Upcycled Iron Chef Competition: Students Transform Food Waste into Culinary Delights

Georgian cheese bread, cilantro-blackened fish tacos, quesabirria tacos with seitan and cinnamon sugar churros – four culinary creations but only one was crowned winner of the Upcycled Iron Chef Competition at UC Davis.

The competition was simple: four teams of students had two hours to prepare any dish using spent grain, which is a byproduct created during the beer brewing process. The event, organized by the Food Tech Club and the Davis Alt Protein Project, was designed to be a fun way to demonstrate how delicious meals and sustainability can go hand in hand. The student groups teamed up with Upcycled Foods, Inc., which supplied a flour made from brewer’s spent grain called ReGrained SuperGrain. This hands-on learning event is a follow-up to last year’s “Sea-less Sushi Roll-Off,” where teams from both groups competed to make sushi rolls with alternative fish products.

With a giant countdown clock prominently displayed in the food innovation lab at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, the teams hustled to whip up a tasty and visually appealing bite to eat. The space is often used by faculty and students, including those with the Department of Food Science and Technology, for cooking demos and other course-related trainings. 

With sweet and savory aromas wafting from the kitchen, Scott Lo, a senior majoring in food science and technology, stayed cool under pressure. “It's the best way to study my major,” Lo said. “I always say there’s too much science and not enough food, so this is fun.”

Student rolls out dough for her team’s Khachapuri dish. Photo by: Jael Mackendorf, UC Davis.

Each dish was presented to a panel of judges and scored for taste, nutrition, creativity and presentation. The panel was composed of Ned Spang, RMI director and associate professor with the Department of Food Science and Technology; Glen Fox, Anheuser-Busch endowed professor of malting and brewing sciences; Roger Thompson, executive chef of Latitude; and Lara Ramdin, chief innovation and science officer with Upcycled Foods, Inc.

“The thing that excites me is that we have many different recipes that use this particular ingredient, so I’m interested to see what all these young minds can do with it,” Ramdin said.

Spent grain contains nutrients and fiber, making it a favorable ingredient for food products. Fox said that historically, it’s been used as a feed supplement for livestock. But nowadays bigger breweries are looking at ways to upcycle that leftover material instead of discarding it.

“There are so many alternatives we can use this material for, and why not use it as a food source?” Fox explained. “We call it a waste stream, and people automatically think there’s no value, and this couldn’t be further from the truth, there’s so much value in this material.”

The dishes created by student teams: Georgian cheese bread (top left), cilantro-blackened fish tacos (top right), quesabirria tacos with seitan (bottom left) and cinnamon sugar churros (bottom right). Photos by: Tiffany Dobbyn, UC Davis.

Flavorful showdown

One team made Khachapuri, a traditional dish in the country of Georgia. It’s an open-faced bread filled with cheese, herbs and vegetables and garnished with an egg on top. The team explained to the judges how they added the spent grain to the dough, even though they said it was a “fickle” ingredient to work with. Spang said the dish was “a cool idea and well executed.”

Another team presented a plate of cilantro-blackened fish tacos, featuring grilled tilapia seasoned with a variety of spices, including gochugaru (Korean chili flakes), paprika, garlic and pepper, plus agave for a touch of sweetness. The team infused purple masa with the spent grain when forming the tortillas, which were heated over an open flame to crisp the edges. Enrique Fernandez, a senior majoring in food science and technology, said he learned that cooking tip from his grandmother. The tacos were topped with a grilled pineapple coleslaw, which the judges really enjoyed.

“It’s a well-balanced, restaurant-quality dish,” Thompson said. “It’s very, very good.”

The only sweet dish was prepared by Lo and his team. They made deep-fried churros with three accompanying dipping sauces – a creamy chocolate espresso dip, apple cinnamon cream, and custard with swirls of strawberry puree. Lo said they were familiar with the characteristics of spent grain, including its dark brown hue and nutty flavor.

“It adds a little bit of a gritty texture which is why we feel like it would be most appropriate for churros,” Lo said. “What we’re going for is to mimic the Disneyland churros which are on the cakier side.”

Judges also tasted quesabirria tacos. The creators decided to substitute beef for seitan, commonly called “wheat meat” because it’s packed with protein and consists of gluten extracted from wheat flour. Jules Madigan, a Ph.D. student studying immunology with the Department of Nutrition, believes her team’s dish stood out because they utilized the spent grain in the tortilla as well as the seitan.

The judges all agreed. On top of having great flavors, infusing the spent grains into two parts of the recipe gave them the edge. It was declared the winner by the judges.

“Seitan was a good protein choice for us to work with since it’s great at soaking up flavors in a strong sauce like birria, but it turned out to be a great advantage for us because it was unique,” Madigan said. “Most of the judges had very little experience with seitan as an ingredient. I think we caught them by surprise with the texture and flavor.” 

Jonah Messinger, a sophomore majoring in food science and technology and vice president of the Food Tech Club, flitted by each of the cooking stations and sampled the grub. He said he was impressed with the culinary innovation.

“The creativity of all the contestants really blew me away,” Messinger said. “Not only were all the dishes really delicious, but they pulled off seamlessly integrating the spent grain into each of their dishes which was fantastic to see.”

Madigan and her teammates received the big prize – a $200 Trader Joe’s gift card. 

“We had so much fun, and it felt impactful,” said Madigan. “UC Davis truly is at the forefront of food system solutions for the betterment of people and planet.”

The winning team that made quesabirria tacos with seitan. (L-R) Nick Johnson, Jules Madigan, J.W. Roh and Austin Lourie.