Our family usually gets together for Sunday Night Dinner with my sister’s family and my parents every week, but with the Coronavirus Quarantine, we have not been able to do this. So, thinking out of the box, my awesome sister put together a Chopped Video Conference Call Competition for our family. We had a blast. You need to set up a video conference call to do this. We used Zoom and it worked out great. This doesn’t have to be something done during Quarantine. If you have friends or family out-of-town, what a fun way to connect with them.

Chopped is a food reality show on the FoodNetwork. We have adapted the game to be preformed virtually. The objective of our Video Chopped Competition is this: Each team must create a dish or dishes including all the secret ingredients given and prepared within the 1 hour time frame. No early prep is allowed. The judges will then choose the winning team.

My parents were the judges and kind of the MC’s of competition. We had 3 teams: my family, my sister’s family and my nephew and his girlfriend. The day before our competition, my parents texted all of us the 4 secret ingredients. They were: pickles, fish sticks, blueberries and cheese balls. We were allowed to get our ingredients, but we weren’t supposed to prep or cook anything until the competition began.

As we were cooking, my parents would ask us lots of questions about what we were doing. Some of us were wearing costumes. Some were razzing other teams. There was even some attempted bribing of the judges, all done in fun (The Olive Garden gift card wasn’t tempting, we were shocked!).

In the end, my team, which had three names, but ended up keeping the name The Kitchen Docs, won! After an extremely funny deliberation of the judges, they turned there computer away so we couldn’t see them, but unbeknown to them, we could still hear everything they were saying. It was hilarious!

I know you want to know what the heck we made out of pickles, fish sticks, blueberries and cheese balls!

We made (Note: you do not have to do 4 courses, but that is something that the judges liked and helped us win):

• For the appetizer: Caprese Salad of tomatos, fresh mozarella (cheese balls) and basil.
• For the main: Open Face Fish Stick Salad Toast (cooked fish sticks chopped up like tuna mixed with mayo and pickle relish placed on a bed of greens on sourdough toast and topped with avocado and a blueberry. This was actually really good!
• For the drink: Bloody Mary with a fish stick, cheese ball, pickle and blueberry garnish.
• For the desert: Chocolate cake (pre-made, so we cheated) with blueberries :).

We had so much fun doing this and I hope you and your friends and family do too! Stay safe, everyone!!

What you will need:

• Chopped Video Converence Call Competition Directions
• Chopped Video Converence Call Competition Worksheet (for up to 4 teams) 
• Chopped Video Converence Call Competition Add-on Worksheet (if you have more than 4 teams)

Instructions:

1. Pull your PDF directions file into a Word Processor and fill out the form picking your teams and judges and including the conference call info.

2. Email everyone the time and directions for the competition.

3. Don’t take yourselves too seriously. Have fun!!