Hospitality students and chefs team up for charity barbecue competition

Chefs and hospitality students from across the country competed in a charity cook-off at the Dirty Dozen barbecue competition at Signature Brewery in London last month.

Over 20 dishes were put up for sale which, alongside auction prizes, raised over £6,000 for the Over the Rainbow Children’s Charity.

Twelve teams competed for the trophy by cooking live on Broil King barbecues, with every chef team paired with students from catering colleges.

Industry judges included Steve Munkley, vice chair of the Craft Guild of Chefs, Karl Pendlebury, senior manager, AHDB and John Feeney, culinary and innovation director for Griffith Foods Europe. They were joined by celebrity judges Dan Hawkins of rock band the Darkness and food podcaster and comedian Ed Gamble.

The winning team on the day was the Mighty Morphin Pork Arrangers, which included chefs John Jackaman and Barney O’Connell and students from New City College in London. Their two dishes were a North Carolina smoked shoulder of pork served in a potato bun with coleslaw and vinegar sauce; and a homemade black pudding Suffolk apple crumble with maple smoked bacon and liquid nitrogen vanilla ice cream.

Chef Russell Bateman and students from North Hertfordshire College won the individual trophy with a dish of Dingley Dell pork ribeye, charcuterie sauce, baked squash, smoked cream and pickled cucumber.

The barbecue collaboration is organised by family farming business Dingley Dell, who supplied all the meat for the event, and not-for-profit organisation A Passion to Inspire.

The remaining ten teams were:

• Chef Matthew Hoggard with Milton Keynes students
• Chefs Mark Poynton and Sam Carter with Grimsby Institute students
• Chefs Adam Lestrelle and Dennis Mwakulua with Basingstoke College students
• Chefs Alan Paton and Matt Wilby with Colchester Institute students
• Chefs Andrew Nutter and Rob Kennedy with Loughborough College students
• Chefs Eric Snaith and Fred Bambridge with West Suffolk College students
• Chefs Adam Smith and Jonas Plangger with Farnborough College students
• Chefs Lee Cooper and Greg Emmerson with Cambridge Regional College students
• Chefs Nick Claxton Webb and Scott Taylor with New Suffolk College students
• Chefs Jazz Dawar and Greg Cheeseman with Eastleigh College students