Culinary Students Enter Competition
“It’s fun for me to watch the kids do all the math and nutrition that goes along with this.”
For the second year, culinary students in Marie Strader’s advanced cooking class at McDonald County High School are competing in a contest to cook for NASA.
NASA has a STEM program called HUNCH that allows students to solve problems for NASA. One of the fastest-growing aspects of the program is the cooking program, in which students come up with recipes for foods that astronauts can eat in space and on the International Space Station.
Last year Strader’s class worked to create several ethnic dishes, which was the required food category for the contest, and then narrow down to two recipes. The recipes can be challenging because of the strict dietary requirements of astronauts, which include a low fat content, low salt content and low sugar content, as well as a certain amount of fiber.
This year the competition focuses on comfort foods.
“NASA has restricted on fat and calories and salt and sugars, and to fit in that category is hard, because comfort foods are often high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar,” Strader said.
She added, “It’s fun for me to watch the kids do all the math and nutrition that goes along with this.”
Gicela Maldonado said her group was making a pizza pocket with tomato sauce, Canadian bacon and cheese. They made the sauce from scratch.
Emely Herrera said one of the
Marie Strader
MCHS Teacher
challenges of the pizza pocket involved getting the salt right. They learned that meats and cheeses have a lot of sodium, so they had to substitute. They were originally going to use ham, but Canadian bacon proved to be a better choice. The group also chose a low-fat cheddar cheese, she said.
Corbin Saturley was slicing potatoes for a dish called poutine, which is French fries with gravy and mozzarella cheese. He said sodium was a challenge for his group as well. They had to find a sodium-free gravy mix and use low-fat mozzarella.
Strader said, “The competition this year will probably all be virtual, but I’m very grateful we still get to continue with the competition.”