Have you been spending a lot more time in your home kitchen over the past year? Have you developed some killer new recipes for you and your family? Then why not share them with the World Food Championships for the chance to earn a Golden Ticket to the big WFC competition in Dallas on Nov. 5-9?
That’s the idea behind WFC’s new Taste of America Challenge online recipe competitions. From now until the end of March, WFC is accepting submissions of recipes featuring ingredients from at least two companies on a list of core sponsors. These include:
- Beeler's Pure Pork
- Bolner's Fiesta Products, Inc.
- Crystal Hot Sauce
- Hassell Cattle Company
- Hershey
- Impossible Foods
- Johnsonville
- Minor’s
- Red Gold Tomatoes
- Pyure Organic
- Wampler’s Farm Sausage
Normally, cooks qualify for the WFC through a series of regional events across the country, including the Scene’s own annual Iron Fork competition. But with current conditions, those events have pretty much dried up for 2020-21, so they’re taking the show online. A panel of trained culinary experts will judge the recipes using WFC’s proprietary EAT (execution, appearance, taste) criteria to pick 30 finalists for entry into the national championships, with the top five having the $300 entry fee waived. They will also pick a group of alternates in the event that any of the winners are unable to compete in Dallas.
While the judges won’t actually prepare the recipes, they will score them on creativity, and they will be able to score a dish on perceived taste after studying the recipe and submitted description. WFC recommends describing prominent flavors and accents in the recipe description to help with establishing perceived taste scores. Entrants must also submit a photograph of the completed dish, because after all, we eat with our eyes first!
Winners will be notified starting on April 15, so if you’re interested, check out all the rules and categories here and submit your best recipes at the official Taste of America Challenge website.
