Chopped Challenge 2024

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 coherent dish. Well, 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, room and board, at the prevailing double-occupancy rate, to attend Pacific Northwest NAMA Camp, NAMA’s 64th Annual Foray, to convene in Randle, Washington, October 31 to November 3. Recipes and photos will be featured in The Mycophile Quarterly; you may click here and flip to p. 44 to view last year’s finalists: July/August/September 2023 Mycophile Quarterly.

REQUIRED INGREDIENTS:

1. any mushrooms (fresh or dried, wild or cultivated)
2. miso
3. cream cheese
4. maple syrup
5. parsnip
6. potato chips

Chopped-style Challenge Contest Rules:

• All required ingredients MUST be used in one cohesive dish.
• As long as you use the five 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, please note that leaning too heavily on these palette-pleasers might not take the cake… be creative!
• Your pictures or videos can be posted on Facebook or Instagram. Please use the hashtag: #NAMAChopped2024so that we will find your dish!
• In addition to posting on social media, please send in the following information to CulinaryArts@namyco.org: a jpg photo of your dish, a written recipe and, of course, your name and contact info. This info allows us to find you and let you know if you have won!
• Judging will be performed by the NAMA Culinary Arts Committee members; please have your photos online and tagged no later than midnight Central Time on June 1, 2024.
• Judging will be based on the photo, description, presentation, and creativity.
• We will announce the award recipient on June 24, 2024.
• In order to use the scholarship award, please note that you 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! 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.