Hunter Dille cooked up a win. 

Literally.

The Liberty Elementary sixth-grader rose to the challenge at the recent Murray School District-wide Future Chef sixth-grade competition, where he and three other students created dishes inspired by flavors from around the world. 

Hunter’s creation – homemade pita bread turned into pizza — earned first place.

“I go to these cooking classes and one time before the competition, we made pita bread,” he said. “I decided I wanted to do this competition, but what should I make? I eventually decided I'm going to make pitas, but I'm going to turn them into pizzas, because it sounds good.”

Hunter built his dish by combining foods from different cultures.

“Pitas are apparently from the Mediterranean area, and then pizza, that’s Italian, the pizza sauce was a family recipe,” he said and added toppings of fresh mozzarella, pineapple and bacon. “I like pineapple on pizza and I put bacon in it because it sounded good.”

The competition, sponsored by Sodexo, invited sixth-graders to submit recipes. Four students competed at Hillcrest Junior High, where they cooked their recipes in the school’s commercial kitchen. They had two hours to prepare their dishes, working alongside mentors from Murray High School’s ProStart culinary program and District nutrition staff, said Gwen Haycock, general manager of the District’s Child Nutrition Program.

“We made sure they had all their ingredients and we even premeasured those for them,” Haycock said. “We had the equipment they would need — rubber spatulas, pancake turners, zesters, lime juicers, popcorn poppers — and gave them a safety chat, so they know how to be safe in a kitchen and the proper way to wash their hands and proper ways to handle knives. Once they got cooking, it got crazy, it got loud, and there was lots of laughing.”

Before the competition began, Hunter worried his recipe might take too long.

“Before the competition started, I was getting a bit stressed because pita bread takes a long time to rise and to make,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it in two hours.”

That concern quickly disappeared once Hunter reached his station. 

“I was happy when I discovered they had already made the dough for me. After that, it was mostly figuring out how to work with other people, because I've never made this recipe with other people before, so I wasn't sure what to tell people to do,” he said.

Hunter directed the process while teammates helped him with cooking and crumbling the bacon.

“They helped me decide on temperatures for cooking the bacon, because I hadn't actually put a temperature in for that and I had them crumble the bacon once it was cooked,” he said. “They were concerned I wasn't going to finish in time because they didn’t know my recipe. I knew the pitas only go in for three minutes so I had plenty of time.”

Murray High chef instructor KC Gray said the competition displays the District’s core values.

“The Future Chef competition is a prime example of what Murray City School District is all about, community,” he said. “Sudexo has created an event that exemplifies community by bringing in multiple facets of our culinary arts in Murray City School District. Having elementary students be mentored by the advanced culinary students helps both parties grow. I saw the advanced students teach what they learned to younger students. From shaping whipped cream quenelles, to rolling out pita, the advanced students helped guide the contestants. What brought the entire event together was watching our cafeteria staff work and learn with the students. They helped the contestants navigate the industrial kitchen while letting the advanced students show their expertise.”

Even with help, Hunter wasn’t sure how the judges would respond.

“They announced fourth, then third, then second. When they hadn't called me at second, I turned around and I looked up my parents. I was so happy I won,” he said. 

Three judges from the District and community — Jannine Kirsten, Jaron Cooper and Pam Cotter — evaluated the dishes on originality, easy preparation, healthy attributes, kid-friendly, dish presentation, taste and how well the students explained their recipes.

Second place went to Nola Nickerson of McMillan Elementary for a mango crumble dessert. She was followed by Penny Burkhart with popcorn surprise and Abigail Elkface with sugar cookies; they both attend Longview Elementary. All the winners received cooking items and the top three received medals.

Last year, the District’s first year to hold the competition, Liberty’s Chloe Loveless won.

Now, Hunter can compete nationally. By late March, he needed to present the recipe and an explanation of it, along the picture of his dish with him. Winners are expected to be announced by late April.

For Haycock, the competition is more than the placement.

“The goal is to encourage a younger generation to enjoy being in the kitchen,” she said. “This gives them an opportunity to cook food and present it to people and have joy of watching those people eat what they’ve made.” 

Hunter said cooking is something he likes.

“I find it fun to do cooking and it’s enjoyable, because it's a step-by-step process of making things,” he said. “I honestly love following instructions.”

The first thing Hunter made after the competition was his pita pizza with all his new winning gadgets, but he said his favorite thing to make is homemade Oreos.

“When you do it from scratch, they’re absolutely delicious,” he said.

While Hunter isn’t sure if he wants to become a chef someday, he plans to keep cooking.

“I’d do this again,” he said. “It's cool I can be known as a person who's good at cooking and they liked the way I cook.”