Brookhaven native Katie Dixon kept a group of sweet 16-year-olds happy and fed on Wednesday’s episode of the Fox reality show Master Chef, earning herself a spot as one of the top 11 home cooks in the nation.

Dixon, the daughter of Henry and Vickie Newman of Brookhaven,  led the blue team as captain in the challenge because her curry last week had been picked as one of the top two dishes of the night.

The 33-year-old personal trainer chose Diamond Alexander, Andrea Galan, Brandi Mudd, David Williams and Nathan Barnhouse in a school-yard pick, though she selected Barnhouse begrudgingly.

“I choose Brandi, David and Andrea because I had enjoyed being a teammate with them in previous challenges,” Dixon told The Daily Leader. “They each give 100 percent, listened to their leader and make some very good food! Diamond is a team player on every challenge.”

This was Dixon’s first time leading a team in a challenge.

“I enjoyed being team captain,” she said. “I really encouraged everyone to do their best. It is always hard when you have so many different personalities on one team. I really tried to listen to my teammates and the advice from the judges.”

Barnhouse turned out to be more of a challenge for Dixon than the challenge itself. She gave him the duty of preparing the vegetables because she couldn’t trust him with the protein, she said.

He required explicit instruction, almost got into a physical fight with Galan and couldn’t correctly chop a tomato.

But Dixon kept her calm.

After a few mishaps in menu planning that raised the eyebrows of judge Gordon Ramsay, the blue team settled in to prepare chili lime shrimp over coconut rice and sugar peas.

“We originally were making a non cohesive dish, as chef Ramsey stated. We regrouped our thoughts and decided to make an Asian-inspired dish,” she said.

The red team prepared a pan-seared chicken with candied bacon, sweet potato mash and balsamic glaze. While the kids loved the bacon, too many servings of raw chicken did the team in. Despite sending out some incomplete plates — some didn’t get all three shrimp — Dixon’s blue team won the challenge with 80 percent of the vote by the party guests.

The losers’ pressure test challenge was to bake, frost and decorate a three layer cake. Dixon and her crew headed to safety in the balcony in the MasterChef kitchen, while members of the red team sweated it out to keep from being the contestant who’d be eliminated at the end of the episode.

“It is the best feeling in the world when your team wins,” Dixon said. “We definitely had our ups and downs, but in the end we pulled it together for a victory.”