Chopped-style Challenge 2025

It’s that culinary-artistic time of year again, when the NAMA Culinary Arts Committee invites mycophagists far and wide to showcase your culinary creativity through what has become a beloved part of our shared mycoculture: the Chopped-style Challenge!

By now, if you are any kind of cook or foodie, you are familiar with Chopped, the thrilling tv show featuring the ever-more-ridiculous challenge of incorporating seemingly impossibly incompatible ingredients into a cohesive, delicious dish.

The NAMA Culinary Arts Committee is giving you a chance to shine in your own competition! Best part is, you could leave out the salt and we wouldn’t know; your description, photos, creativity and presentation will be the criteria for judging. ANYONE can participate but only one will win: ARE YOU READY?

One winner will receive a scholarship for registration and room and board, at the prevailing double-occupancy rate, to attend NAMA New England, NAMA’s 65th Annual Foray, at Potash Hill near Marlboro, Vermont September 11 to 14. Recipes and photos will be featured in the Mycophile Quarterly; you may click here to view last year’s finalists in the July-August-September MQ.

Following are this year’s contest guidelines, submission dates and, of course, the list of truly challenge-ing ingredients selected through vociferous discussion among our robust Culinary Arts Committee! Bon appétit!

Required Ingredients:

1. Mushroom of your choice
2. Vegemite
3. Molasses
4. Bananas
5. Pistachios

Contest Rules:

1. All required ingredients listed above MUST be used in one cohesive dish;
2. As long as you use the four ingredients and mushrooms, you can use ANY OTHER ingredients you choose. You may use staples from your own kitchen, or shop for other ingredients for your dish: butter, cream, oil, onions, garlic, cheese, or herbs, for example; however, leaning too heavily on these palette-pleasers might not take the cake…. be creative!
3. Your pictures or videos must be posted on Facebook or Instagram. PLEASE use the hashtag: #NAMAChopped2025 so that judges will be able to find your dish! 
4. Judges will be NAMA Culinary Arts Committee members, who will rate your creation(s) based on the photos/videos, written description/recipe, presentation and overall creativity Judges will be NAMA Culinary Arts Committee members.
5. Please have your photos online and tagged by May 1, 2025. We will notify our winner by June 1, 2025.

Please note that in order to use the Annual Foray Scholarship, the recipient must have never attended a NAMA Annual Foray event before; however, if someone who HAS attended before ends up winning, they will have the option to pass on the scholarship slot to someone they choose who has not attended before! Or they can just decline the award in favor of the next finalist who has not attended. FUN – and spreading mycofellowship – are the point of this contest.

Have questions? We are happy to help you resolve them; please contact us at CulinaryArts@namyco.org.