MLEC Culinary Team Cooks Up Victory
On Tuesday, February 3rd, three Miami Lakes Educational Center seniors competed at the Universal Orlando Handheld Challenge. After months of preparation, Paula Muniz, Wester Mordan, and Ryan Anderson earned first place, bringing home MLEC’s second championship in the competition’s four-year history.
The competition challenged high school culinary teams to create handheld foods that could actually be sold at Universal Parks. Since the competition began, MLEC has made the finals every year. In this year’s final round, they went up against West Orange High School, Deltona High School, and Lyman High School.
The team spent months practicing to prepare for the competition. They repeated their original recipe over and over until every step felt natural and they could move quickly without hesitation.
“I think I made pickles like six times in a day,” Wester said. With Chef Nunez’s help, they worked on timing, technique, and how to move together as a team to put the team’s recipe, a burger, together without any problems.
Getting the recipe to that point took months of trial and error. Back in September and October, the team tested several different types of bread. Paula experimented with concha bread topped with cheese, but it came out flat and inconsistent. Wester tried making Japanese milk bread, but it ended up too yeasty. Everything changed when Ryan created a pretzel bun that Chef Nunez loved right away.
Going into the finals, the team felt confident about their chances of winning. Two weeks earlier, the competition judges visited MLEC to taste their dish and offer feedback to the team. They advised the students to add more spice, since the burger already had every other flavor balanced. The semifinals in December helped them see exactly what else needed to be fixed.
“The pretzel bun came out horrible, but the judges loved it,” Muniz said. The pork, however, was not seasoned enough and came out slightly undercooked.” The judges gave detailed feedback on everything that needed improvement. “The whole thing with a schnitzel is that it’s supposed to be expanded outside of the burger,” Paula recalled them saying. The team took this criticism seriously and went back to work. By the time the judges returned before finals, they only had positive things to say about the dish.
On competition day, the students had 90 minutes to prepare their entire dish in the UCF Rosen kitchens. Judges scored them on taste, presentation, cleanliness, and teamwork. Even with all their preparation, there were still stressful moments.
Wester admitted that he ran into a timing issue during the competition.
“I ended up forgetting to do something, so then I had to kind of scream for Ryan to come help me,” he said. Paula saved one important step for the end, frying the pork in the last five minutes so it would be fresh for the judges. In the final seconds, the team managed to put together all three plates in just 30 seconds.
Their final dish featured a pretzel bun with pork schnitzel, bread and butter pickles, red cabbage sauerkraut, and a tarragon grainy Dijon mustard aioli. The entire concept was built around German flavors.
After winning the competition, the MLEC Culinary program received $2,500, and each team member earned a $1,000 scholarship from Universal Orlando, awarded for the first time this year. The team also brought home a new trophy that now sits next to the one they won in 2023. Most importantly, their winning burger will now be added to the menu at a restaurant in Universal CityWalk.
The win not only marks MLEC’s second Universal Orlando Handheld Challenge championship in four years, but highlights the dedication of Paula Muniz, Wester Morden, and Ryan Anderson. Their months of practice, teamwork, and attention to detail paid off, and their burger will now be part of the CityWalk menu. More than the trophy or scholarship, the experience shows what a team can accomplish when they work together even under pressure.
