Yesterday was a great day here at Taste of Home headquarters. We got to meet four of our “America’s Best Loved Recipe Contest” winners, including George Schroeder of Port Murray, New Jersey, who took home $25,000 for his Gorgonzola Penne with Chicken.
It really does pay to enter our recipe contests!
You might not know this, but we judge about 20 recipe contests every year here at our Greendale, Wis. offices. That means we’re giving away tens of thousands of dollars to fine folks with top-notch recipes, and thankfully so! We wouldn’t exist without your willingness to share.
So how does a contest go down? It starts with the editorial staff selecting a theme or topic, which is usually based on seasonality or the kind of recipes we think you’ll want to try. (Have a contest you’d like to see? Let us know!)
Next, we announce our contest in a magazine issue or at tasteofhome.com. (Check out our current contest topics.) And the entries start pouring in by the dozens!
For Simple & Delicious, our food editor extraordinaire, Amy Thieding and her team begin the tedious process of narrowing down the field of submissions from hundreds to dozens by excluding duplicates or recipes that simply don’t fit the category.
For example, once, we received a “light” recipe that called for a pound each of butter and bacon. Needless to say, that one didn’t make it into the contest!
Then we start testing. For days on end, we’ll test recipe after recipe.
A team of food editors prepares each recipe, and a panel of judges made up of editors and food experts taste them blindly, meaning we have no idea who submitted them. Here’s a photo of some recipes we judged recently for a Healthy Cooking contest. I can’t tell you who won though! You’ll just have to stay tuned to the Dec/Jan 09 issue of Healthy Cooking to find out!
While tasting, we discuss each recipe to see if it has the qualities of a winner. Everything from taste, appearance, how well it fits the category, difficulty of preparation, mass appeal—it all matters because these recipes earn cash! Sometimes, like in George’s case, lots of cash!
Winners are announced, checks are cut and the story is written.
We’ll have photos of George and the other winners’ visit on the Web site soon.
It’s a very fun process, but there are certain aspects that can be overwhelming. Imagine tasting 25 recipes for a refrigerated cookie dough contest in two days…sure, it sounds good, but like they say, “everything in moderation,” right? It took several weeks before anyone craved a cookie after that, but it was worth it in the end!
Keep sending in those recipes! Maybe you’ll be the next to win big!
John McMillan
Associate Editor