Since 2008, the Jr Iron Chef VT culinary competition has been challenging teams of middle and high school students to engage in improving their own health and the health of their community by creating nutritious, local dishes to inspire school meal programs. 

The teams are coached by local educators, chefs, school nutrition staff, and parents. Every March, the teams gather in the spirit of friendly competition, and each cook up an original recipe in under 90 minutes. Every dish is judged by a panel of food system professionals and advocates, and awards are given out in three categories: taste, teamwork, and use of local ingredients.

Sixteen years and thousands of students later, how has this program impacted the lives of some of the first participants? Network Coordinator Dana Hudson spoke with Hayden Fuller to find out. Hayden was a member of a Jr Iron Chef team at Camels Hump Middle School and Mt. Mansfield Union High School from 2010–14. Fourteen years after his first competition, he lives in Kentucky with his wife and children, and works as an EMT and firefighter. Here’s his story:

 

Do you remember what you cooked for the competition? 

We made all kinds of things over the five years I participated, but I particularly remember a three-layer potato dish. We used carrots to dye one layer of potatoes orange, beets to dye another layer purple, and then we had a white layer. The recipe was filled with vegetables. It was pretty and delicious.

 

What stands out most for you about your time with Jr Iron Chef VT?

I liked the pressure of the time limit. I liked showing the adults that were watching everything that my team could do. We liked practicing, too. 

Dave Horner was my coach, and he was my biggest mentor and got me into the cooking profession. I had been diagnosed as dyslexic and had anger management issues. Dave was more than a coach, he helped me with emotional and social skills. I had a counselor, but Dave was with me the whole time. 

After Jr Iron Chef, Dave still kept our group cooking afterschool. We worked on healthy life choices and healthy eating. There were five or six of us in this middle school group. We learned about proper cooking methods, which I wasn’t learning at home. We used vegetables and fruit from the gardens, and we learned a bit about growing food. We had enough ingredients leftover to go home and cook the recipes again for our families. So I got to cook and eat together with my family. 

 

Left: Four boys of the Camels Hump Middle School during the Jr Iron Chef VT competition. Right: a dish of tricolored potatoes stacked and topped with cheese.
Hayden (second from right) with the Camels Hump Middle School team, and their team recipe, three-layer potato dish.

What did working as part of these teams mean to you?

There were other students on my team that had family struggles at home and didn’t want to come to school. They were always down. But this afterschool cooking really helped us build confidence and made us feel good about ourselves and gave us something to look forward to. I still talk to some of them. Where I lived, I was isolated from friend groups. I couldn’t hang out afterschool or on weekends because they lived too far away. This program gave me the chance to build a group of friends at school and hangout after school.

Dave encouraged us to ask questions and try more things. He talked to us about careers, and he was working alongside us kids on a personal level. We really all got to know each other. He taught us how to go from struggling to make meals, to really knowing all the cooking basics. I am now trying to teach my son the same things.

 

A young man grills hamburgers outdoors
The cooking education opportunities Hayden and his fellow students had took them outside of the classroom, too.

Did these experiences impact some of your career choices?

As a freshman, Dave encouraged me to get a job at a restaurant, so I started as a cooking assistant at the Reservoir Restaurant in Waterbury. I was nervous, but ended up working there for six years, in the front and back of the house. I liked working in the back of the house cooking, but they sent me out to answer customers' questions about the food since I knew about everything in the dishes. Dave really pushed me, because I was nervous, but I got confident. 

In 11th and 12th grade, I went to the Essex Tech Culinary program. I already knew a lot about cooking when I went there and it really gave me a boost which helped with my grades. I truly loved it. 

 

What do you like to cook for your family?

The biggest thing the whole experience gave me was how to take random ingredients that I have in my house and come up with delicious food. When I go shopping I try to get lots of base ingredients, and sometimes I don’t even know what something is, but I want to experiment. I just want to try new things. 

I tried making stuffed peppers the other day and used couscous instead of rice, just to see how it would taste. My experience learning to cook in those middle and high school programs really opened me up to a variety of foods that I now eat. I would not have done that as a kid from Bolton otherwise. 

 

Four boys in a professional kitchen. Two are sitting in large soup pots.
Cooking doesn't *always* have to be a serious endeavor.

Photos courtesy Dave Horner.

Burlington School Food Project and Vermont FEED launched Jr Iron Chef VT in 2008, a first-of-its-kind youth program to help kids experience the power of food and recognize their potential as food system changemakers. In 2021, Vermont Afterschool took on overall management and hosting of the competition. Read more about the history of the program and find current program details.