Food Bank culinary students get inventive with scrapple

Members of the Food Bank of Delaware’s culinary class took part in a competition asking them to create their own unique dish using that Mid-Atlantic culinary curiosity – scrapple.

The Feb. 25 event served as midterms for the students, who were given scrapple provided by Rapa Scrapple and asked to come up with a recipe with scrapple as the main ingredient.

Tim Hunter, the food bank’s executive chef, said the food bank has been doing the scrapple cook-off for about six years now. The food bank runs a 14-week program where aspiring chefs learn everything about the trade and use that training to become chefs working at local restaurants. The class usually has about 15 students. 

“They always come up with interesting recipes,” Hunter said. “We always say, ‘It’s not just for breakfast anymore.’ We come up with scrapple tacos, they make some sweet things out of it. Some of them come from different cultures, so they put their own spin on it. They can use anything in the kitchen.”

John Curtis, sales manager with Rapa Scrapple, said the company donates about 30 to 40 pounds of scrapple per class for this event as part of an effort by the company to get people to think of scrapple as not just a breakfast item.

“We’ve seen a lot of neat items come about from this program,” he said. 

The competition was won by Kaira Lawson, who made a scrapple bao bun, a soft, Chinese-style bun that typically includes barbeque pork. Second place went to Cletis Simms, who made a scrapple skillet, third place was taken by Lateefat Olumegbon for scrapple hand pie and fourth place was Jasmine Simms, who made an apple scrapple crumble pie.