Whittier Tech Culinary Students Participate in Meals Ready to Eat Competition
Whittier Tech seniors studying Culinary Arts created tasty dishes using Meals Ready to Eat for United States Armed Forces members. (Photo Courtesy Whittier Tech)
Superintendent Maureen Lynch is pleased to share that Whittier Tech seniors studying Culinary Arts recently participated in a competition where they created dishes using Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) for the second year in a row.
Seniors Olivia Delisle, Nora Broadrick, and Haley Miller, participated in the MRE Challenge, accompanied by their instructor Tjiste Boringa. The challenge, which was promoted by SkillsUSA, was held at the Army National Guard facility in Natick at the end of January.
Students were given six pouches of MRE meals, which are ready-to-eat packaged food rations used by United States Armed Forces members. Students were tasked with using the ingredients in the MRE packages to create an appetizer, entree, dessert and drink that would be more appealing than the pre-packaged meals.
In the 30 minutes allotted to plan and 90 minutes to execute, the students transformed their pouches into a tasty meal.
Their meal featured:
Appetizer: Beef potage, which is a thick soup, with vegetable cracker crumbs
Entree: A veggie smash burger with tater tots
Drink: A mixed berry punch
Dessert: A checkerboard cornbread cake
The dishes were judged on creativity, presentation and taste. After being tasted by military personnel and SkillsUSA members, Whittier students were awarded a silver medal for creativity and a bronze medal for presentation.
“The MRE challenge is a way to uniquely express the skills we have learned in shop, as well as an experience to go out and use those skills outside of our normal environment and comfort zones. I also loved working alongside the Army National Guard’s own personnel, seeing who can serve the better dish," Miller said.
To create the dishes, the students used MREs that included oranges, fruit punch, and raspberry grape drink mixes, cubed chicken, vegetarian taco filling, beef stew, energy bars, beans, oatmeal cookies, nuts and raisins.
“It was really nice to have been able to go back. Our teachers were very supportive and helped make it a really great last MRE challenge,” Broadrick said.
Leading up to the competition, the Army National Guard provided the students with MREs to practice with, allowing students to develop skills necessary to succeed in the competition.
"This competition was a wonderful and unique way for our up-and-coming chefs to showcase their talents, and we are very proud of their excellent work. We cannot wait to see what their future holds as they graduate high school and enter into the culinary profession," Boringa said.
Left to right: students Olivia DeLisle, Nora Broadrick and Haley Miller posed with their medals. (Photo Courtesy Whittier Tech)