Sidney Servers place third at Junior Iron Chef

Four Sidney sixth-graders teamed up to take third at the Junior Iron Chef competition at SUNY Cobleskill this past Saturday.

Sidney’s students put together a Rebel Rotini Salad. The team consisted of Emma Constable, Kenzie Gregory, Ben Miller, and Kyleigh Phillips. Teachers Josh Gray and Charity Baker were with the students throughout the day.

There were other members of the team who helped prepared leading up to the invent and those students were: Acelein Branaird, Cassidy Gascon, Emma McGown, Midian Ottoson, Mackenzie Terebo, and Claudia Wilson. These students helped prepare the recipe and worked on the poster.

Each team also had a student from the SUNY Cobleskill culinary program as help. Sidney’s team received help from Ashanna Dawson.

Junior Iron Chef is a competition for teams of middle and high school students from Delaware, Montgomery, Otsego, Herkimer, Oneida, Sullivan, Fulton, Chenango and Schoharie counties. The idea is to develop healthy recipes using a combination of local and USDA foods that could be prepared in a school cafeteria.

Waterville Central School placed first, followed by Camden Middle School, and Sidney.

During the competition, the teams cooked, prepared, and plated their recipe and presented it to a panel of six judges.

The judges for the middle school competition were: Audrey Rapant (SUNY Cobleskill food service), Joseph Yelich (Oneonta CSD Superintendent), Matt Grady (Stage Coach Coffee), Kristen Leonard (Origins Café), Dana Leonard (Origins Café), and Roger Davidson (Council Rock Brewery).

Judges awarded points based on several criteria. The team’s poster accounted for 10 percent of the point total, and was judged on content, creativity, organization, neatness, and overall effect. The remaining 90 percent was based on the dish the students prepared. The remaining breakdown was as follows: Food-service friendly (20 percent), taste (20 percent), creativity (15 percent), visual presentation (15 percent), oral presentation (10 percent), and local/commodity ingredients (10 percent).

To see a gallery of photos from the event, please see below or visit: http://www.sidneycsd.org/JrIronChef2017.aspx.