Haley Garrity had 90 minutes to prep and cook shrimp cocktail, blanch the broccoli, make the rice pilaf, saute the chicken. The dices and cuts needed to be as close to perfect as possible. The dishes needed to look and taste great. Sanitation, cooking technique, cleaning – they all needed to be precise. And then there was safety. That was a consideration as well.

Haley, a senior at McCutcheon High School, was among other teen chefs at the Art Institute of Indianapolis recently vying for victory in the Best Teen Chef Competition. She blazed through the contest, racing to slice the onions and the tomatoes and devein the shrimp and execute all sorts of other tasks. When time ran out, she took a breath and put her knives away. And that’s when she sliced her finger. It was so bad she ended up getting stitches in the emergency room. While she was there, the judges had named her the victor.

“I just like making new things and trying new things and … cooking things for people,” she told the Journal and Courier.

Haley Garrity - stitched finger and all - holds her Best Teen Chef Competition award recently at the International Culinary School of the Art Institute of Indianapolis. (Photo via JOURNAL AND COURIER)