Right after students got back from spring break, 10 culinology students and club members, along with two professors, left for Puerto Rico. They were on their way to the yearly Research Chef Association (RCA) competition.

Culinology Club President Dylan Riggle, Vice President Jordan Clark, members Kenneth Lam,  and Justin Lapprich were the four-person team competing. Before they could attend the competition though, they had to create a proposal for the RCA.

“Our first semester [this year], the team, we developed our proposal,” Riggle said. “We had it at 30 pages, but we had to slim it down to like 20.”

Some of the sessions that the RCA had available for students to attend were keynote speakers, different talks about the food industry, and a chance to network and meet people who are well known in the culinology world.

“We met someone that was [a part of] the idea of creating Locos Tacos, [and] met somebody that works for Smuckers,” Riggle said.

March 16 was when the actual competition for the $2,500 first place prize took place. Competitors had to re-make the frozen version of their savory dish that they had mailed to the RCA previously.

“We had practiced what we were going to do before,” Clark said.

Practice was needed as there was no written recipe for the team to go off. All the ingredients that they would need were provided, they just had to remember what to use, how much to use, and when to use it.

“We had an hour and a half to cook, and then 15 minutes to plate,” Riggle said. “So we were timed, we had to be sanitary, [and] we had judges walking around watching us.”

This is not the first year that SMSU has competed at the competition. Culinology Club members have been competing ever since the competition first started.

“The RCA organization has been around for 20 years now,” Clark said. “I’m not sure how many years they’ve had the competition. I would say 10-ish. In the past, we’ve had a couple teams win.”

This year, the team took home a silver medal.

The work that each team has put in at this competition for the past ten years has not gone unnoticed. Now, there is a class to help students to write a proposal to go to the competition. Unlike Riggle and Clark, future competitors from SMSU will not have to find time in their own schedules to meet up and write their proposals. Instead, they will have extra time to work on achieving that first place finish.