Lynden High Culinary Students Solving Problems

Given social distancing, tight kitchen space and the health safety challenges of having high school students work with food at the school, the Lynden High School culinary arts class needed to move “cooking labs” to students’ homes. So, Karen Pehl, teacher, introduced a Chef’s Challenge and the students took to it. 

In the exercise, each student received a bag of groceries—this a school lunch distribution bag—and were challenged to make a “culinary sensation” with the ingredients in the bag, whether turning a hamburger bun into a crust or an apple oatmeal bar into a strudel. 

“I got very positive responses from students,” Pehl says. “They thought it was both fun and challenging. They told me that the most difficult part was deciding what to make from such limited ingredients.” 

Students were able to work with family members to craft recipes, something Pehl encouraged. “The students were really creative with ingredients, cooking both sweet and savory dishes,” she says. 

Expect additional Chef’s Challenge labs.