Chopped Champions!

Have you ever seen the show "Chopped" on the Food Network? It's quite a favorite in the Rosser household. A few weeks ago Tyler, being the sweet and thoughtful husband that he is, had a brilliant idea! He went to Hy-Vee, picked up four mystery ingredients, and I competed (against myself) in my first ever Chopped experience!  (And yes, we even put the ingredients in a basket and opened them when the time started! If you haven't watched the show, you should check it out. It's intense!)

My mystery ingredients were celery, cheese curds, Asian noodles, and chicken wings. In the real show, the contestants get 20 minutes to prepare an appetizer. I got 30 minutes and used every second!

I ended up making beer battered chicken wings (good idea, but batter didn't stick) with poppy seed Asian noodle stir-fry (tasted interesting) and cheese curds in celery (which Tyler called juvenile....) He was quite the judge...which made me excited when it came around to his turn a week later!

I really enjoyed walking around Hy-Vee and picking the mystery ingredients. I knew I wanted to get shrimp, and when I was in the organic section found salted pumpkin seeds. I also picked up a pineapple (wanted to use mango, but knew neither of us know much about that fruit...and I didn't want to make it too hard on my darling husband. But it turns out he had never cut into a pineapple before so that was an adventure!) and the last ingredient was buttermilk biscuits.

I was very impressed with Tyler's creativity. He also got 30 minutes and finished right on time getting everything onto the plate. He boiled the shrimp and then breaded them with a mixture of pineapple, pumpkin seeds, and oil. That was my favorite part of the dish and it tasted great! Everything else, as you can see, made it on the plate but didn't really get transformed...but I wasn't as tough of a judge as he was!

So we decided that we are BOTH Chopped Champions! And we are excited for the next adventure of making a main course sometime in the future...