‘Chopped’ chef wins $10,000, loses 92 pounds

Southern Highlands resident Phillip Dell, 36, recently won on the Food Network’s May 30 episode of “Chopped,” a cooking show that has contestants unveiling mystery ingredients and whipping up something spectacular in record time.

It was a perfect way to show off his talents as a professional chef, something he had aspired to since he was a toddler.

“On Saturday mornings, most kids watch cartoons,” he said. “I’d watch all the cooking shows.”

For the show, there are three rounds – appetizer, entree and dessert. The mystery ingredients for the appetizer portion were duck, kumquats, goji berries and bitter melon. He created Southwestern duck and added sweet bell peppers and jalapeno for a ratatouille using goji berries and the bitter melon. The entree challenge included black cod, dinosaur kale, pork rinds and coconut oil. He made a sesame- and pork rind-crusted cod with the kale and asparagus sautéed in coconut oil. A sesame soy sauce marinade was drizzled over the dish.

“That was a huge hit with the judges,” he said.

The dessert round used passion fruit puree, clotted cream, angel food cake and spirulina. Most people would probably frame their creation around the angel food cake, but Dell created a fruit salad, crafting a cheesecake dressing of passion fruit puree and clotted cream and accenting it with angle food cake croutons. He flavored the fruit by tossing it with a mixture of natural sugar and spirulina, using mint to mask the spirulina’s grassy flavor.

Dell, who owns Sin City Chefs Inc., won the challenge and $10,000. But it’s his loss that’s the real story.

One might say Dell is a poster child for weight loss. He has shed 92 pounds. At one point, he weighed 217 and had a 44-inch waist. It was hard to hide on a 5-foot-2-inch frame. Extra pounds had plagued him throughout high school.

“I was always kind of a heavy kid,” he said. “I was husky. I could never have hand-me-downs from my friends because they were all skinny.”

Earning his culinary arts certificate at the Traverse Bay Area Career Tech Center in Traverse City, Mich., and getting a degree in pastry arts at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., meant being around food all day. Taste testing creations is required of every chef. He’d end his day with fast food and a six-pack of beer.

His weight skyrocketed, and he said he had little energy.

One day, soon after moving to Las Vegas in 2005, he took a good look at himself in the mirror and saw double rolls around his midsection. He said that was his turning point.

Determined to lose weight, he relied on his minor in nutritional science to choose what he ate. First, he stopped drinking soda. Then Dell turned to his recipes and reworked them.

“I started transforming all the foods that I liked to eat to a healthier version without ruining any flavor,” he said. “That worked very well. ... I eliminated anything ‘white,’ so no refined carbohydrates — no white flour, no white sugar, no white bread, no white rice,” he said. “Everything became complex” carbohydrates.

If a recipe called for cheese, he switched to a low-fat version. Rich ingredients were chopped down as well. A recipe calling for a cup of butter got drastically reduced to a single tablespoon.

“It’s amazing what people think they have to have and they really don’t,” he said. “Another example is people will put half a cup of cheese, feta cheese, on their salad. In reality, two tablespoons give a significant amount of flavor.”

Before long, he had lost 50 pounds just from eating more healthily. Then a friend called and suggested they hang out.

The friend picked him up with an ulterior motive. He wanted to introduce Dell to exercise and drove to the Las Vegas Athletic Club that had just opened at 1725 N. Rainbow Blvd.

“We tried out the gym, and I was hooked immediately,” he said. “The adrenaline rush, the way you feel, everything, I loved it.”

Free weights became Dell’s passion, and soon he was doing supersets, getting his cardio workouts with weights.

“What most people take an hour and a half to do, I get done in 30 minutes or less,” he said. “I might take a drink of water, but it’s less than 15 seconds before (the next set).”

He was building muscle mass, which burns calories 24 hours a day. The rest of the pounds melted off quickly. He said he had energy, slept well and had better skin tone. He said he felt “amazing.”

His body mass index plummeted from 36 to 9, and Dell got involved in competitive bodybuilding.

Now, he and his wife, Leah, whom he helped lose 60 pounds before their 2010 wedding, go to the gym together to hit the weights area. Each weekend, they prepare meals for the upcoming week. She said having a workout partner “keeps you on track. It gives you a reason to get up and do it.”

The couple allow themselves to pig out one meal a week. It helps reset the metabolism. What do they like to have?

“Chocolate cake figures prominently,” Leah joked.

They are starting to pull together a cookbook based on healthy recipes. It might be out as early as 2014.

“Everybody can live a healthy life,” Phillip said. “You just have to choose to do so.”

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.