Executive Sous Chef McKenna Shea of Pacific’o on the Beach has won Food Network’s hit cooking competition, “Chopped,” with a grand prize of $10,000. A lifelong fan of the show and of cooking, Shea said she feels like she’s been preparing for the competition her whole life. The episode, “A Bunch of Abalone!” will re-air today and on March 28. Photo courtesy of Spencer Starnes

When Maui chef McKenna Shea opened a basket of mystery ingredients to find abalone and ube cheesecake on the set of “Chopped,” the odd pairing felt surprisingly like a taste of home.

“Instantly I felt familiar with the flavor,” said Shea, the 27-year-old executive sous chef at Pacific’o on the Beach in Lahaina. “Even though it was cheesecake and shellfish, I still felt at home.”

Shea turned the basket into a salad of watercress and radicchio with veggie straw-breaded abalone and ube cheesecake nicoise dressing — the appetizer to a three-course meal that made her a “Chopped” champion and snagged the hit cooking competition’s top prize of $10,000.

“It’s been an overwhelming wave of comments and appreciation and congratulations from what seems like everyone I’ve ever known in my whole life,” Shea said Wednesday, the day after her victory aired on Food Network. “So it’s pretty overwhelming but all in good ways.”

A lifelong fan of the show — “I watched ‘Chopped’ instead of Disney Channel,” she recalled — Shea was making meals for her family at age 13 and has been cooking for big feasts like Thanksgiving “since I could hold a pan.”

“It’s just always been my guiding star,” Shea said. “I’ve always wanted to be in the kitchen.”

A former pastry chef who worked her way through Ritz-Carlton kitchens in Denver, Lake Tahoe and San Francisco before moving to Maui four years ago, Shea joined Pacific’o on the Beach in 2019 as their youngest leading female chef. Mentored by Executive Chef Isaac Bancaco, Shea went on to become sous chef in 2020 and is now executive sous chef.

“Chopped” discovered her through social media, where Shea posts things she’s eating and cooking as well as her life as a young female chef.

The process of interviews and figuring out which episode and competitors she would fit with best took about six months. In September, she flew out to New York to film the episode, “A Bunch of Abalone!”

On the show, four contestants each receive a mystery basket of ingredients that they must turn into an appetizer, entree and dessert over three timed rounds. Shea said there was no trick of the camera — they really only had 20 minutes for the first round and 30 minutes each for the next two.

“It’s pretty raw. It’s pretty as it seems, and it’s very turn and burn,” Shea said. “It was a huge production. … They got the system figured out. I just showed up, stood on the ‘X,’ here’s your box, next, and they just were very efficient.”

Shea’s had plenty of chances to imagine what it would be like on set. Before she even got the call from “Chopped,” her boyfriend would pause episodes after the basket reveals and make her come up with a meal.

“A lot of the time I was like, ‘Babe, not now, I want to relax,’ ” Shea recalled. “And he was like, ‘No, what would you do?’ ”

When her chance finally came, Shea had a plan. Before she opened the first basket, she had already decided she would make a salad, giving her time to calm down and strategize. Halfway through the appetizer, she was already scoping out the pantry, mentally compiling a menu so that when the next rounds came, “I already have a loose game plan to fit whatever protein, whatever ingredients into this template.”

The judges loved the salad — two of them finished it even after judging was over — but noted that they wanted to see Shea make a dish that defined her style as a chef. So when the second-round basket came with top sirloin cap, sweet and spicy peach jam, fioretto baby cauliflower and iron eggs, Shea set her mind on an Asian flavor profile that would play up the Pacific Rim dishes she cooks on Maui.

She grabbed gochujang from the pantry, used the eggs to make a remoulade that she put underneath roasted potatoes and cauliflower, seared the steak and glazed it with the peach jam.

In Round 3, she also took a page from the Pacific’o menu. With a basket of black-and-white rainbow cookies, worm salt, Asian pear and raspberry lambic beer, Shea decided to whip up a dessert inspired by the tropical pavlova she makes at Pacific’o. The meringue-based dessert typically requires a 12-hour dehydration process — Shea had to make a version of it in 30 minutes.

“It barely worked, but I don’t know what came over me,” Shea said. “You couldn’t have told me in the dessert round to do any other dessert because I had made my mind up. The judges were freaking out: ‘This is impossible, I wouldn’t do that in a million years, I’ve never seen someone use both stand mixers and the torch at the same time. This is crazy.’ Hey, things gotta be done this way if you want it in 30 minutes.”

Facing off against a French chef who also had a background in pastries, Shea made an Asian pear raspberry compote and mascarpone whipped cream with worm salt on top of the pavlova, which was essentially a “thin sheet of marshmallow that got crispy” in a 500-degree oven.

“The judges were like, ‘I don’t know if this is technically a pavlova, but it’s dang delicious,’ ” Shea said.

Even now, it’s still hard for Shea to process the moment she won.

“The initial thought is ‘thank goodness,’ because I’m just such a competitor that all I wanted at that moment” was to win the competition, she said, comparing it to kicking the winning field goal in a game.

“It’s like I earned this, I did my best and the results were great. Looking back it’s hard to believe and really feel like I won, but in that moment, I knew I won and I was so proud.”

After putting on a “poker face for six months” to avoid spilling the news, Shea is glad to talk about her win and hopes it will put her in position to return to the “Chopped” tournament of champions or to compete in a different show.

For now, she’s putting her winnings toward the goal of buying a boat with her boyfriend, a ship captain, to do catered dinners at sea.

And, to celebrate Shea’s win, Pacific’o on the Beach is offering a special dish inspired by her “Chopped” appetizer through April 15. The dish consists of Kula watercress, crunchy radicchio and veggie chip-breaded Hawaii island abalone on top of an ube nicoise vinaigrette.

“A Bunch of Abalone!” will re-air at 4 a.m. Hawaii time today and at 1 p.m. March 28.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.