An avid cook and contester who won the Gilroy (Calif.) Garlic Festival contest in 2000, Saulsbury is the author of a book on using packaged cookie dough to make various desserts. She is also featured in "Cook Off," Amy Sutherland's book about the cutthroat world of cooking contests.

She decided to focus on home cooking for her dissertation because of societal concerns about obesity. "I wanted to see what normal eating is like in 2005," she said.

She plans to use her prize money for a down payment on a new house when she and her husband move to Texas soon.

Second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-place winners won $10,000 $5,000, $3,000 and $1,000, respectively. The contest is sponsored by the National Chicken Council and the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association.

Saulsbury said her idea for the recipe came from playing with a glaze she developed with similar ingredients but which initially seemed too complicated. A fitness instructor for more than a decade, Saulsbury said she chose sweet potatoes because they're very healthy and almost everyone likes them.

The winning mahogany broiled chicken is served with smoky lime sweet potatoes and cilantro chimichurri, a combination that impressed the judges.

"I think that actually had a big influence on me, too," Saulsbury said.

The dish was enhanced by a bed of "kicked-up" sweet potatoes and chimichurri sauce. The fresh taste of the cilantro and pungency of the garlic made the dish stand out.

We as judges thought the recipe offered versatility as well as great flavor. You could serve each of the three components — the chicken, potatoes or chimichurri sauce — together or separately with other dishes. This, we thought, was a real plus.

Fifteen food writers from across the country were invited to judge the event May 13 at the Charlotte Convention Center. Among the other judges were writers from Cooking Light magazine, Woman's Day, Fitness Magazine and a variety of newspapers.

I wasn't sure what it would be like tasting chicken all day. But I had a wonderful time and discovered some great recipes. And it didn't put me off chicken forever — I even was able to eat chicken fingers at my daughter's end-of-the-year picnic the night I returned.

The event — the nation's oldest continually running consumer cooking competition — began as the 51 contestants paraded across the huge ballroom where 51 mini-kitchen booths were set up.

Draped with red ribbons declaring their state of origin, the contestants had three hours to prepare a dish to wow us and a second dish for photographing.

We were a picky bunch, divided into five tables of three. My fellow judges were Alison Ashton, senior food editor at Cooking Light in Birmingham, and Jane Dornbusch, food editor at the Boston Herald.

Contest officials brought a prepared dish to our table, where we would taste it as a team, but score it individually on score sheets.

In the end, about a dozen dishes had made it for final consideration.

Unfortunately, too many of the recipes tried to combine too many flavors that simply didn't work together.

The first-place recipe — which our team tried for the first time in the final round of consideration — created a buzz in the room as soon as we all had a chance to taste it.

Said Paul Schultz of the New York Daily News, who served as chairman of the judges, "Sometimes when you have a lot of spice, it can be overpowering. But in this dish, the combinations worked really well."