Double couple competition
Do you and your partner love to cook? If you and your couple friends are foodies, or just enjoy watching any of the myriad cooking shows on television these days, why not throw a mystery ingredient cooking challenge party?
Cooking challenge shows vary in their rules and complexity, so if there is a particular program that you love, feel free to adapt it to your liking. The plan laid out below allows for some friendly, mild competition for a group of four. If you prefer your competition a little more cutthroat, invite a few more friends over to serve as judges.
The rules
Each person is responsible for one dish: appetizer, entrée, side dish, dessert. Depending on the size and functionality of your kitchen, you can either all cook at the same time, two at a time, or one at a time.
The catch
Each individual will need to use a provided set of mystery ingredients to make their dish. You and your friends can decide how best to do this – will one person do all the shopping, or will each person create a mystery ingredient bag for a particular course?
To keep it fun and manageable for everyone, don’t make your mystery ingredients too outlandish, or too disparate. A combination of shrimp, navel oranges, cocoa power and bok choy? Challenging but doable. Rocky road ice cream, anchovies, turnips and eggs? Maybe not so much.
Tips for success
Make sure your kitchen is well-stocked. You’ll want a good selection of cookware as well as butter, oil, salt, pepper and spices. You may want to have staples on hand like Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, flour, corn starch and lemons. The more you have to work with, the more creative you can be! And don’t forget to plan for some fun cocktails or mocktails. You’ll need something to wash down the culinary masterpieces!
Don’t forget to plate your dishes – after all, cooking show judges never fail to penalize bad presentation. Then sit down and enjoy the fruits of your labors while you make your critiques (gently, now!). Since this is all for fun, the losers need not pack their knives and go. But you might want to make them do the dishes!
