CHOPPED! At-Home Edition
Last week I shared with you that my purpose for writing this blog was to inspire you to try new adventures. Today’s post is definitely something I hope you’re inspired to try at home! My amazing mom hosted our very own At-Home Edition of the Food Network show Chopped! This was a fun night, and extra yummy! If you have been thinking about hosting your own Chopped At Home evening, here are a few ideas!
What is Chopped?
For those who haven’t seen the show Chopped on Food Network here’s the show in a nutshell.
-Four chefs compete to create a three-course meal using very specific ingredients.
•There are three timed rounds (appetizer, entree, and dessert) and the chefs are given a basket with three to five unrelated ingredients. The chefs must then create their dish using those ingredients plus a stocked pantry and fridge.
-After each round a chef is “chopped” until there are only two chefs competing in the dessert round.
My mom warned us that the ingredients in the basket can sometimes be very unusual and let’s just say that she did not disappoint when she presented us with the baskets for our very own Chopped at Home!
Here are a few tips for creating your own Chopped at Home…
1. First, create teams of chefs since you’re most likely not professionals. Each of our teams had a chef and a sous chef.
2. On the actual tv show you get much less time for each course! However, we’re not professionals so we got a little longer per course. We found it helpful have about 40 minutes per course.
3. Between courses we only sat down and enjoyed the course together. We had judges but it we also really enjoyed having everyone sit down and enjoy the food. This gave everyone an opportunity to experience what the other teams had created.
4. Be creative with the ingredients! As you can see on this list of actual episodes, the ingredients in the baskets are usually pretty diverse and don’t make much sense. Have someone grab four ingredients from your pantry and then create your very own Chopped at Home dish.
Here’s a look at our Chopped baskets…
Chopped At Home: Appetizer
Here’s the tricky thing…not only do you need to create some type of recipe with these random ingredients, but since you’re being timed you need to budget time for cooking and plating the food!
My team created a “Tuna a la Ferguson” for our appetizer. It is a graham encrusted yellow fin tuna with a brown sugar glaze on a bed of kale. Please don’t laugh at the names or descriptions! I had no idea how difficult it is to name and describe dishes in an appealing way! The whole experience gave me a new level of respect for those who create menus!
Chopped At Home: Entree
How in the world am I supposed to combine hash browns, cocoa powder, and chicken to create an edible entree?!? And do it with limited time?!?
My team created a “Summer Picnic Wrap” – A cocoa infused BBQ chicken wrap with cucumber and crispy hash browns.
Chopped At Home: Dessert
This is the only basket we received where the dish we could create came to me so quickly…and was really easy to make!
My team created a “Baked Tropical Sunrise” that was seriously AH-mazing!!! This dish was so good I want to explain what I did because some fancy menu-type explanation just isn’t going to cut it! First we cubed the baguette. Then we melted down the cotton candy (basically just add a little water and it will dissolve!) and creamed the melted cotton candy with cream cheese. We spread that over the bread and topped it with the frozen tropical fruit. Finally we mixed together the coconut milk with an egg, poured it over the whole dish and popped it in the oven. I would like to think the fruit helped make this a little healthier but who am I kidding…the cotton candy prevents me from using the word healthy in relation to this dish!
Okay here’s the thing, I absolutely loved this Chopped at Home challenge and would love to do it again! I realized I am more comfortable cooking without a cookbook than I thought and I think it would be really fun to do some sort of virtual version of this challenge with some of my favorite food bloggers!
I loved that even with the same core ingredients each of the teams was able to create such diverse dishes! The top row are the appetizers created by the other teams, the middle row are the entrees created by the other teams, and the bottom row are the desserts created by the other teams.
If you were hosting your own Chopped at Home party, what food bloggers would you want to participate?
p.s. My team won!!! I’m pretty sure it was the Baked Tropical Sunrise that won it for us!
36 Comments
theseanamethod
We love Chopped in our house, but never thought of doing one of our own. I’m often calling out to the TV what I would make with the ingredients. I have to say your teams were very successful! Maybe you should go on the “real thing”!
girlonthemoveblog
I would love to go on the “real thing” and I would LOVE to be a judge for Cupcake Wars!
Leslie
What a fun event! My Husband thinks that Chopped is totally unrealistic, but I think it’s fun and creative. (Plus, he’s never worked in food service, so what does he know?) Looks like your mom did a great job picking out the ingredients, too!
girlonthemoveblog
I thought it was a bit unrealistic at first but it was actually a lot of fun and really let my creative juices flow in the kitchen!
Rachel G
Wow–that’s quite a competition! I bet it was a lot of fun!
girlonthemoveblog
It was a lot of fun to put the list together!
Wilma Jones
Cute. I never thought about doing this, but it sounds fun. Stopping by from the SITS girls. http://www.LivingHappierAfter.com
girlonthemoveblog
Thanks for stopping by! It was a lot of fun and I would definitely love to do it again!
Jennifer Johnson
How fun!!! I need to get some friends to do this with me.
girlonthemoveblog
It was sooo much fun! I hope you’re able to do this with your friends!
Anastasia
Chopped is one of my favorite shows and this sounds like so much fun! Usually we just have our impromptu Chopped when we haven’t gone grocery shopping. 🙂
girlonthemoveblog
We’ve definitely done that version of Chopped as well!
balmtomysoul
How fun!! I love to watch Chopped, but am afraid I would miserably fail at this challenge. It looks like you succeeded! Found you at Running with Spoons link party!! Have a great Sunday!
girlonthemoveblog
Thanks for stopping by!
Kristina & Millie
I love this show and it would be so fun to try it at home 🙂 love the recipes you came up with!
girlonthemoveblog
Thanks! You should definitely try it at home because it’s a lot of fun!
Jordan
What ingredients would suggest for a CHOPPED kids birthday party? I’m turning 12, and I want to invite either 5 or 7 other girls to compete with me. I have an idea on basket items for appetizers and entrees, but I’m at a lost for dessert! What would be a good idea?
jmdenouden@gmail.com
What a fun birthday party! Just a couple of ideas of things you could use…marshmallows, caramel sauce, some type of fruit (pear, cherries, strawberries), sourdough bread, almond milk…hope that helps you get started with brainstorming!
Pingback:
Pingback:
Jenny
What a fun idea! I should challenge my sister-in-law to this while we’re all at the beach – she’s a whiz in the kitchen! Happy SITS day!
Cajun
This is so adventurous! I don’t think I know anybody with a big enough kitchen to try all of this at once. You should post an update with pictures of you all fighting over the real estate- LOL! Happy SITS day!
jmdenouden@gmail.com
My parents are fortunate enough to have a pretty open floor plan that gives us enough kitchen space for challenges like this!
Sheila
you didn’t mention that I designed that nice open kitchen 😉
jmdenouden@gmail.com
I did leave that off :/
Joan
What a super fun idea! My husband’s family is very competitive with cooking – this would be great when we rent a beach house all together! Thanks for the fun idea!! Happy SITS day!
jmdenouden@gmail.com
Definitely a fun idea for a big family!
JoAnn
Love this idea!! I actually went to a party when we did this once and my team won! My favorite creation was making a banana brulee – made by sauteing sliced bananas in melted down Otter pops.
jmdenouden@gmail.com
That’s so creative and just genius!
Yulunda
Awesome! Whenever we are cooking, my daughter is always running and rushing around the kitchen as she thinks she is being timed. Chopped is one of her favorite shows. After the Teen chopped challenge, she took it up a notch and I had to slow her down.
I will certainly have to do this with my family or possibly a girls night out type of activity.
Thanks for sharing and “Happy SITS Day!”
jmdenouden@gmail.com
It’d be a great girls night out activity!
Monica Fastenau
My family did this one time–my brother, mom and I selected the ingredients, and my sister and dad (the chefs of the family!) worked together to create the dishes. We had lots of fun just watching it come together, but I’d love to do it again sometime with a bigger group and make it an actual competition!
Pingback:
Jennifer | The Deliberate Mom
Oh my gosh! I LOVE Chopped! I’m obsessed with it. I binge watch it. I actually have 42 episodes on the PVR right now. LOL
My husband and I have talked about doing something like this. AWESOME!
Thanks for sharing.
xoxo
Alex
I wonder how you solved the dilemma of so many people trying to make things on only one stove. Or did you have more than one stove? I am looking to throw a Chopped party, but the one stove situation is really worrying me.
jmdenouden@gmail.com
We got creative with how we cooked things. So we used an electric skillet in one part of the kitchen and then tried to have the other two groups share the stove…hope that helps!