What you're about to witness is something that's never been done before. A culinary competition so intense even Gordon Ramsay himself would be nervous to compete. I myself happen to be one of the four contestants today but before I explain the rules, allow me to introduce the other three. Hi, I'm Manny, and I'm going to be today's host and judge. First up, Lynja. Certified bussin’. Second, we've got The Golden Balance. It looks lowkey classless. And last but not least, Cugine. It’s in the bag, probably. The rules are simple. We’ll be split into teams of two and each given $100 to spend at the grocery store to make the most amazing dish we possibly can in just one hour. There may be a few random twists too. And our judge today will be none other than cameraman, Manny, who will be promptly fired if he doesn't vote in my favor. We have $100 and five minutes to spend it in the grocery store to get all the ingredients we need. Your five minutes starts now. I did absolutely zero planning for this. We could have salmon for lunch. What if we make a salmon Wellington? Well, it's bold for me but I trust Nick. We’ve got nothing. I think we should select a protein and then just build off of that. So I think we should make like a Fillet Mignon sandwich. Like is it dripping with fat? I mean, yeah. Okay. So for the base let's get some spinach, butter, garlic, shallots. This much? Perfect. How much is it? $6. So $36 so far. Okay, that's good. The salmon's going to be expensive. I'm worried about the salmon. Each of these is $2.50. Okay, I'm getting my steps in today. We'll just deep-fry these. Anything deep-fried is good. We're looking for some steak, good quality steak. Can we do the second and third ones from us? That looks disgusting, Lynja. How could they put it out? If we're going to make Wellington we need the thickest piece of salmon we can find. Do we need a starch? The starch can come from the puff pastry on the outside. Then we'll have the fish, and then the nice hollandaise sauce kind of sitting out with a few chives to finish it off. Perfect! He's got a big fat piece of salmon for us. That's perfect. Just letting you know, this is going to be more expensive. Uh oh. Than the other one. Shoot. We'll scale it. It's bigger than me! ... (beep) you guys. Do you think this thing's in the budget? Do you think they got this or we got this? It's in the bag, probably. Are you kidding me? We're doing the filet mignon. How are you doing? We got the inside scoop on that. Hello. A little potato action. Okay. Quality bread. Say less. Is that in the budget? I got it. I got it. Yeah, yeah, we got it. Okay, I also think we should make- what do you think about a nice hollandaise sauce? Well, that sounds perfect. Does this fit in the budget? No, but we need it. Where are the freaking eggs? Damn, these are some expensive eggs. It's $4. Inflation's out of control. We need a good, strong cheese. Havarti melts nice. All right, let's do it. I make sandwiches for a living, you know? Ciabatta? Whatever. Yeah, let's go. Yeah, I know. It feels good. Do you want to put any salads in it or not? Do you want to caramelize some onions, maybe? I think onions. We've got about one minute. We've got to go for real. We got all our ingredients with 30 seconds left. Let's go check out. Always time for a diet Coke. As long as it fits in the budget. I'll give you the budget. Will these make the cut? You're making a sandwich? Yeah. Two slices of bread. You're just trying to do too much. Two slices of bread. He's doing Salmon Wellington. Please be under $100. I hope so. Oh, it's actually so close. They're making a sandwich. A sandwich? Manny doesn't have a classy freaking palate. No, I promise I won't do it again. He needs the exercise. I lied. We are back with all of our amazing ingredients and both teams seem well-prepared to impress our judge. And your time starts now! We need a pan to start doing the spinach and the shallots. Do you want to chop or do you want me to chop? Yeah, I'll chop. Look at these try-hards. They haven't even started. They've done nothing. He's going to the bedroom. We're relaxing. He's taking a (beep). Oh, hey. What the freak? You guys are starting? We're making a salmon Wellington. This is not an easy recipe to make. We could run out of time with the baking process. We could. Look at these knife skills compared to what he's doing over there. TGB has no knife skills. What? Most uneven pieces I've ever seen. It doesn't matter. They're getting sauteed. I don't think Cug has ever cooked anything in his life by the way. Woah! I worked the line for a year. No disrespecting my teammate. He eats but he doesn't cook. Gabagool. We only have a few sticks of butter, but I'm going to use the first one for the spinach. All right, we need a little bit of butter in here. I got you. I got you! That's class. Very classy. We just got to get these going early. Finish with the salt action. Nice. He's sabotaging our dish. Some balls. Oh, shoot! We burned the butter. Lynja, we've got to redo it. Okay. Lynja, if you don't say "behind" one more time I'm going to (beep)! I need to take care of the steak. I'll take care of the mayo. I think I'm just going to be the cheerleader today. Let's hit it with some garlic powder. Yeah, garlic, paprika, you know? I know Manny has never tasted any garlic powder from Nick. Smoked or regular? Smoked. Smoked, how you doing? 46 minutes left, boys. 46 minutes left and we've got to redo our butter. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. So this is going to be the base of our salmon Wellington and a little garlic. My eyes are- I'm crying. Okay, Lynja. Tell me when you're ready for the garlic. Okay. Good? Ready for the garlic. Okay, let's toss it in. Really give it class. Cug, Lynja just roasted you. Yeah, do we have a problem here? Putting some black pepper on the steak. We're gonna give them a quick little flip. Cug, put some salt on there, please. Get it in there. Let it do its thing for a little bit. Nick, have you ever put seasoning on the steak? I know you like chicken and rice. Have you ever cooked a steak? Settle down. Okay, Nick, what's next? Nick! In the pan. You're not Popeye. This is the base of our salmon Wellington. We also need a few breadcrumbs, some cream, and maybe a little bit of parmesan cheese to get a little bit of salt in there. All right, so we're about to make our mayo. We need a blender. Can I get the blender base, please? (beep) no. Please. We'll do 1 egg yolk, 1 regular. Some Dijon mustard in there, and we need a little bit of vinegar. Is that nice and thick? Aye yo. Trying to make mayonnaise for the first time over here. They put way too much mustard. It's going to be the wateriest mayonnaise you have ever seen. That looks like some good mayo. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to go in with a few pine nuts. Those are going to give that nice nuttiness to our dish. Nuttiness. Settled down. A couple of these breadcrumbs to soak up some of the moisture because we don't want anything to bleed through the bottom of our puff pastry. We need it to be nice and dry. Now, let's shave in some parmesan cheese. Lynja, take a taste. Mmm, it's delicious. I'm going to finish it with a little roasted garlic Osmo. We're going to rest this in this glass bowl and set this aside. 35 minutes left everyone. Let's get it together. Guy's going to stab himself. Biggest cook on TikTok and he doesn't even have a can opener. He's a fraud. Total sham. We're getting cut from the video. All right, we got some Chipotle peppers going. How are we doing? Bon appetit. If Manny says it's not good he's lying. Everyone, stop for a second. We've got 30 minutes left and a little bit of a twist. All right, we got some lobster claws right here and handcuffs. Nick and Lynja, you've got to put these on. And you guys have to split these claws between yourselves. For the next 10 minutes, this will be part of your cooking challenge. I think we're just going to hang out for 10 minutes. Yeah. Are you a lefty or righty? Yeah. No, but you need your right hand. It almost would make sense if we kind of hold hands. Hold hands. Look at that. Do you want to try to open up all the herbs with your hand while I start doing the salmon? We just found out. We realized we took all the rosemary in the market. Where's the rosemary? Probably somewhere here. Rosemary. Rosemary. There's no way they don't have rosemary. There's no way. Lynja, catch! I can't hold it with one hand. We're chilling. This is actually kind of easy to use. I'm Mr. Krabs over here. He didn't go to the gym today so this thing is heavy, you know? You just have to have fun with food and you'll actually make good food. Frozen fries are a cheat code to life. Frozen fries? You got a problem, Mr. Fancy Salmon whatever you are? For the salmon Wellington, we want the thickest part of the salmon. I think we want to come around the side to keep this belly part. Next up, I'm just going to chop off the end of the fish here and then finally I'm going to cut right through the middle of this. And now here's our perfect filleted salmon. Do you think we need to cut it down a little more? The only problem is I have to cut it off the skin and I can't do that when we're handcuffed together. We can't wait so. Okay. Be careful, Lynja. Here with our fillet knife, I'm just going to come right under the salmon here. Try to get as close to the skin as I possibly can. Never in my life have I filleted a fish while handcuffed to somebody. The handcuffs are really hurting my hand actually. I don't know about you, Lynja. Ouch. Oh, I put mine on really loose. I'm going to cut right through the middle of it. And this is the finished piece of salmon for the Wellington. Oh, man. We got the onions rolling back here. They're looking beautiful. We need the garlic for heartburn and the filet mignon. Bro, what kind of garlic is this, bro? It's purple. Oh my god, peeling garlic with these stupid gloves on, bro. Total nonsense. Congratulation guys, the ten minutes are up, so you can take off your constraints. Ouch! My poor baby. Do you know how to read? Two to five minutes. How are the onions looking? I mean, they aren't caramelizing. You might want to crank up the heat just a little bit just to speed up that process. Right now, we've got the steaks marinating. It's been like ten minutes. They're nice and oiled up. Ready to get a nice sear on them. Forget about it. The last two things that we have to do are put the salmon in the puff pastry and make a hollandaise sauce. First things first our puff pastry we're going to lay it down on our cutting board. And give it a big whack of flour. Now we'll roll this out until it's nice and flat and then here we'll dry our salmon off to make sure that it's not bleeding through the puff pastry. Then we'll hit it with a little sprinkle of salt. Dry it off one more time. Smack it. And then lay that right down on top of our puff pastry. You guys are frying frozen pre-done fries by yourselves? You just don't get it like that's it. Let's take care of Manny. Back up for a quick second. Look what's going on over here and look what's going on over here. Which one would you rather eat? Nice, crispy golden french fries, and cooked steak. Nobody even knows what that is. What are you going to say to that? I can't say anything to Lynja. She's a national treasure. Time to roll out the top layer. I'll gently come over this one more time with my rolling pin. Then we'll place the filling over the top of the salmon. Are you intimidated? Be honest. Nobody wants to eat that food. Everyone wants sandwiches. Blue collar stuff. They’re over here doing some Gordon Ramsay nonsense. Nick’s got no comeback. He's trying to think harder than he did at Harvard. Crack the eggs for egg wash. And we'll whisk it all up. Get your mind out of the gutter, Nick. Now we'll paint all around the edges of our salmon so we can close up this puff pastry. And once that's ready we’ll lay over our top sheet of puff pastry. Now it's all about just making it look as pretty as possible. We just need to make sure we press out all the air bubbles and push down on all the edges to make sure that this thing holds up when cooking. And once that's complete, paint the whole thing in egg wash once more. 18 minutes left. Alright, don’t do this at home... They look like McDonald’s, huh? We’re tossing the fries into a bowl. The fries are going to get a little parmesan cheese, tiny bit of garlic, and a nice little toss right there. Okay. Okay? Best fries that you've ever had. Now we have to slice off all of these extra edges and then give it a few nice designs across the top. It looks amazing. Then I'll scoop it up and into the oven we go. He thinks he's Picasso over here. Alright, it’s steak time. Let's get the pan nice and hot. We're gonna grab the thickest piece of steak. We’re going to lay it away from us. Hear a nice little sizzle. Cug, did you steal our rosemary? Are you stereotyping me now? That’s a beautiful sear. I will say it’s a good sear. So we’re going to toss in a little of our butter, a bunch of garlic. Why are you eating our fries? All right, we got 10 minutes left and we have a little bit of a surprise. We have three mystery items and each team has to pick one item to put in their recipe. Do you guys want 1, 2, or 3? Three. You got two left. Which one do you want? One. All right, here we go. I think we could use this. Lynja, how do you want to use the pineapple? Why don’t we make a slightly sweet hollandaise sauce? I feel like this would actually go kind of well in there. But we do need to slice it down. So will you start cutting it? I’ve never cut a pineapple in my life. You're over here dillydallying, commenting on my Chipotle mayo. Meanwhile, your grandmother over here’s struggling with a pineapple. I’ll help you, Lynja. It's pink?! It’s a girl! We're putting the pineapple in a bag and we're going to beat it to death to get the juice out of it. This is heavy cream. I needed whipped cream. I think we’re going to throw it in the Chipotle mayo. Get a little sweetness going. These guys over here cutting up a pink watermelon. Our last step is the hollandaise sauce. You're going to start whisking as I pour in these yolks. Start whisking really hard really fast and we're going to turn our heat down. We do not want them to cook and if we ever need to we can take the bowl off the heat to make sure it doesn't cook too fast. We’re waiting for these egg yolks to double in volume and get a little bit lighter. And once that happens, I'll start going in with hunks of butter that will slowly melt into those egg yolks to emulsify into a beautiful hollandaise sauce. Ouch, my shoulder. Keep (beep) mixing, Lynja. We’re going to take a little bit of the butter from the steak and we're going to toss it into a pan. And then we're just going to toast our sandwich bread. We're doing Havarti. King’s choice because obviously me and TGB are (beep) kings. I know you like some medium rare steak. We got it resting in that butter. Thin slices so they're very easy to bite. Look how tender that steak is. Get a nice little spread on there. We got our mayo, and we're gonna go in with our fries. Let's lay out our steak. Beautiful, caramelized onions. Takes longer than you think. Little blanket for the onions. Just gonna toast the cheese real quick. And to finish off we’re going to take some homemade hot pepper spread. Oh, that’s a lot. I'm going to kill you, Manny. And then we're just going to give it a nice little spread. Some pickle action and then we're going to shut it up with the lid. Do you think she is pretty? Pretty? Drop dead gorgeous. At the end of the day someone's got to eat this, you know? To finish it off, I'm going to puncture this and get a little bit of pineapple juice. This will let us get a little bit of sweetness in there. Oh, it's squirting. Last but not least, we'll add a few herbs into our hollandaise sauce to get some of that flavor along with a touch of cayenne pepper and just a pinch of salt. For the final garnish, we're going to chop some chives. To plate our final dish we'll slice into our salmon Wellington. Open it up and take just one side to place down on a plate. Then we'll place our pineapple cayenne hollandaise sauce just in front of it. And finish with a few chives. Bon appétit. Alright, for our first dish, we have a steak frites sandwich. Let's give it a try. Wow. Overall, I love a sandwich. The flavor's great. The steak is cooked perfectly. I love the sauces that they incorporated. My only criticism would be, it's a little thick. It's hard to handle, a little hard to bite, but that's probably only criticism. Next up, we have a salmon Wellington. First thing I've got to say is this dish is gorgeous. One thing I've learned on the job here is that a Wellington should be really tight. Nick and Lynja have done a great job in making sure everything's super tight and compact. Alright, I'm going to go for a corner piece right here. Wow! The puff pastry is perfect. This pineapple sauce is amazing. It works really well. The spinach mixture works really well with the salmon. All the flavors combine really well. Overall 10 out of 10. Time for the final verdict. The winner of today's cook-off goes to Cug and The Golden Balance. Hugs out here! Yea, we're winners! They're going home with the 24-karat gold trophy and, of course, bragging rights. Lynja, we did our best today. I know. We did that salmon proud. Look, boss, no hard feelings. It wasn't my favorite dish. No, it's fine. It's fine. Pack your stuff and get out. You're fired. Are you serious? Yeah. What?
