Iron Chef Cook Off

Iron Chef Cook Off

Library Edition

Pancakes/waffles

½ Cup whole wheat flour

½ Cup all-purpose flour

½ Cup quick cooking oats

You may choose to use all-purpose white flour if so use 1 ¼ cups and no wheat flour or quick cooking oats.

2 teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 ¼ cups buttermilk

(1 teaspoon lemon juice added to 1 ¼ cups whole milk will do for a substitute for butter milk)

(Or you may use whole milk and eliminate the baking soda)

1 egg

2 Tablespoons oil

You will have one other secret ingredient you must showcase your secret ingredients.

Characters

First, you need a large enough group to execute every role. That means two chefs, two Sous-chefs, three judges, and a chairman and a host. That's a total of ten people, and if you can do more, go ahead and have someone play the role of host, and if you want to maximize the fun, have someone operate a hand-held camera and film the whole thing, so you can watch it with friends. You have to pick your chefs and sous-chefs right away, because they will be the ones who don't know what the secret ingredient is. If you have more guests coming to the party, they will be glad to watch the activities, as long as they get to eat the food at the end. I have 32 kids that come so we did 5 teams of 4 on each team. We had the other kids fill in the other rolls

Food

Now that you have got the party goers set, you need to pick up some food. We had the kids make pancakes, because you can make a lot of different kinds or pancakes with just a few different ingredients. We gave each team the list of ingredients’ and how they might change it to add the secret ingredient. We gave each team a bag with a secret ingredient in it that they had to use. Not all the teams had the same secret ingredient, but they did have to use what was in the bag in there pancake in some way. Some of the secrets ingredients were. Pumpkin, chocolate chips, blue berries, canned peaches, an apple.

I made homemade syrup a maple and butter syrup that the chefs could choose from for a topping.

Costumes
Now that you have the food, it’s time to think about costumes for each team, if you want to go all out, you can pick up chef outfits for pretty cheap at a Halloween store or kitchen supply store. Otherwise a button down shirt and an apron will do. For the Chairman, some kind of kingly garb, perhaps an old robe dressed up, will do. We had each one of the kids bring an apron to wear, I brought things for the chairman to ware, and the Judges just wore there one thing.

Kitchen

We do not have a kitchen at our library, I made due by using electric griddles and waffle irons. Make a cooking area where the hot griddles are away from the preparation stations. (We did this and it does not work, if and when we do this again we will have a griddle or waffle iron at each station.) You will need to have mixing bowls and utensils for each station. Since we had 5 different stations I put the supplies at each station. We have a small room and I did not want the kids moving around the hot cooking table if I could get away from it. I went to the dollar story for measuring cups and spoons and mixing bowls, you could have the kids bring that from home but my kids come from school so I opted not to have them bring anything.

The Party

Now it is time to get going with cooking the food. The chefs will have one hour to complete their dishes. Give them constant updates as to the time; chances are they will be tossing food while playing the game in a frantic rush. Having a host is always great, because it gives everyone at the party a chance to interact while the food is being cooked. The Now that you have got your party goers set, you need to pick up some food. You and your friends must decide on a food to be the secret ingredient. It is good to pick a food that is cheap and will go with a lot of other common foods, otherwise you will end up spending a fortune. Ifyou don't want to spring for all the ingredients yourself, your friends won't mind chipping in for the food. We did this at our party, and the end cost per person was quite cheap. A good idea is to go to the farmers' market the day of the party. The food is cheap and you can pick up all of the fruits and vegetables you need, and they will be fresh for the competition can talk to the chefs, interview the judges, and annoy the Chairman. And the more the Chairman plays up his role, the more fun it will be. The Chairman is supposed to quietly pace back and forth, overseeing the food preparation and cooking. We had a friend that took this role particularly seriously and he didn't break character for a second. By the end we were all rolling with laughter at his commitment.

Once the food is made, it is served up to the panel of three judges. Playing a different role with each judge is recommended. Having a particularly snobbish and harsh English food critic is cliché, but still funny. After eating, each of the chefs' dishes, the judges will rate them

Now everyone eats the leftovers make sure you have enough food for all the Chefs’ and Sous-Chefs all get something to eat.

After thought---

I should have had more chocolate chips the kids loved that ingredient the best but all the secret ingredients was used.

Make sure you have cooking pans at every station. We ended up only having two, one frying pan and one waffle iron. The cooking was slow.

Shopping List

10 lb Flour

Baking power

Baking Soda

Lemon Juice one bottle

1 dozen Eggs

Small Bottle oil

1lb Butter

Maple Flavoring

Measuring cups 5 Sets

Measuring Spoons 5 Sets

Secret ingredients:

Peaches, (I used frozen)

Cinnamon chips (like chocolate chips but cinnamon)

12 oz bag Chocolate Chips

Small bag frozen blue berries

Small bag chopped Walnuts