Last week, Worst Cook had the aspiring cooks learning how to use their knives without accidental amputation. In keeping with the “extreme” theme with the knives, this week was all about “extreme flavors.” As a hint to the cooks, Chef Anne Burrell and Chef Bobby Flay surprised them by ordering pizza to their houses. Of course that meant that the skill drill would be to make pizza with extreme toppings. The goal of the challenge was to experiment with flavor combinations that were outside their regular comfort zones.
The chefs had to follow instructions to recreate pizza dough, but then they would be on their own to create dough good enough to be the winning dish. Bobby and Anne would do a blind taste test to rate the cooks’ pizzas from worst to best. The winning team with the best pizza would win a significant advantage for the rest of the competition. When kneading her dough, Erica needed Vinnie’s help. He kept telling her to use her hands, which to Erica meant smashing it with her elbows.
The results of the pizza tasting, from worst to best was: David, Bennett, Anthony, Vinnie, Benjamin, Erica, Dorothy, Bob, Sarina, Melissa, Kelly, and finally the winner Tiffany. As a prize for winning, Bobby’s team was able to trade one of their players for a player of their choice from the opposite team. He chose David from his team to go to Red, and invited Melissa from Red to come to Blue.
The next stage of the competition was the main dish challenge. To introduce the cooks to a perfect “extreme flavor” combinations, Chef Anne and Bobby did a blindfolded taste test. They had the cooks guess classic opposite flavor combinations: such as spicy with fruit, and sweet with salty. Each team went away thinking about what they could do with their meals.
Chef Anne had the Red team grill chicken with mashed potatoes as a side. Bobby had the Blue team grill a steak medium rare also with mashed potatoes. The cooks had to use the designated protein and mashed potato side dish, but the flavor combinations would be all theirs. Dorothy chose to try her vanilla chicken mixture again. It was a major failure and Chef Anne made sure that Dorothy would never attempt that again.
The cooks that were the winners of this round were Bennett and Benjamin. Erica and Bob were sent home. Erica was such a fun person to watch and both will be missed.
