Students Battle in Strawberry Cook-off Competition
Three Johnson & Wales University students will put their skills to the test in a cook-off competition featuring North Carolina strawberries at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, November 5, at the Charlotte campus. The competition is part of the N.C. Strawberry Project, a joint partnership between N.C. State University at the N.C. Research Campus and Johnson & Wales University.
Recipes must feature North Carolina-grown strawberries, and be low in fat and sugar. Recipes must be geared toward home cooks and include no more than 10 ingredients with a prep time of less than 30 minutes. In preliminaries, culinary faculty selected three students’ recipes, giving those students the chance to compete on Friday.
Faculty members with N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute, including strawberry breeder Dr. Jeremy Pattison, will serve as judges. The winner will receive a $500 scholarship. The winning recipe will be featured on N.C. MarketReady’s website, the extension outreach of the Plants for Human Health Institute.
Friday’s winner will advance to the championship cook-off in May to compete against the winners of the winter and spring strawberry cook-offs for a chance to win a $1,000 scholarship.
The N.C. Strawberry Project connects N.C. State plant breeders with the culinary world and introduces JWU chefs-of-tomorrow” (students) to agricultural research and N.C. farmers. The overarching goal is to glean important information from the culinary industry, produce buyers and consumers that the N.C. State strawberry breeding program can use to breed a better N.C. strawberry and in turn increase the crop’s economic impact.
The project is supported in part by a grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation.
The N.C. Strawberry Project is a partnership of N.C. State University (including the Plants for Human Health Institute and N.C. MarketReady)at the N.C. Research Campusand Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte. This project received support from the Golden LEAF Foundation.
