Chopped: Slow cooker.

Host Ted Allen: Welcome to a special edition of Chopped. In this slow cooker challenge, four chefs will vie for $10,000 by making the best appetizer, entree, and dessert in slow cookers. In each round the contestants will have to use mandatory mystery ingredients from the baskets at their stations. The chef in each round who pleases our judges least with their crock comestibles will be chopped. 

Chef Tats McEargauge: I didn't come here to lose. So I guess I came here to win.

Chef Egon Greez: I've used slow cookers in all my restaurants. Every one. Every single failed bankrupt rotten lousy one. I'm gonna take home that prize. I want my daughters and their mothers to be proud of me.

Ted: And in the first round your dishes will have to use... lamb shanks... fiddlehead ferns... ramen noodles... and chocolate syrup. You have eight hours to prepare your dishes. Time starts now.

[Chefs seen starting to examine products, moseying over to pantry to find other things]

Chef Belle Buster: These guys try to intimidate women in the kitchen, well, nuts to that. I'm here to show that a woman can cook as well or better than the big boys, just like the five thousand or so women who have been on this show before me.

Chef Gerard Ling Rajagukguk du Wangenstein: [very thick accent; subtitled] I am happy to be here and I hope to won. The pen of my aunt is on the bureau.

Ted: [to judges] This is our first slow cooker challenge on Chopped. A little different!

Aaron Sanchez: Foods cooked in slow cookers can get dried out if you don't time it right.

Scott Conant: Yeah, sometimes you need split-hour timing.

Alex Guarnaschelli: Usually chefs get 20 minutes for the appetizer round. How long do they have?

Ted: Eight hours.

Alex: Well, damn it, I'd have had lunch if I'd known that.





Tats: My mother loves lamb shanks, so I immediately start browning them in the pan. Then I remember it's a slow cooker challenge, so I relax. Mom doesn't like them slow cooked, but she didn't even recognize me last time I was home. Just because I tattooed someone else's face on my own face. You think a mother would know.

Egon: I'm totally stumped by these ingredients, until I suddenly see it in the pantry---canned cream of mushroom soup! The slow cooker classic!

Belle: I chuck the ramen and lamb in the crock and start it cooking. I got eight hours to think of what to add. The noodles shatter but who cares. It's gonna be epic because I'm making it. And why am I making it? Because it's gonna be epic.

😋

[after first-round judging]

Ted: I'm sorry, Belle, but you have been chopped.

Belle: Oh, that's all right. [BLEEPED WORD STARTS WITH F]

Scott: Belle, we loved your Chocolate Lamb Surprise. You repurposed the ingredients well. But you forgot to use the fiddleheads.

Belle: Yeah, they just sat there on my pan for the first seven hours. But then I put them in.

Scott: Plus the introduction of flounder was a little too surprising. So we had to chop you. 

Belle: Okay, whatevs. [stalks off]

Ted: Gerard, Tats, and Egon, you move on to our entree round. The mystery ingredients for this round include... black walnuts... leg of goat... kohlrabi... horseshoe crabs... and Twinkies. You have ten hours. Time starts now.

Aaron: Ten hours! Hijo de tu puta madre! We've already been here ten! 

Alex: This is a slow cooker challenge, Aaron. 

Aaron: Can we call in Marc Murphy?

Ted: The rules say the judges must remain on premises. You remember that time...

Scott: Yeah, the guy who got drunk during the Australia Day episode. I didn't know a human being could consume that many cans of Foster's that quickly.

Tats: I decide to cut the meat off the goat leg to make nice tender cutlets in the slow cooker, each seasoned to perfection. Also, the leg bone won't fit. 

Egon: I'm at a loss at what to do until it hits me: canned cream of mushroom soup! Now I know what to do.

Gerard: [subtitles] My umbrella is green and blue.

😕

[slow cookers humming away. chefs sitting. Egon reading the paper, Tats playing with his phone, Gerard quietly conjugating.]

Alex: This is some kickass television entertainment, Ted.

😑

Ted: And now it's time to judge the entree round. Wake up, judges! 

Alex: Finally! Why didn't I eat more of the appetizers?

Ted: Chef Egon, you're up first.

Egon: So, I made for you today my Creamy Goat Crab Casserole with Kohlrabi-Twinkie Topping.

Aaron: Clever use of the Twinkies as topping.

Scott: Too bad it tastes awful.

Alex: I don't care if it tastes like licking a moose butt, I'm eating it.

Scott: Pretty close.

Ted: Chef Tats?

Tats: I have for you my Goat Bowl with Curried Twinkies.

Scott: Your pasta is mushy. 

Tats: I probably shouldn't have put it in with five hours left to go.

Scott: You're freaking right you shouldn't have, you tattooed jackass. I almost jumped over this table and beat you bloody. How could you do that to innocent pasta that never did a thing to you? What do you use those holes in your lobes for, to measure servings of capellini?

Ted: Um, now we have Gerard.

Gerard: [translated] My brother has a large automobile.

Aaron: Really good job on the goat here, Gerard. Definitely the least moosey of the bunch.

😯

[Round three, following Tats's self-chopping by refusing to come out of the break room for it]

Ted: [tie askew, jacket on the floor] Gerard and Egon, are you ready for the dessert round?

Egon: No.

Gerard: [unknown; bleeped just in case it's offensive in some language]

Ted: For the dessert round you will have to use.... circus peanuts... cheap vodka... strawberry Greek yogurt... and canned anchovies. You have six hours. Time starts now. 

Alex: Kill me.

😫

Ted: Is it still Tuesday?

Alex: I think it's Friday. My watch stopped. 

Aaron: Did I ever tell you about that time my mother back in Mexico...

Scott: [waving a bottle of tequila] Oh, shut up, Aaron! No more friggin' stories about ol' MeHEEco today, aright?

Aaron: Look, you--- Hey, where'd you get that?

Scott: Pantry. 

Aaron: You didn't share?!

Ted: Look at the clock! Our time was up at least ten minutes ago and no one noticed!

Alex: [groggy] Thank you, Jesus.

Egon: Dang! We didn't plate anything.

Scott: Just slop it out. How good's it going to be, anyway? I saw you making anchovy ice cream. Guess what? Every freakin' ice cream out of that machine is going to be anchovy from now on, stupid.

Egon: Well---it melted in the slow cooker anyway.

Aaron: You are an idiot.

Alex: Oh, just hit us with it so we can go home.

Ted: And what did you make? 

Egon: This is my Creamy Strawberry-Circus Cake with Anchovy, uh, Sauce.

Alex: Just tell me one thing. 

Egon: ....Yes?

Alex: Did you use canned cream of mushroom soup in this? 

Egon: ...

Alex: Like you did with your appetizer and your entree?

Egon: Er, classic slow cooker ingredient...

Alex: [throws spoon at Egon] You lose. The weird froggy guy wins. I'm done.

Aaron: Second the motion. 

Scott: Peasche out.

Ted: Well, Egon, looks like you've---

Egon: I know. I know.

Ted: And that means, Gerard, you're the winner of our first---

Alex: ---and last---

Ted: ---slow cooker challenge. Congratulations.

Gerard: [subtitle] The butterfly is red and orange and potato.

😴