MRE Challenge Puts Culinary Students to Taste Test
When life gives you Italian sausage and peppers and tacos, of course you can’t make lemonade – but you can make some mighty tasty Italian enchiladas.
That appetizer was how a trio of culinary students from Blue Hills Regional Technical High School kicked off their run for the championship title in the annual MRE Challenge, hosted earlier this year by SkillsUSA Massachusetts in partnership with the Massachusetts Army National Guard.
Akin to FoodTV’s long-running “Chopped” series – where chefs open a basket to discover mystery ingredients they must incorporate into that course – the competition challenged student chefs to reinvent Meals, Ready-to-Eat. More commonly known as MREs, these portable meals fuel soldiers in training or battlefield sites far from the mess tent. Pre-cooked MREs are designed to hold shelf-steady for three years.
These meals aren’t considered haute cuisine by anyone’s definition, but students needed to break down, reassemble and cook food items contained only in those meal packages into palate-pleasing appetizers, entrées, desserts and drinks. They had to cook using the package’s built-in, water-activated heating element, and they could bring in two bottles of water. Two complete versions of each dish were delivered for judging on taste and presentation.
“The challenge is: You get there, you get six packages and you’re not exactly sure what’s going to be in those packages,” said Nafisatu Apatira, a Blue Hills RTHS junior.
For many of the teams, the MRE Challenge serves as a warm-up to SkillsUSA Massachusetts’ Leadership and Skills Conference, scheduled for April 25-27. Culinary is among the 111 disciplines where students will be participating in hands-on skills competitions.
Being ready for anything
At the competition, the judges gave each team a random set of MREs. Competing in their first MRE Challenge, the Blue Hills RTHS students quickly unpacked spaghetti, ravioli, tacos, apples, cheese bread, crackers and cake, not to mention an assortment of jams, spreads and peanut butter. Looking at the foodstuffs – including a lot of taco packages – on other chefs’ tables around the room, they considered themselves fortunate with that baseline of ingredients.
“Your first thought is “This is what soldiers are eating?’” Apatira said. “The textures in these MREs are very different from what you normally eat on a day-to-day basis. There were some very dry textures, some very moist textures – a lot of stuff that you don’t usually work with.
The teams had 30 minutes before cooking begin to open their assigned MREs and a piece of paper to jot down ideas. The students thought about how to parse all the various ingredients to compile the three-course meal and beverage, then took on their assigned menu item.
Beyond the Italian enchilada appetizer, the three young chefs rounded out the menu with a ravioli entrée and a dessert, which layered apple filling and berry cobbler between lemon-poppyseed and apple cake slices; almonds on top added crunch. Their drink was an orange fruit punch, served in a sugar-rimmed glass.
Junior Ayianna Rosa took charge of the main course, blending several different pastas. “I separated the noodles and sauce that came in each package, then I used a little bit of all the three different sauces to make a new sauce,” she said, noting that she thinned out the sauce and used salt packets to pull out more favor. “I feel like that’s one of the things we did differently, because we took parts of each MRE to make the one dish.”
Apatira, who already runs a cake business, took on the dessert, which was almost picked clean during the judging. Ian Kregar, a sophomore, handled the appetizer, where the team fused Mexican and Italian cuisines.
Practicing for the winning taste
In the weeks leading up to the competition, the students spent time online researching MRE. A school supporter also donated a box of the military meals, allowing them to get some hands-on practice – particularly with the heating element.
Their research showed that pastas, chili, peanut butter and Kool-Aid turned up most frequently, with the military keeping about two dozen different entrees in rotation. They brainstormed over how to mix and match different parts of each meal kit to transform it into something different and flavorful.
Based on those practice and review sessions, the students said they felt like they’d already prepared some of these dishes in their minds. Once time was called during the competition, each trio introduced its dishes and explained how it was developed.
“It was a good challenge. It was fair,” Apatira said. “Everyone had a good time.”