WEST ALLIS, Wis. >> It’s peak state-fair season in the United States, when the spotlight hits concession stand foods like deep-fried ranch dressing (yes, that’s a thing this year) and anything edible on a stick. But the real culinary action happens inside fair pavilions and expo centers, where tens of thousands of cake bakers, jam makers and vegetable canners compete.

In every state, there is an elite group of cooks who approach fair season with the focus of an Olympic athlete. They analyze categories and study how to impress judges. They practice pie recipes and pick only the best produce for their canning jars. Year after year, they take home not just a blue ribbon or two. They dominate.

We combed the country looking for these state fair all-stars. Here are seven of the big hitters:

Karen Delawder

Age: 71

Home kitchen: Rockingham County, Va.

Ribbon count: More than 1,000, from state and local fairs.

Day job: Retired from a variety of jobs. “Mostly I was just raising kids and getting them out in life.”

Notable wins: First place in the State Fair of Virginia contest sponsored by the state Egg Council for a magic flan cake. “I had worked five years to try to win that one.”

Top skill: Versatility. Delawder has won across categories including baking, food preservation and sponsored specialty-cooking competitions, like one from the Virginia Peanut Growers Association, in which the cooks tend to be more skilled and the judges more discerning.

Secret weapon: She took a class in judging fair competitions to learn exactly what the judges are looking for.

Pro tip: Practice, practice, practice. That means troubleshooting a pie that doesn’t look quite right, or adjusting for shrinkage in your canning. “You need to cut your beans a certain way. Whole tomatoes need to be put in the can a certain way so they fill it up but don’t squish.”

This year: She’ll enter the King Arthur Baking Co. harvest pie contest and the Virginia Peanut Growers Association “grab n’ go” contest, as well as some canning competitions.

Jim Austin

Age: 72

Home kitchen: Rancho Cordova, Calif.

Ribbon count: More than 100.

Day job: Retired nurse practitioner.

Notable wins: A two-time winner of the Golden Bear, which is awarded to the best entry from each competitive category in the California State Fair. Prickly pear jelly and brandied Rainier cherries were his winning entries.

Pro tip>> Be a perfectionist. It’s something he learned while growing up on a farm near Turlock, in the Central Valley. “I still hear my mom’s voice always saying, ‘Make it as perfect as you can. If something isn’t right, you don’t proceed.’”

First fair: He submitted a lemon meringue pie in a county fair 55 years ago and won a blue ribbon. His mother’s pie took fourth place. “They said her meringue wept too much. She was not happy.”

Retirement advantage: When he was working full time, he could prepare only one or two baking entries a year. Canning became a retirement project. He started experimenting with recipes so he could sell jams and jellies at a farmers’ market, and used the state fair as a proving ground.

How to tell if someone really knows how to can: Taste the bread-and-butter pickles: “It’s really all in the spicing.”

This year: He has been asked to become a judge, so his competition days are over.

Anna Sattler

Age: 25

Home kitchen: Cedarburg, Wis.

Ribbon count: 20, including nine blues.

Day job: Coordinator in the general counsel’s office of Human Rights Watch.

Notable win: Her first blue ribbon. At 17, she submitted a cinnamon roll recipe to the Wisconsin State Fair that she’d learned in a class at age 12 and tweaked with the addition of five-spice powder. It went on to win the best of the baking division and earned her $150 from the sponsor, Red Star Yeast. “That really lit the fire.”

Training: Sattler spends weekends testing recipes. When she goes to the fair, she watches the judging intently and makes notes on their comments. “You’ll learn the type of crumb they like a cake to have, or the flavor they expect from a type of alcohol, for example.”

Pro tip: Master the fundamentals of baking and learn from experts, whether online or through books like Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Cake Bible.” Be clear about competition requirements like serving size. Take every detail very seriously.

Inspiration: Her mother, who is an expert baker and competed in state fairs in the 1990s. “Growing up, we had the ribbons on the wall.”

Motivation: It’s a wholesome hobby that gives her a chance to highlight the state’s agricultural bounty. “If I can help promote Wisconsin’s products, sign me up.”

This year: Sattler will enter a German bienenstich — a bee-sting cake — in the contest sponsored by the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association, and a salted caramel apple cake in the Wisconsin Apple Growers Association competition. She’ll also enter a pie or two.

Resa Romero

Age: 48

Home kitchen: Pueblo.

Ribbon count: Zero. But her children have won at least 750, and her mother has won another 50 or so.

Day job: Emergency-room nurse.

Notable wins: All six of her children won the Colorado State Fair’s Kitchen Royalty competition for people under 18. That’s Hannah, now 32; Kiki, 29 (who won twice); Darian, 28; Nathaniel, 23; Jeremiah, 21; and Joshua, an 18-year-old who won last year with 75 different items including canned yams and an all-natural insect ointment.

Secret weapon: Romero’s mother, LaDean Silberhorn, taught everyone in the family how to can. Silberhorn grew up on a farm in South Dakota. “She was one of those who would cook for all the hired men by the time she was 10 or 11.”

How they built a dynasty: Romero showed the children how to bake. Her husband, Sam, taught them to make dishes like green chili and spaghetti. His mother, Eunice Romero, was the master of sopaipillas and tortillas. And of course, there is the queen of canning, Silberhorn, who said, “I think they have a record that will never be beaten.”

Fame: Besides appearing in numerous news reports, the children contributed nine recipes to “Blue Ribbon Canning: Award-Winning Recipes,” a 2015 cookbook by the competitive-cooking authority Linda J. Amendt, who is the lead culinary judge for the California State Fair.

This year: Romero had planned to try for the Queen of the Fair title, but it’s been hard to find to time to prepare. She is making up for work hours she lost when she donated a kidney to a brother. She is spending time with her grandchildren, remodeling a rental house and saving a garden decimated by grasshoppers. But she plans to submit at least a jar of honey and a plate of almond-cranberry-apricot cookies. “It’s the best recipe ever,” she said. “I’ll never give that recipe away.”

Elaine Reilley

Age: 62

Home kitchen: Jordan, N.Y.

Ribbon count: More than 200, about half of them blue.

Day job: Real estate administrative assistant.

Notable win: A blue ribbon for her corn chowder at the 1994 Great New York State Fair. “It was a huge ego boost because I won the first time I entered anything. Then the letdown comes when you realize you don’t always win.”

Strategy: “I was never a sports competitor or athletic, so this is my competition. I challenge myself year after year. My mind gets racing and I choose my recipes and start putting concoctions together in my head early on, and then I test them on my co-workers.”

Next Level: Reilley uses the state fair competition to perfect dishes for national contests sponsored by food companies. In 2017, she won $150 at the state fair for her Peaches-and-Cream Spamini — a glazed-doughnut and Spam sandwich with a mixture of grilled peaches, peach jam and cream cheese, cooked in a panini press. The win qualified her for Spam’s national contest, where she lost to Spam Monkey Bread.

Pro tip: Don’t give up. One year, the apple Bundt cake she made for the state apple growers’ contest stuck to the pan. She went to bed defeated, but woke up around midnight with an idea: She cut the cake into cubes, made apple mousse and built parfaits. They won. “It’s all about the ribbons and to say, ‘I got first.’”

This year: She’ll submit at least 10 dishes, including blueberry coffee cake with lemon for the King Arthur Baking streusel contest, a vegetable cake for Cake Day, a cream pie for Pie Day, a dessert with mashed potatoes for the Empire Potato Growers contest, and something for Five Ingredients or Less Day and the gluten-free dessert contest.

Han Lievens

Age: 51

Home kitchen: Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ribbon count: Two first-place ribbons and one second-place.

Day job: Cybersecurity specialist.

Notable wins: First place in both the artisan and sourdough bread categories at last year’s Oregon State Fair, the latter for a white sourdough loaf his children call “papa bread.”

Skill Set: Technical prowess. Lievens started baking for friends and family 11 years ago when he had trouble finding bread that matched his memories of the loaves he ate while growing up in Belgium. He studied the techniques of the acclaimed American bakers Peter Reinhart, Chad Robertson, Maurizio Leo and Ken Forkish.

Strategy: He’s not a big fan of sour sourdoughs, so he dials it back and instead teases out earthiness and nuttiness by using specialty wheat flours like hard red spring Yecora Rojo. “Any freshly milled flour is always better.”

Pro tip: “It took me a long time to realize that an exact temperature really is very important but you can push the hydration. Where you can get creative is the shaping and the flour you are experimenting with.”

Origin story: He grew up abroad with a Flemish father and Taiwanese mother, and had never heard of state fairs. His wife, Emily, who is from North Carolina, encouraged him to enter.

Why fairs matter: “We tell our friends we are going to the state fair and they’re like, ‘Oh really. Is that fun?’ But it’s not just corn dogs and a rodeo. Everybody should go so they can experience Americana and understand the farming business.”

This year: He’ll enter the artisan and sourdough bread categories, and for the first time he’s taking a shot at the Oregon Award, a special prize for breads that showcase local ingredients. He’s thinking of a recipe using local flour and hazelnuts or cherries.

Pamela Kloiber

Age: 70

Home kitchen: Oklahoma City

Ribbon count: 1,607, including Best of Show, and awards from competitions sponsored by the Kerr and Ball jar companies, Certo Sure-Jell and C&H Sugar. Also, 27 special medallions and 56 sweepstakes awards, which are based on how many blue ribbons someone wins.

Day job: Executive director of Team Tinker Home Away From Home, a program she founded in which volunteers invite new recruits at Tinker Air Force Base for meals and activities as a way to alleviate the anxiety of being far from home. (She’s also a retired junior high school teacher.)

Notable win: The Oklahoma State Fair cookie jar competition in 2012. The rules require contestants to stack four to seven types of cookies in a gallon jar decorated with that year’s fair theme, which was “homegrown fun.” Kloiber had just completed breast cancer treatment and her mother was dying in the hospital. The family sugar cookie recipe, passed down from her grandmother to her mother to her, were in the jar. She won, and was able to share the news with her mother, who died before the fair ended.

Pro tip: Exercise precision and patience. “I baked a batch of cookies the other day. I was going for a new drop cookie, so I added apples and oatmeal and applesauce and craisins and it just crumbled and it was horrific. Well, guess where they went? Right in the trash can.”

Test subjects: Young service members who come to her home every Sunday as part of Team Tinker.

Ace in the hole: Her chocolate cake, which she has used to win the title of championship baker five times.

This year: So far, she is planning to submit 30 jellies and jams, with more entries to come. Last year she entered in 95 categories.