Before Tuesday’s cooking competition began, Jazmyne Peeples felt a little nervous.

But once her knife sliced through the first red pepper, the butterflies went away.

“I only get stressed before the competition,” she said. “Once I’m there, I lock in.”

The 17-year-old Mount Ararat High School senior and school food service director Wayne Napples represented their school at the Maine Farm to School Cook-Off at Central Maine Community College in Auburn.

It’s the ninth year for the competition, which challenges teams to use local ingredients to create tasty dishes that could be served in school. This year, they used tofu from Heiwa Tofu in Rockland and chicken from Maine Family Farms in Portland.

To start the competition, each team had 60 minutes to create their vegetarian dish. Jazmyne and Napples made tofu kabobs with rice and a fruit cup.

They faced defending champions Alicia Smith and Jesse Smith, a mother/son duo from Lewiston and Brittany Cole and Simon Bolduc from Auburn.

Just like the professional competitions, the teams presented their plated dishes to a panel of judges that included a school nutrition director, chef at a Portland bakery and a 7th grader to make sure that the meals would pass the student tastebud test.

Stephanie Stambach, child nutrition supervisor for the Maine Department of Education, said the department opens the competition to anyone who wants to participate.

The teams are judged on several criteria, including presentation, taste and time management.

“More schools are looking at incorporating more vegetarian meals into their menus so we’re looking at that,” Stambach said. “And also teamwork and division of work. How is the division of work split up between the teams? Really using the student and their skills as well.”

Although Tuesday’s competition featured high schoolers from Lewiston and Auburn, in past years children as young as 10 years old have competed.

Stambach hopes those who do compete take away more than just skills they sharpen in the kitchen.

“Hopefully it’s a fun experience for them and they really get a sense of what it’s like to speak in front of judges and get that experience, but also a greater appreciation for the school nutrition staff in their schools that prepare hundreds of meals every day,” she said.

On Tuesday, the teams buzzed around the kitchen gathering tools and ingredients, firing up the stove to boil pasta and constantly changing their blue food safety gloves as they switched tasks.

After another round of cooking, the judges will present three awards — best vegetarian meal, best non-vegetarian meal and best overall.

Peeples, who plans to attend Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island in the fall to study baking and culinary arts, felt confident about their tofu kabobs.

“I think we did pretty good,” she said. “Our plating looked really pretty.”