At Home Chopped Cooking Competition

If you are looking for a great family night activity, try setting up an at-home CHOPPED cooking competition. If you ever watch the cooking channel, then I am sure you know what Chopped is. If not, it is a T.V. show where they call in different chefs and have them face off against each other to see who has the best culinary skills. They will all get the same ingredients and often there is a weird food that they have to incorporate. They will only get a certain amount of time to make the meal before they have to present it to the judges. Sounds fun right? We thought it would be a great quarantine family activity to suggest to you all. There are a few ways you could do it depending on the age group and cooking skills in your family. If you are by yourself, you could also set up a cooking competition with your friends over zoom. Instead of voting on best taste, you could vote on how it looks. 

PIZZA CHOPPED COOKING COMPETITION: 

Doing a pizza chopped competition is great for a family with kids. Pizza’s are easy to make and this way everyone could end up eating their own at the end. To judge the competition you could all trade a piece and let everyone have a taste. It could be fun to set up a video camera of you all cooking as well and get together after and watch it. The great thing about pizza too, is there are all different types - thin crust, thick crust, chicago style deep dish, neapolitan pizza, cauliflower crust, vegan pizza, pesto pizza, white sauce pizza, etc. 

Ingredients you will need: 

• Pizza dough (you could make it, or buy it store bought) 
• Pasta sauce (if you really want to get into it everyone could make their own pizza sauce) 
• Cheese 
• Topping: basil, veggies, pepperonis, prosciutto, spices  

Here are some pizza inspiration photos to spark your competition

BURGER CHOPPED COOKING COMPETITION

Summer is almost here, which means it is a great time to start grilling. Shake up your family BBQ with a little competition before. This one could be better for families with kids who are a little bit older. Depending on how into you want to get you could make your own sauces and fries to go with it. Different burger suggestions to think about are - regular cheeseburger,  hamburger, garlic burger, burger that is stuffed with cheese, a burger with an egg on top, bacon burgers, vegan burger, guacamole burger, protein style burger, etc. 

Ingredients you will need: 

• Burger or Beyond Meat Burger 
• Cheese 
• Buns (protein style as well, wrapped in lettuce) 
• Topping: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, bacon, ham
• Sauces: ketchup, mustard, fry sauce, bbq sauce, spicy sauce, buffalo, pesto, mayo 

French Fry Ingredients: 

• Potatoes or Sweet Potatoes 
• Seasoning to try: Salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic salt, garlic, red pepper flakes

Fries come in so many different styles, here are some ideas - regular fries, steak fries (thicker), potato crisp fries, curly fries, wedges, tater tots, no oil fries, sweet potato fries 

COOKIE CHOPPED COMPETITION: 

A cookie chopped competition could be another fun one for the whole family. Cookies are easy to make and there are so many different types. For this one, it could be fun to find different recipes that use the majority of the same ingredients but have a twist. Then you could all try eachother's cookies and see which ones you like the best. Once again there are endless amounts of cookie types and shapes. Here are few suggestions - doughy cookies, thick cookies, thin cookies, bite size cookies, crunchy cookies, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, M&M cookies, cinnamon and sugar cookies, frosting cookies, cake cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, s'more cookies, cookies with nuts, peanut butter cookies, healthy cookies, etc. 

Main Cookie Ingredients 

• All purpose flour 
• Eggs
• Granulated Sugar 
• Brown sugar
• Baking soda 
• Salt 
• Vanilla extract 
• Butter 
• Toppings: Milk chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, M&M’s, marshmallows, cinnamon, oatmeal, raisen, nuts, frosting ingredients, peanut butter, sprinkles 

We hope this has sparked some new ideas for your family. We would love to see any videos or images you guys get of your at-home chopped competition.