by Leslie Stewart
Ville Voice Eats Correspondent

Everyone’s heard of exorbitantly priced hamburgers – those usually made with Kobe beef, truffles, and other exotic ingredients that produce a lavishly presented sandwich resembling nothing you’d find at even the more upscale steakhouses.

But would you pay $50,000 for a chicken burger?  The National Chicken Council would, and did – and to a rising star chef from right here in the Bluegrass, no less.

Lexington’s Brigitte Nguyen took the top prize in the 48th annual National Chicken Cooking Contest in San Antonio last weekend, with her Chinese Chicken Burgers with Rainbow Sesame Slaw.  The burger recipe includes soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, lemongrass, and scallions, and you can find it here.

The contest featured entrants from every state of the union and the District of Columbia, and winners from the state contests and subsequent regionals went on to compete at the San Antonio campus of the Culinary Institute of America.

Nguyen, a 2008 Culinary Arts graduate of Sullivan University’s Lexington campus, has appeared on the Food Network, where she was runner-up in the “Burger Recipe Challenge” in January, and does a weekly healthy cooking television segment for Lexington’s WLEX-18.

You can find more recipes and inspiration from Brigitte’s own spirited and informative food blog, called Counting the Beans and Cooking the Books.