The pork fillets, red potatoes, apples, and cranberry sauce sit ready and waiting. “Today we’re making breakfast and here’s what you have to cook with,” Phronsie Howell announces to a dozen teens inside a basement kitchen on a recent morning. “Now go!”
Three trios of young chefs huddle to devise plans in this homemade edition of Chopped, the reality show where contestants create a dish from surprise ingredients. Aged 12-18, the students have up to 40 minutes to craft something delicious for their peers, who score them on creativity, taste, and presentation.
“They make whatever they think of, whatever they want,” says Howell, who dreamed up the class earlier this year. Winners are exempt from clean-up and get to choose the ingredients for, and judge, next week’s competition. Past classes have cooked macaroni and bacon, and curiously, pickles and wheat.
