Cook-off

Team building games, Messy food games, Artistic games

This is a similar concept to the Iron Chef on TV and can be run in two different ways...

Option A...
Give the kids a bunch of ingredients (best to combine a few standard ingredients such as flour, pasta, tomato paste etc with a few wacky ones such as pickled gherkins, olive paste, food dye, mustard etc). No real rules to the game, just whoever comes back at the end of the night with the most edible/most creative/most innovative meal/best allrounder wins. For this you need a panel (half the fun is watching the panel have to taste each concoction...i will never forget the blue soup i had to eat:S ). Have judging criteria based on presentation, edibility etc.

Option B...
Give the kids a three course menu and the ingredients and send them off to cook their own dinner. The benefit of doing it this way is the kids can actually eat their meals at the end of it (which also encourages them to do it well!). Same as option A, have a panel and judging criteria.

Our youth group loves this game, although be warned, it will take up an entire evening...if doing a three course meal, I recommend giving kids a time limit (e.g. by 7:30pm, entree must be served, by 8pm, main meal)

Submitted by Samara on 02 Oct 2007 - Search for more games submitted by Samara.