Encampment students take first in culinary contest

With only their second try and a creative recipe on hand, two young chefs from Encampment School won the Taco John's Culinary Competition held in November.

Students Matthew Jarrett and Brett Ralston revamped their entry from last year to submit their "fiery cornbread bites" for the competition, which took place Nov. 20 at the Taco John's restaurant headquarters in Cheyenne. Their teacher, Cheryl Munroe, and fellow student Harold Jackson were also present at the competition.

Taco John's Vice President Bob Karisny said he was amazed to see such progress from young high school students.

"One of the Nestle companies is Hot Pockets," Karisny said. "Their food scientists have worked with similar cornmeal dough, and they had the hardest time getting it to seal properly. Then (the Nestle representative) comes here and the judge meets two high school students who have figured it out. The quality of work we see from these contestants is far beyond their years."

Jarrett and Ralston each received $500 scholarships for winning first place in the culinary competition. Jarrett said the sticking together of the dough on the bites was a major selling point, in addition to the ingredients of the filling.

"It had sugar, flour, bacon, cheese and baking powder," Jarett said. "Basically it was like rich quick bread, and we put filling in it and deep-fried it so it was quick. It had a lot of good flavors in it, and they really liked that we got the dough to stick together and put a filling in it."

Jarrett said their submission for last year's competition was a "bread twist" that evolved into their first place-winning fiery cornbread bites. He said he felt the bites were a unique and different food product, and that they were fun to create and have sampled by the public.

"We worked on this last year and kind of developed it over two years, and last year we went to the competition and had a bread twist," he said. "Then we developed it so it was more user friendly, easier to handle and something smaller, and with two years of development on it, we got something they liked. We let a lot of the school try it to see whatever they liked, and we kind of built off of that. We got the majority of what they liked, and though it may have not been exactly what we liked, it was what the majority liked."

After winning first place, the next step for the two students is a return trip to the Taco John's Support Center in April, where they will work with Karisny and his development team to take the recipe from prototype to something that could be produced in a real Taco John's restaurant. Jarrett said there's a chance that after the meeting, the fiery cornbread bites could end up for sale on the Taco John's menu.

"I think they use it for a couple months at least, and if it doesn't work then they'll drop it," he said. "They'll use it in Cheyenne for a while, and then if it works out, it will go throughout Wyoming and maybe even expand beyond that. The goal of the competition is to get on their menu, and last year's winner, the Santa Fe burrito, you could see on billboards. It was cool to go through Cheyenne and see last year's winner up on billboards and their menu, and they kind of promote it quite a bit before, for three or four months."

Jarrett said it will be fun to work in an exclusive setting with Taco John's officials this coming April.

"We're going back to work with their test kitchen and their chef to develop our product, so that it can be mass produced," he said. "It will be just us working with development team and we'll change our product up if need be, so they can mass produce it and use it in their restaurants. We'll tweak it a bit, but it should be similar to what we created. I'm not sure what they'll have in store for us, but we'll be meeting with the Taco John's development team and there's good chance the Nestle chef will be there."

Ralston said he is excited to meet people who are high up in the business world, and to learn how the restaurant industry works. He was also enthused about the chance to possibly work with the master chef from Nestle.

"I'm excited because the Nestle master chef guy said they own Hot Pockets, and our product kind of held together like a Hot Pocket," Ralston said. "I've never won first in a competition like this before, so just knowing that I've been a part of something that created a winning product is really cool."

Like Ralston, Jarrett said he is excited to learn how a product or business works its way from the ground on up.

"Working with these professionals that work in the industry and learning tricks of the trade will be pretty neat," Jarrett said. "We also get to talk about the advertising of our product and developing it, including making the photographs of it and that type of thing. It was cool that we came up with something a professional chef and a test kitchen crew liked."