Food Challenge pits 4-H students in a cooking contest with high steaks, um, stakes.

Rebecca Burt of Littlefield presents her dish, Canadian stuffed bell pepper, after having it judged at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo's Food Challenge Show. Rebecca Burt of Littlefield presents her dish, Canadian stuffed bell pepper, after having it judged at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo's Food Challenge Show. Photo: Photos By Kin Man Hui / San Antonio Express-News Photo: Photos By Kin Man Hui / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Food Challenge pits 4-H students in a cooking contest with high steaks, um, stakes. 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

The scent of sizzling bacon and chopped onions overtook the pungent smell of livestock inside Cattle Barn Two on Saturday morning, as the Food Challenge Show reached full boil.

In its third year at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, the contest gives FFA and 4-H students from across Texas a chance to display their cooking skills and nutritional knowledge as they compete for a $10,000 scholarship prize.

This year, 22 high school students from as far away as the Panhandle lugged giant bins filled with cooking equipment onto the dirt-floor show ring, where they opened bags containing a host of surprise ingredients, all of which had to appear in the resulting dish.

Modeled on the hit TV cooking show “Iron Chef,” the challenge gave each contender 40 minutes to come up with something tasty-looking and healthy in one of four randomly assigned categories: bread and cereal, fruit and vegetable, main dish or nutritious snack.

The participants came armed with plenty of practice: A similar competition began six years ago at 4-H clubs across the state, although those contests are team, not individual, efforts.

More Information Slideshow mySA.com: See more photos from Saturday's events at the rodeo.

And while the judges wouldn't actually taste the resulting fare — contestants are graded on presentation, food-safety adherence and nutritional know-how — things still get pretty hot in the kitchen.

“Forty minutes sounds like a lot, but it goes by fast,” Beau Gibson, 16, a student at Bandera High School, said before the contest began.

Eleanor Cockerell, 16, who lives in Seguin and attends Incarnate Word High School, was competing for her second time.

In her first go-round, she created a fruit dish her father later told her was called a Waldorf salad.

“The celery threw me off,” she said. “Why would you put celery in a fruit salad?” She didn't win, but this summer her 4-H team will go to the state-level competition.

Courtney Dodd, one of the co-founders of the Food Challenge 4-H program, said it seeks to instill basic cooking skills and food knowledge in youth. Bringing the contest to the rodeo was a natural fit, she said.

“It's all about agriculture, and food is definitely agriculture,” she said.

Once the clock started ticking, contestants laid out bowls and skillets on long tables and donned gloves. Soon, a flurry of slicing and dicing commenced as the young cooks worked with an intensity rivaled only by TV chefs.

Four winners moved onto the final round, where they combined two ingredients — popcorn seeds and oil — with other good stuff from a communal pantry.

The winner: Amy Heimann, 16, of Fredericksburg, who made a “creative” trail mix using nuts, dried fruit and peanut butter.

“The judges had a hard time, but she was the most thorough in her presentation and knowledge,” Dodd said.