BENTON TOWNSHIP — When it comes to making chili, Niles High School has the found recipe for success.

Niles teams finished first, second, third and fourth at Lake Michigan College’s sixth annual chili cook-off event Friday, out-cooking a field of 28 four-person teams from four area schools, including Branch County Career Center, Kalamazoo RESA and St. Joseph.

Niles’ Halie Powers, Kayla Flanders, Susan Roy and Melodi Reith finished first with their grilled meat trio chili recipe. Their team was appropriately named the “Soup-A-Stars.”

“I was very excited and happy for the students,” said Niles culinary arts teacher Jayson Zoll, who aided students in the process of coming up with unique recipes for the contest along with instructional assistant Sharon Cochran. “Last year, we took second and third place. So this year we put more work into it and it paid off.

“If you put your mind to something and you are willing to put in the effort, you reap the rewards most of the time. It was an amazing day for Niles.”

Finishing second was the “Bomb Squad” team, whose pulled pork bacon and white bean chili recipe was the same one that won People’s Choice at last year’s Hunter Ice Festival. J.J. McIntyre, Alec McIlroy, Danielle Bloss and Tyreece Terry were on that team.

“We rubbed down the pork and let it sit for five days and then we smoked it for six hours and hand pulled it in class,” McIntyre said. “We took our time, so a lot of love went into this chili.”

Finishing third was the “Wrecking Crew’s” white chicken chili. The “Fresh To Chef” team’s vegetarian chili took fourth.

Students worked in four-person teams to prepare their best original chili and cornbread recipes from scratch, cooking on portable butane burners. The dishes were assessed by a panel of judges, and awards were given for best taste, appearance

and creativity.

Zoll said students found base recipes and tweaked them to make a unique recipe. They did several trials in class in the weeks leading up to the competition.

“You can combine different ideas from different recipes to make it your own,” he said. “It shows some ownership in the recipes.”

Lake Michigan College created the event to give high school students a taste of what a hospitality career might entail. Local hospitality industry professionals also critiqued student portfolios and led roundtable discussions about careers in food service and lodging. Current LMC hospitality and culinary arts students talked with competitors about studying hospitality at the college level.