It ain't chicken feed — St. George woman wins $1,000 in national cooking contest

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Friday the 13th was a lucky day for Erin Renouf Mylroie of St. George. She placed fifth in the National Chicken Cooking Contest, taking home $1,000 for her Crispy Chicken Salad with Sugared Pecans, Pears and Blue Cheese.

Mylroie represented Utah at the Charlotte Convention Center, where finalists from each state and the District of Columbia prepared their dishes simultaneously.

Mylroie said her winning dish is a variation on a salad she makes all the time. The most-asked question she encountered was her use of panko — Japanese bread crumbs — which gives the chicken a light, crisp coating.

"If I can get it in St. George, Utah, everyone can get it," she said. "But you need to look in the Asian section of your supermarket, because they don't put it with with the bread crumbs."

Call it cluck luck, but this is the fourth time in a row that the Utah finalist has placed among the top five winners. In 2003, former Deseret News food editor Jean Williams took fourth place, and Ruth Kendrick of South Ogden took fourth place in both the 1999 and 2001 competitions.

This year's grand prize of $100,000 went to Camilla Saulsbury, an Indiana University sociology professor. Her dish was Mahogany Broiled Chicken with Smoky Lime Sweet Potatoes and Cilantro Chimichurri.

"When I tasted it I said, 'Wow, this is good,' " said Monica Gullon, an editor at Shape magazine and one of the judges. "The question we asked was if you had it, would you feel like eating it again? When we tallied the scores among the judges, the winner came up so much higher than any of the others that it was clear."

"Sometimes when you have a lot of spice, it can be overpowering, but in this dish the combination worked well," said judging chairman Paul Schultz, executive food editor of the New York Daily News.

He added that strong, assertive flavors were the hallmark of this year's contest, where many of the recipes combined two or more different ethnic treatments, such as Indian-Spiced Chicken Fajitas or Sesame-Curry Rubbed Chicken with Southwestern Pilaf. Out-of-the-ordinary ingredients, such as garam masal, wasabi, pomegranates, figs, mangoes and pumpkin seeds, figured prominently in some of the dishes.

"The cooks were fearless, they're not shy when it comes to boldly spiced ingredients," Schultz said.

Quick preparations — rotisserie chicken, one-dish meals and quick-cooking methods — were another trend he saw.