spiceblends.com for more recap of the event, including video.
