Chopped Champion: Chef Spencer Tan Wins National Cooking Competition

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Natalie New

Joined: Jul 2014

Info via BYU Hawaii Newsroom

BYU–Hawaii’s Executive Chef Spencer Tan recently won first place in the national 2014 Chef Culinary Conference’s Chopped competition. The conference, hosted at University of Massachusetts Amherst in June, is the premiere gathering for high-volume food service operators and campus chefs to learn more about world cuisines and flavor trends in an engaging environment.

The Chopped competition took place over three days between campus chefs from universities around the United States. Each competitor was given access to a pantry and refrigerator stocked with a wide variety of other ingredients, and the chefs had only 30 minutes to complete dishes for a panel of judges. The chefs needed to complete four plates, one for each judge plus one “beauty plate” for photography, before time ran out. At the end of each day’s competition, the judges critiqued the dishes based on presentation, taste, and creativity. The judges then decided which chefs were “chopped,” that is eliminated, from the competition.

By the end of the second day of competition, there were only two contestants remaining, including Chef Tan. On the third day of competition, two additional “wild card” challengers were added to compete in the final round. In the final round, each competitor was able to sabotage another chef by adding extra requirements that their rivals had to follow. Of the four competitors, Chef Tan received the maximum amount of three sabotages as each of his opponents chose him as their sabotage target because of his strength during the competition. His sabotages required him to give his ingredient basket to a competitor, cook with a small camping stove and cookware, and not taste or smell his food as he cooked.

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