Copper Chef competition brings creativity to Montana Tech dorm kitchens

The smell of sizzling ground beef, sweet pineapple, and spices filled the Living and Learning Center as Montana Technological University students raced the clock in this year’s Copper Chef cooking competition.

With just 10 minutes to plan and one hour to cook, student teams were challenged to transform a surprise set of ingredients into a winning dish. This year’s required items—ground beef and canned pineapple — pushed competitors to think creatively, blending sweet and savory flavors in unexpected ways.

Other available ingredients included Hawaiian buns, flour, butter, eggs, taco shells, seasonings, potatoes, rice pouches, lettuce, onions peppers, canned beans, shredded cheese and tomato sauce.

“We do this every year and I think it’s so fun,” Residence Life Programming Assistant Quinn Cox said. “Students compete with cooking tools that are available in the dorm kitchens. This is a dorm cooking competition so they have limited ingredients you might find in a dorm.”

Dishes ranged from taco-inspired wraps to Hawaiian bun sliders with egg, plated for judges who scored entries on taste, presentation, and use of required ingredients.

The winning team, Seager Nentwig, a senior in mechanical engineering from Billings, and Emma Harrison, a senior in environmental engineering from Grand Junction, Colorado, leaned into originality with their Hawaiian-inspired pierogis. The dish featured ground beef and pineapple filling wrapped in dough and paired with a complementary pineapple dipping sauce.

Judges praised the balance of flavors, noting how the sweetness of the pineapple worked with the savory elements of the dish to create something unexpected and cohesive.

For Nentwig and Harrison, the competition is about more than just cooking. It’s about community.

“We helped put it on the first couple of years, and then we started participating,” Nentwig said. “It’s just a lot of fun.”

Their advice to other students is simple: get involved.

“If you’re interested in doing something, just do it,” Nentwig said. “I hadn’t really cooked for myself much before coming to college. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve picked up here.”

Harrison said success in the competition often comes down to creativity and taking a different approach.

“Most people go with their first idea,” she said. “We try to think outside the box.”

That willingness to experiment paid off. The pair had never made pierogis before the competition, but relied on instinct and collaboration to bring the dish together.

Beyond the competition itself, events like Copper Chef highlight the kind of hands-on, community-driven experiences that define student life at Montana Tech. What starts as a friendly contest often turns into something more.

“It turned into us inviting a bunch of people to cook together outside of the event,” Harrison said. “We’d get a group together, share ingredients, and just spend time making food.”

Every dorm at Montana Tech has a kitchen, giving students space to cook and connect. From meals to ideas, Copper Chef is less about winning and more about bringing students together, one creative dish at a time.