Has anyone here ever entered a cooking (recipe) contest?

[alstephenson]

My SO is a great cook/chef. We watched the $100,000 chicken cook-off and I swear he could do just as well as the winner. I checked out a couple of websites listing the contests - some top prizes are only $5K or so, but several are at $25k+! Hey, the economy is tough and I'm always looking for new ways to make extra $$$$! Has anyone here had any success at this? Thanks!

[Phentex]

1. No, but I saw part of that show.

100K! I was pretty surprised by that. Her recipe looked good especially compared to the one that had the icky brown stuff on top. She should have known that the look alone was unappealing. There are plenty of contests if you look: bbq sauce, cookies, cakes. Didn't the winner already win from Better Homes and Gardens? Have you checked them out?

[alstephenson]

4. Thanks for the info.

He's thinking about entering a contest for Mac N Cheese (a Tilamook Cheese contest). I'll have to be careful during the trial tastings - I could put on a couple of pounds real easy.

[lavenderdiva]

2. how about entering the Pillsbury Bake Off?

you could win $1,000,000!! here is the link: http://food.yahoo.com/pillsbury-bakeoff/rules/

Look on FoodTV as they occasionally have an hour long show featuring the Bake-Off contest and showing how certain finalists came up with their recipes, and how to make them, etc. Good Luck!

[alstephenson]

3. Thanks for the link!

We don't do much baking, but for $1,000,000 we could get real interested!

[Horse with no Name]

5. I have a friend who used to do the contests

She said that the MOST important thing is to read the rules VERY carefully...and the second most important thing is to take notice of WHO is sponsoring and then incorporate as many of their products into the recipe as possible (research to find out exactly which companies they own) and thirdly make it as easy and as attractive as possible...use a lot of bright colors for summer foods...warm colors for cool weather foods.
Good luck!

[TreasonousBastard]

6. You realize, of course, that it's called a "contest" for...

a reason.

You buy the ingredients, pay the gas bill, throw away mountains of "not-good-enoughs," pay your way to the event, and you're up against anywhere from 20 to a hundred people at least as good as you are.

Not sayin' nobody should enter these things, but they're not exactly guaranteed profit-- you do it for the fun of it and hope you get in the money.

Now, if you actually wanna make some money cooking, buy a food spot at any of those fairs you can get into. State fairs cost a bundle, but block and other small local fairs used to be as little as 50 bucks a day when I was involved, and would gross an average of $1500 a day.

(One guy just showed up with a huge barrel of pickles and sold them for a buck each-- he always sold out)