[Guy] For the first time ever, Flavortown Market is making deliveries
to the doorsteps of all-star chefs across America.
But with my family pack in the boxes,
you never know what you're going to get.
Oh, no. What is this?
[cheering]
Tonight these unsuspecting all-star chefs are about to feel the burn.
That's the freezer burn, son.
Oh, no, frozen food.
[Guy] They'll have to turn boxes full of frozen food into thaw-inspiring dishes.
Real cool, Guy.
I can't cook with this stuff.
Or they might just find themselves out in the cold.
I don't know what to do with fish sticks.
It's a "Frozen Fiasco" right now on Triple G: Delivery.
- "Out in the cold"? - I know, right?
[honking]
All right, Hunter, my son,
are you ready to see if our chefs knows really good, chilly recipes?
I've got some goose bumps just thinking about it.
Oh, I know, I know.
First up, fiercely competitive chef and cookbook author,
you also know him as Ally's husband.
The one and only, Chef Jet Tila.
Poor Jet.
I am Jet Tila.
I've been through the wringer with Triple G from all sides.
There's no way to really prepare for this game
even though I've got, like, the most teched out kitchen there is.
I kind of crawl into it like a robot mech suit
and we become one to destroy.
- How are you, brother? - Confident.
Next, executive chef and culinary rock star, Chef Michael Voltaggio.
[Michael] I have competed in Flavortown.
I have a pretty good record on Triple G: Delivery as of right now.
It's important to me
that I have all the same toys at home that I have in the restaurant.
A lot of people would be stoked to have
a guy coming in live through their kitchen...
[laughing]
...but in this particular circumstance,
it's also a bit of a challenge.
- What's up, bro? - Let's go.
And finally, Food Network star and beloved Triple G judge
competing on Triple G: Delivery.
For the very wise one and only Spice Queen Chef Aarti Sequeira.
Thank you.
[Aarti] My two worlds are colliding.
Cooking at home. Flavortown in my home.
It's like, it hurts my brain to think about it
but I have all the things that I think that rescue
anything that Guy's got in that box for me.
[grunting]
Who understands Guy's brain?
- How are you, Aarti? - Welcome, Aarti.
So excited.
Welcome to ThunderDome, Aarti.
[laughing]
Can't wait.
Welcome chefs to Triple G: Delivery.
It's Flavortown's best delivery service
and home to the world's hardest game.
- Yes! - Hunter, give them the scoop.
We've sent you two of Flavortown's coolest boxes of ingredients.
- Cool. Cool. - Very cool.
Our three-judge panel is standing by to score each of your dishes
based on gameplay, creativity and plating,
and, most importantly,
your description of their taste.
Best of all, the chef with the highest combined score
after both rounds, will get a shot at winning up to $20,000.
Why don't we start off by making something everyone loves?
A hot lunch.
I mean, that's easy peasy, right?
- Totally. Yeah. - Simple.
Now, to make it a little more challenging,
we filled your Game 1 box with things typically served just like dinner.
[Hunter] Yeah.
So, basically, you'll be flipping a bunch of these
cool dinner items into a hot lunch.
- Got it? Hunter. - Right, 100%.
All right, bring it out.
It's bigger than I am.
Definitely a little lighter than I like.
Is it light? This is my first time.
Oh, ho!
I don't... I'm never gonna have this anyway.
Aarti, this is what you're gonna get, just so you know.
Are you trash talking already?
Is Jet already talking smack that Aarti is getting the Package of Pain.
I gotta get ahead.
Oh, no, frozen food.
Oh, no. What is this? I can't cook with this stuff.
Cold dinners. Real cool, Guy.
Hold up. Hold up, Hunter...
I said send them some really cool ingredients.
Right, you said, you said send them cool ingredients.
- So I went... - Cool ingredients, not cold, frozen ingredients.
...to the freezer section and got them this.
[laughing] This is wrong.
This is terrible.
I apologize.
Evidently, this competition wasn't well thought out.
Mmm.
Was it?
Was it well thought out?
It's really a "Frozen Fiasco."
It is a fiasco.
What is this nonsense?
Chicken nugget things.
- Pizza. - More pizza.
Little Salisbury steak dinner.
Sesame chicken.
[Jet] Oh, Texas toast. All right.
Yeah, everything is frozen, and everything's already a meal.
You must transform the ingredients
in these frozen dinners into a hot lunch.
Anyhow, I wonder, what's this?
Ladies and gentlemen, it's an Ice Dice Baby.
Look at that.
Oh, it's like ice. I get it. There's ice in here.
Oh, okay. Uh-uh, it's cold.
How about we roll it and whatever it lands on
that's how many ingredients you get to use out of your pantry.
- Ah, that's nice. - Your pantry, your fridge, your freezer. Okay?
Aarti?
- [laughs boisterously] - [Guy] Six!
Fantastic!
Roll it, Jet.
Yeah! Six!
Voltaggio.
Winner, winner, frozen dinner.
- Five. - Five?
[speaking Spanish]
[Guy in English] You guys can use anything you want out of the frozen food
and I will let you grab,
Aarti, six items. Jet, six items and Voltaggio's five items.
The gift of giving. Look at that.
Let's get after this hot lunch.
As soon as I say three, two, one, go!
It's real time.
This is terrible.
Ahh, Jesus, take the wheel. I don't know what I'm doing.
[giggling] What is this nonsense?
Guy's asking us to transform
these frozen dinners into a hot lunch,
and all I can think is hot mess.
Frozen things don't turn out like real food all the time.
It's a tall order, Guy and Hunter.
- [Guy] Aarti. - Yeah?
What are you doing?
Think I'm going to do a grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Oh, tomato.
I'm using the Texas Toast as a basis for my grilled cheese.
The rice from this frozen shrimp and rice ball
I'm going to use that as a thickener in my tomato soup.
I only get six ingredients from my kitchen...
I definitely want some tomatoes.
It definitely wants some of this berbere seasoning.
It's ten spices in one. It adds this warm flavor.
Ginger.
The ginger is going to add that freshness.
I'm going to do some arugula.
Gonna add a little more cheese.
I'm so glad that I have this grated mozzarella cheese.
I'm gonna add that to the Texas toast
that already has a little bit of cheese in there.
I'm gonna use one of these herbs. I'm not sure which one.
[groaning] I hate frozen food.
All right, let's start harvesting.
Frozen food is very difficult to transform because things are precooked.
It's usually loaded with a lot of salt.
Oh, yeah, look at all that jackpot.
Look at all these veggies, man.
So I'm cherry picking ingredients.
It's not all melting together.
I see some chicken nuggets...
I have nuggets. Harvest rice.
I am going to cook orange chicken with fried rice.
Broccoli.
All right, I'm getting... I'm getting there.
Six is the number of fresh ingredients
I get to pull from my own fridge and pantry.
I'm gonna use eggs out of my fridge.
I'm gonna pull scallions out of my fridge.
I'd want ginger. A little onion.
I'll do a little lemon.
You know, I've got to balance out
all this frozen stuff with some fresh stuff.
So I'm going to go a little bit of spinach as well.
To me, lunch is usually a sandwich of sorts.
I'm a pretty busy guy. Something on the go.
Nothing says hot lunch like Philly cheesesteaks.
I'm gonna go that route.
One of these is gonna be my bread.
That's cute.
There's plenty of beef and some of these bowls.
I don't have any cheese except for macaroni and cheese.
Not very much macaroni and cheese.
I'll have to stretch that one out a little bit.
It's about being able to go through all these boxes
and utilizes many of them as I possibly can
because I want to really play the game, you know.
To go with my Philly cheesesteak,
I'm gonna make a pizza Panzanella
and then toss it with some fresh greens
to get some fresh veggies onto the plate.
My five items for my pantry are tomatoes,
arugula, onions,
cheddar cheese, and heavy cream.
Frozen dinners like this I don't think I've eaten since my childhood.
Our all-star chefs are trying to turn
frozen dinners into a hot lunch.
Things are definitely heating up,
but will they heat up in time?
Find out when we return.
[honking]
All right, Hunter, let's meet the culinary brain trust
that will be judging today's frozen food face off.
First ever tournament champion winner,
whose Playa Provisions restaurant makes its very own ice cream.
I can only imagine the flavors.
The one and only BW, Chef Brooke Williamson.
Hi, guys. [kisses]
Acclaimed executive chef, avid snowboarder.
Oh, the ninja.
Wait till you see this one cook but she's judging today.
The one and only, Chef Nyesha Harrington.
And food critic, whose culinary fashion
is taking him to nearly 100 countries, including Iceland.
Simon Majumdar.
Hi, Guy, Good to see you.
Did you guys grow up getting to have frozen dinners?
Did you get that when you were kid?
Not at all. This would be really hard for me.
I definitely have eaten fish sticks
and had a few frozen dinners in my childhood.
- Fish sticks. - [laughing]
It's Aarti's first time competing.
I'm going for it, buddy.
I do not want that Package of Pain. Let me tell you that much.
For my hot lunch,
I'm thinking a grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Classic.
When you think about a hot lunch
I want something that feels warming
and sounds warming, too.
When you say ginger, you know that it's going to be kind of a spicy soup.
The ginger is going to inject the soup with fresh flavor.
Where's my time? I got 20 minutes.
Okay, so I'm gonna try to get that red sauce in there 'cause that's umami.
There's the little veggies.
It's giving me a nice, beautiful base of flavor.
Already smells so much better.
And then the rice will thicken it, too.
So that will give it that sense of like,
"Oh, this has been cooking for a wicked long time."
No, it hasn't. I made it in 15 minutes.
Okay, tomatoes go in.
It's time to add the spice.
I love berbere.
It's spicy.
Has a lot of fenugreek in it, so it gives you some of that maple flavor.
Oh, my God. Ah, so good.
Chef Jet, what are you making us?
I'm gonna do an orange chicken over fried rice.
Anyone who says they don't crave orange chicken for lunch is a liar.
Is an absolute liar.
So, orange sauce...
Base is always going to be sugar.
My orange chicken sauce consists of sugar, chili flakes,
red wine vinegar, paprika.
The secret orange chicken is
there doesn't need to be orange juice or orange product.
We're detecting that acidity and the fruitiness from vinegar,
believe it or not.
So, hey, that's one to grow on.
You're welcome.
So let's get the nuggets in.
We'll set it for air fry.
Michael Voltaggio, what ingredients are you using from your pantry, good sir?
Hunter, who invited you to this party?
[whooping] I get enough hard time from your dad, man.
That was very sassy.
It's weird because I feel like we just rolled a four on your dice.
- [Jet laughing] - Oh, no.
- Wow. My Lord. - Do not take any smack from him.
I have known Hunter since he was in college.
I think it's great that they're working together.
But just because you're Guy's son
doesn't mean I can't hate you a little.
Hunter.
I love you, buddy.
I love you, too.
So I'm starting with a Philly cheesesteak.
I'm using the steak from two boxes to get my Philly cheesesteak meat.
Like this one's in a nonstick pan
so that the sauce that's in there will bleed out.
So I can separate the sauce from the meat.
To me, Philly cheesesteak is all about the cheese sauce.
My cheese sauce is macaroni and cheese cooked in heavy cream,
so you end up with like that processed cheese sauce
that you would get on a Philly cheesesteak.
Add some fresh cheddar cheese and some heavy cream.
It should taste like melted, emulsified, creamy cheese.
[whirring]
My goal with these ingredients
are to repurpose them in a way that you can't recognize him.
We got that drip.
Ten and a half minutes, chefs. Ten and a half to go.
[Guy] Nyesha, you don't know what goes on here,
but one of these chefs is going to win the Envelope of Opportunity,
and one of the chefs is going to get the Package of Pain.
I'm scared. [laughing]
- Aarti. - Hi, guys.
- How's it going? - Oh, you know, it's just a walk in the park. [giggles]
- What parks do you walk in? - [laughing] I know.
Frozen parks. I'm trying to get some freshness in here
because there's just so much sodium going on.
I'm doing a grilled cheese and I'm going to throw some arugula in there.
Dude, arugula is like chef catnip.
So I'm hoping that it will get the judges is excited.
It sounds delicious, Aarti.
Isn't there's a lot of fraternizing with this one contestant?
I feel like there's a little favoritism happening.
Yeah. How does that feel, Jet?
[Jet] Checking on our rice situation.
Okay, that's good enough.
So I need a thoughtfully harvest this rice out
so it doesn't take on that red sauce with it,
'cause I need very clean rice for the fried rice.
So into this hot pan, I'm going to add oil...
Onions in the pan.
I add my spinach.
I'm going to whisk the eggs.
Always add rice to wet eggs
because it helps make it fluffy and keeps sticking to the pan.
That's what I'm talking about. Those nuggets are ready to go.
And then I bring it together with my orange chicken sauce.
I'm gonna get this down to a nice, thick glaze and then I'm gonna plate.
[Michael] This Texas toast is gonna add more cheese.
Philly cheesesteak is usually on, like a sort of hoagie style roll.
But I'm going to use the Texas toast
because there's cheese inside of that as well.
So I'm gonna actually panini this together.
Add more cheese to my Philly cheese.
My toast is on the panini press.
My steak is cooked with the onions.
I'm happy with that.
The sauce is ready.
Now it's time to make the Panzanella.
I know it's a hot lunch, but I think all the richness of this food
needs like a salad to, like, break it up a little bit.
So the French bread pizza
I'm just slicing it, tossing it in olive oil and toasting in the oven
to make pizza crouton,
That will then be the base of my pizza Panzanella salad.
You could see all that cheese and tomato is gonna add flavor to the Panzanella,
and I'll toss this with some fresh greens
and serve this as like a lunch salad on the side.
Chefs, three minutes.
Start plating soon.
Soup look silky and thick and beautiful.
[Aarti] To serve, I pour my ginger berbere tomato soup
into these pretty little blue bowls.
A little cilantro. Now this is both, for color and flavor.
Grilled cheese is looking good.
Plate up my grilled cheese slices in half.
I look at my hot lunch and I feel like this is safe.
Like it's fine, but it's not my best work.
Ninety second chefs, 90 seconds to go.
[Jet] I bundle that rice up to the middle of the plate.
I layer the orange chicken nuggets and the vegetables in.
I like how fresh these vegetable look.
They were frozen at one point.
Come on now.
And then I cut up some scallions for fancy, and I lay it all on top.
I mean, it should be a complete experience,
and I think I've nailed it here.
I've got a cheesy center for my Philly cheesesteak.
So I'm open facing the Texas toast,
that again exposed that cheesy center.
I'm stacking the meat on top on one side of it. The meet the onions.
Throw a little Panzanella salad on there and stack it all up.
[Guy] Five, four, three, two, one.
Chefs, that's it. Stop working.
[sighing in relief]
- [judges clapping] - Great job.
Let's take it over the judging and, chefs, get ready to present.
[honking]
All right, judges. Here we are.
Game 1 of Triple G: Delivery. "Frozen Fiasco."
[Guy] Chefs had to flip frozen dinners into a hot lunch.
We let them roll the Ice Dice to determine,
do it for me over time.
[clicks tongue]
Ice Dice.
Oh, I know what you want to do.
Ice Dice Baby.
- And it came with the dance. - Yes, it did.
Lucky we let them roll the Ice Dice Baby
to determine how many fresh ingredients they could grab from their own pantry.
Chef Aarti, what do you got?
So, guys, I made you a very classic hot lunch.
I made you a grilled cheese and tomato soup,
but of course I made it with a twist.
The tomato soup has some warm flavors from some berbere.
I use the shrimp salsa roja bowl,
and I gleaned these beautiful sweet vegetables from there
to make almost like a sofrito for this.
Oh, and I use the rice to thicken the soup.
And then this is a grilled cheese using Texas toast dunkage.
Look at how nice and thick that soup is.
[crunching]
Hear that crunch?
This to me is a great classic hot lunch.
[crunching]
Aarti, Dunkage Queen. Great to see you again.
To me, this definitely looks like a hot lunch.
I think your use of the frozen ingredients was terrific.
I really like the idea of using that rice,
thicken it as you would do a seafood bisque.
I think that was really, really smart.
I love that used berbere.
It's one of my favorite spices.
It goes really well.
Brightness from the tomato.
I love the crispiness, the golden brown that you got on the bread.
I think you did a really good job of flipping those frozen meals.
My question to you would be,
is that cheese inside of the sandwich melted?
You said you added fresh cheese.
It feels a little fresh still.
- Um, but... - Yeah, there's a little...
- Look, it's a little melty. - [laughter]
At least it's not frozen,
- Yeah. [chuckling] - So good on you for that.
- Next up, Chef Voltaggio. - All right, judges.
I made you a Philly cheesesteak and a panzanella salad,
Starting with the boxes that I used today...
[all laughing]
The cheese sauce was thickened from the macaroni and cheese out of this box.
My steak in my Philly cheesesteak came from these two meats,
which I sliced very thin, cooked in their juice,
then caramelized in a pan with lots of caramelized onions and black pepper.
For the panzanella, I cut the pizza up,
utilized the cheese, the sauce, the pepperoni as my panzanella crouton.
I grabbed cheddar cheese from my fridge.
Wait, am I in Philadelphia or L.A. right now?
[all laughing]
It's cheesy, it's hot, it's peppery.
It tastes like a Philly cheesesteak.
Michael, that definitely looks like a hot lunch that I want to eat,
'cause I love me a Philly cheesesteak.
And I love the way that you used so many of the frozen ingredients.
That double punch with the cheese sauce and the melted cheese all gooey,
much respect for that.
Using that pizza crust as croutons was amazing.
[Simon] The salad, though...
I'm not sure I particularly want a panzanella salad with a Philly cheesesteak.
It's not something I would order at Tony Luke's.
Next up, Chef Jet.
One of my pleasures, and not guilty,
for a hot lunch for sure is Chinese takeout.
Fried rice and an orange chicken.
I got the nuggets,
I heated them up make sure they were extra crispy.
From four or five of the boxes,
I got green beans, I got carrots,
I got bell peppers, I got broccoli.
Mmm.
Crunchy, soft, pillowy...
- [laughs] - ...savory.
It's got that whole hot, sour, salty, sweet, savory thing.
Chef Jet, this looks absolutely delicious.
Your dish looks super fresh and vibrant,
and the fresh scallions on top really brought the dish all together.
There's literally nothing more on this planet
- that I crave than orange chicken. - Phew!
[Brooke] Looks tasty, it looks exactly like
everything I crave every time I want orange chicken.
[Simon] To think you took all of that from frozen food
to create such a beautiful plate
is fantastic under a competition like this.
Yeah, I love the way that you used the fresh ingredients
to bring to that sauce.
One of things I was worried about, though,
it is going to be very heavy.
All right, judges. Thank you very much.
The chef with the highest score will experience
- the warmth of the envelope of opportunity... - Yes.
...while the chef with the lowest score will get what, Hunter?
The large, chilling package of pain.
- [Guy] Large chilling package of pain. - [Hunter] Yes.
So judges, text over your scores to Hunter,
and when we come back,
we'll find out who's leading this frozen fiasco after Game 1.
[honking]
Welcome back, chefs.
We've given you the very difficult task of cooking with frozen food.
But you really... brought it.
- No, that was bad. - That was bad.
- That's terrible. - Yeah.
[Guy] And the judge's scores reflected.
We've got high, we got medium, and we got low.
Let's start off with the winner-winner chicken dinner.
And that goes to not Jet.
Jet, you're right in the middle there, buddy.
That leaves Aarti and Voltaggio.
Was at the Philly cheesesteak
or was the grilled cheese and soup?
And with a 41 to 37, that will go to...
- Boom! - [Hunter] Wow!
[Guy] Chef Voltaggio with a 41,
Aarti with a 37.
Chef Voltaggio, congratulations.
You can go ahead...
- You know what it feels like to rip this package open. - Thanks, Guy.
Take a look here. The envelope of opportunity.
$1,000 prize to you, Chef Voltaggio,
and $1,000 to a restaurant that is in the time of need
from Triple G: Delivery.
Oh, wow!
This donation is gonna go to a restaurant called All Time.
It's just down the street from my house.
This absolutely helps. Thank you so much.
[Guy] All right, I dig it.
- And you will get a chill advantage... - Cool.
Chill advantage in the next round.
And package of pain going to Chef Aarti.
[chuckles]
- Okay. - Oh, look at this. It's a Sunday glass.
How is ice-cream pain?
You have to assemble and eat an entire ice-cream sundae
before you could cook in Round 2.
I am so okay with that.
And round two starts now.
This is the deciding round of our "Frozen Fiasco."
And the chef with the highest combined score at the end of this round
will have a shot of winning up to $20,000 in really cold, hard cash.
So let's see what dish would go well with an ice cream sundae.
[inaudible]
We're talking about Sunday supper,
the meal that your friends and family look forward to all week long.
So let's go ahead and open those boxes.
[chuckling] Oh, no, no.
Oh, man!
There's frozen fish sticks, Bagel Bites, mochi ice-cream.
Frozen shrimp and apple pie.
We've given you some really great frozen proteins.
Unfortunately, they're combined with some whammies.
The name of this game is the 2 for 1 Frozen Special.
That's cold. Seriously.
In order to make your Sunday supper,
- you'll literally have to take the good with the bad... - [Hunter] Mmm-hmm.
...which is kind of like having your family over for dinner.
Oh, that is cold.
And there's three possible combos with this.
- Frozen shrimp go along with the... - [Hunter] Mini apple pie.
[Guy] The frozen chicken tenders go with the green tea mochi.
- And the frozen fish sticks... - [Hunter] Mmm.
...go with the Bagel Bites.
Now, Chef Voltaggio, since you won the advantage in the first round,
you not only get to choose the combo that you want to cook with...
[groans]
...you get to assign the combo to the other two chefs.
Ooh!
Chef Voltaggio will be the frozen shrimp and frozen mini apple pie,
will be the frozen chicken tender meat and the green tea mochi,
or will be the frozen sticks and the Bagel Bites.
Which one would you like to have, Chef?
I'm going to take the shrimp and the apple pie.
[Guy] Shrimp and the apple pie.
Chef, who will get the frozen chicken tender meat and green tea mochi.
I can tell you who's not getting that one is Jet Tila.
- Come on! - [chuckling]
I knew that was coming.
[Jet] That's what I wanted.
So smart.
So, Chef Jet, frozen fish sticks and Bagel Bites,
Chef Voltaggio, frozen shrimp and frozen mini apple pie,
and Chef Aarti, frozen chicken tender meat and green tea mochi.
I can tell by your frozen expressions that you aren't happy,
so everybody gets use four fresh ingredients from your pantry.
- Your time starts now. Good luck! - [Hunter] Nice.
Okay, so Sunday time.
Oh, my God, so before Aarti can even start cooking,
she has to assemble and eat a sundae.
[Guy] Hurry up, Aarti!
- You gotta make that sundae and eat it! - [Aarti] I'm working.
- Here you go! Get that whipped cream on there! - Yes, this is delicious!
Don't forget the sprinkles.
This is madness.
And a cherry! Go, Aarti, eat it!
I love, love ice-cream.
This is my heaven.
- And I can get through a cup of it real fast. - [chuckles]
What's painful about this exactly? [chuckles]
- That was like four bites! - Good job, Aarti!
All right, Aarti, you're good to go.
Okay. I really gotta think.
Michael Voltaggio, with love in his heart,
gives me chicken tenders and the green tea mochi.
Aarti has enough going against her right now.
I'm pulling for you, Aarti.
- Thank you, darling. - To be in second.
[chuckles]
What in the actual world am I going to do with these ingredients?
The first thing that I have to do
is take the chill off of these chicken tenders.
Okay, I get four ingredients, right?
So for my four fresh ingredients from my pantry,
I'm grabbing some parsley, pita bread, pickled beets and tahini.
So when I was little, on the weekend,
my mom would get a night off from cooking.
She cooked all time,
and so we would get Lebanese food.
So I think the best thing that I could do with this chicken
has actually turn it into some version of a shawarma.
A shawarma marinade has a bunch of different spices in it.
I'm going to cheat it with a lot of cumin and paprika.
Both of those are pantry ingredients
so, uh, they don't count towards my four.
How do I transform fish sticks?
Ay, ay, ay.
- [chuckles] - I'm just glad I'm not playing this game.
I don't have a starch that ties this all together.
Sunday suppers are all about pasta, yo.
So I'm going to center this around a pasta dinner.
So I've got linguine.
So I've got four ingredients to play with from my pantry,
and those are going to be linguine, garlic, lemon and kale.
I'll do a garlic bread.
That's what I'm gonna do.
And then I gotta figure out what to do with fish.
I don't really know what I'm doing with my fish sticks yet.
So I thoughtfully peel off the pizza toppings from the Bagel Bites.
I'm going to isolate them and make garlic bread breadcrumbs to tie into this pasta.
I think it's going to be delicious.
Garlicky butter.
So let's put this in the air fryer.
And I'm gonna make, like, a little crumble.
- [air fryer beeps] - Let that go.
[Brooke] Frozen shrimp and frozen mini apple pie.
Those ingredients don't even go together in any way, shape or form to me.
But I think Michael Voltaggio is the correct brain to deal with a combination like that.
[Michael] Wow, this is super frozen.
My strategy for this round
is to not try and force a conflicting flavor into one dish.
So therefore, I'm making two different dishes.
For my Sunday supper,
I am making shrimp and grits
and a apple pie pastry cream-stuffed croissant doughnut.
So the four things from my pantry that I'm using
are eggs, scallions, puff pastry and frozen corn.
To make a puff pastry croissant doughnut,
I'm actually brushing each sheet of pastry with egg yolk,
seasoning that with sugar, stacking it and pressing it together.
Then I'm cutting that in doughnut shapes,
and which I'll fry.
So it's basically like a little croissant doughnut.
So for my shrimp and grits, I don't have grits,
so I'm gonna make them out of frozen corn
by putting them in the food processor.
They don't turn into a puree and you don't push all the milk out.
They turn into, like, a powdery dust that I can use to turn into grits.
[Guy] Triple G all-stars are attempting
to turn frozen food combos into a winning Sunday supper.
Can they win this frozen face-off
or will they let it go?
[honking]
Our all-star chefs are in a fierce frozen food fight
where things could snowball quickly, Hunter.
Snowball.
I get it. It's good.
[Brooke] Sunday supper is different for everyone.
But I think for most people that this is a meal that a family sits down to eat.
The real crux of this is
each chef has to use two frozen ingredients
that should never really sit together,
and try and create a meal that makes sense out of that.
It's a challenging, challenging around.
-[food sizzling] -[in sing-song voice] Beautiful.
Let's get a run down here.
Aarti, tell us how are you putting this fantastic Sunday supper together?
So I'm making chicken shawarma,
and then I'm gonna take that green tea mochi
and I'm gonna use that in my tahini sauce
for my shawarma sandwiches.
Hmm. That sells.
So weird that I'm using this to make something savory.
The tahini is really driving this whole dish.
There goes that tahini.
Tahini has that nice, earthy bitterness
that marries really beautifully
with that earthy bitterness of green tea.
Oh! It's so good.
It's, like, fresh, it's bright, bitter.
It's perfect. It's perfect.
[sizzling]
So then the only thing left is to make a teeny tiny salad.
This is totally a Sunday supper for me,
both from my childhood and now.
Okay, so that's just parsley and pickled beets.
It's time to warm up this pita.
See how that goes.
[Jet] Just lean in.
[chuckles]
I've never quit, but I have no idea how to get out of fish sticks.
- Chef Jet, boy, you won big with the fish sticks. - [chuckling]
Nobody likes to party at the Tila house on Sunday, huh?
Chef Volt crushed me, Guy.
This is the most pain I've ever been in in Triple G, right here.
- You're looking at it. - Oh, my gosh.
Victim.
So you know what? I'm going to do, like, a Sunday supper pasta dish
with fish and kale and garlic and lemon.
Hopefully it'll come together nicely,
I'm literally shaving off the breading
to expose these mini fish fillets.
And it's working.
So I take the same garlic butter
that I bathed the bagels in to sauté fish sticks.
I want to get that, kind of, buttery, salty garlic flavor into that fish.
Uh, the borrowed butter's here as well with olive oil.
And then I grab a bunch of kale
and it's going to work really well with garlic,
and give it a really hard sauté to, kind of, counter all these flavors.
A ton of lemon zest into this kale,
'cause, you know, like that freshness that that brings in.
I need to concentrate on what the challenges are.
Garlic bread crumbs.
Really embrace them,
don't try to fight against them,
and that's how I'm going to win this.
It's gonna be a very simple dish.
Chef Voltaggio, who's in the lead,
uh, walk us through what you're doing.
I'm actually, uh, creating a shrimp oil real quick.
Then I'm gonna confit the shrimp in, so they're nice and tender.
To me, what makes the perfect shrimp and grits
is getting so much shrimp flavor in there
that you could just eat it through every bite of the grits.
There's no supper without dessert.
For my apple pie pastry cream,
I take the apple pie filling, I put it in the blender,
now I'm blending it
and using the apple pie dough as my thickener
so that I can create the effect of a pastry cream or doughnut filling.
Let's see what we got here with our apple pie.
Wow, that is actually pretty, pretty good.
Sunday supper to me should be a little bit special.
Think back to the days of, like, Sunday gravy, Italian cooking,
putting lots of food out on the table,
and families sitting down and just enjoying the ritual of breaking bread together.
All right, chefs. We got five minutes.
Five to go.
Don't look at this floor, you guys. [chuckles]
It's terrible!
The frozen chicken is really moist and has some good char on it.
I don't think you could tell that came out of the freezer.
I put the pita down on the plate,
has a nice char on it.
I ladle the tahini sauce on the bottom,
that nice hot sliced chicken over the top,
and then that parsley and pickled beets over the top.
I mean, the pickled beets look so pretty in that.
I came into this round in third place,
but I am not leaving at this round in third place.
[Michael] Pastry cream ready to go.
Now it's time to plate my Sunday supper.
I transformed this frozen apple pie
into a croissant doughnut with an apple pie pastry cream.
Nice and thin, smooth.
For the shrimp and grits, I'm putting the grits down first,
then pouring the shrimp oil that I made out of the shrimp over top of that.
So it now is becoming shrimp in grits.
Then I'm topping that off with a skewer
so that I can get some points on presentation.
I just feel like everything looks a little bit prettier.
I think this is the best round of cooking
I've ever done on Triple G: Delivery.
All right, chefs, you got 60 seconds.
[Jet] All right.
Into the pan that I've sautéed the kale and the butter and garlic,
I am throwing the pasta in now.
Garlic butter.
I hit this with a good amount of breadcrumbs for some crunch.
Mmm. All right.
I get that onto the plate and lay my fish pieces over.
Yo, fancy fish pasta right here, y'all.
Three, two, one.
- That's it. Stop working. - [exhales]
[Guy] Well done, everybody.
Good job, guys.
Well done. [chuckles]
- [sighs] - Wow, what a challenge.
- That couldn't have been easy. - You got ice running through your veins, Hunter.
Time to find out who's the leader in the ice pack.
Let's take it to the judging.
[honking]
All right, judges. This is Triple G: Delivery, "The Frozen Fiasco."
The chefs had to make a Super Sunday supper
using the mandatory frozen food combos they got.
With a commanding lead of 41 points,
Chef Michael, you're up first. What'd you make?
For me, Sunday supper is also about dessert.
So I made you two dishes today.
So we've got shrimp and grits
and apple pie croissant doughnut.
First, shrimp and grits.
I ground the frozen corn, cooked that down as grits,
finished it with butter and scallions.
The shrimp, I made two things.
I made a shrimp oil out of the shells.
Then I confit the shrimp in that oil.
The shrimp, because I confit them, are super tender.
They're not overcooked.
They're not rubbery. If people are worried about that,
when it comes to frozen seafood. And then the grits,
they're actually coated in shrimp oil.
So every bite of this dish,
you taste the shrimp all the way through.
It's shrimp in grits, not shrimp and grits.
And then, for my dessert part of my supper,
into my croissant donut.
I'll cut into this and you'll see
I got perfect apple pie donuts here.
And they're cooked all the way through.
- [laughing] - Coated in sugar and love, baby.
When I think about a Sunday supper,
I do always think about a savory dish and a dessert dish.
I love the idea that you use
the shrimp boil in there to bring extra seafood flavor.
Really like the idea of confiting the shrimp
because I could almost hear that snap of those shrimp.
And that's something really hard to achieve with frozen shrimp.
I love the idea that you use shrimp in two ways,
and I loved the idea of turning that filling into a pastry cream.
- Thank you, Chef. - [Brooke] Chef Michael,
when I saw that the fact that you gave yourself shrimp
and apple pie together, I was very confused
because, to me, they don't go together at all.
So separating them into two separate dishes
made a lot of sense to me.
Shrimp and grits does feel like a very comfort food driven dish,
but it does feel a little bit disconnected
in terms of presentation for a Sunday supper.
[Guy] All right, Chef Jet, you're up.
This, to me, is my idea of a true Sunday supper.
Something that our kids would eat.
There'd be a giant bowl in the middle.
So, today, I made a linguini,
sauteed kale and a ton of garlic.
I harvested the Bagel Bites.
I took the bread only. I toasted it off until it's really crispy.
I just couldn't present such esteemed judges fish sticks.
There's no way. I'm not gonna do that to you,
so I actually took the breading off. Mmm.
The fish is actually more like a sauteed fish instead of a fish stick.
- The Bagel Bites are never to be thought of again. - [laughs]
- Super delicious. - You really brought the essence
and the energy of a Sunday supper.
And I pictured myself sitting with you and Ali and the kids
at the dinner table enjoying that big bowl of pasta.
- Thank you. - [Simon] Jet.
One of things you say to me is that, once you step outside
your Asian roots that you sometimes
let yourself down with your cooking,
and I just don't think that's true at all.
- Thank you, Simon. - [Brooke] Chef Jet,
the Bagel Bites, turning those into bread crumbs,
I think was brilliant.
I would have also loved to have seen
that fish sort of crumbled up a little bit
and tossed into the pasta
so that it didn't feel so, sort of, separated.
- Fair enough. - [Guy] Aarti.
So, for me, the Sunday is thinking of food
that is easy on me as the cook of the house.
I took it back to my childhood,
and I made chicken shawarma,
which is a Lebanese Middle Eastern
spiced charred chicken with a tahini sauce.
And then I made kind of a spin on Tabbouleh
with pickled beets and parsley.
I took the chicken tenders. Thank you, Michael.
The chicken tenders, I defrosted and marinated
in cumin and paprika from my pantry.
I also dribbled in a little bit of that pickled beet juice
to keep it nice and light and fresh.
And I made this green tea tahini sauce.
And you get some of that nice bright salad.
And get your hands dirty. Mmm.
The chicken's still really tender on the inside.
The char is what I love the most
just because that's free flavor.
Sweetness from that pickled beet,
that works really beautifully with the bitterness of the tahini
and the mouth, too. Mmm.
I have to say, Aarti, in terms of presentation
and the way you cook, I think you're back.
I think it took you one round to get used to home delivery.
This is my kind of dish.
Well, Aarti, I have to say you looked
as cooler than a polar bear's toenails.
[laughs]
Chef Aarti, I love the fact that you call char free flavor.
[laughs]
A lot of people don't realize how much
the caramelization of something
really lends itself to just having
big, robust, layered flavors.
I think it's really smart food.
Honestly, it eats well.
That's got textures, flavors
to sort of confuse your palate enough
to make you think that the green tea mochi makes sense in here.
My only concern would be the sweetness.
- I know. - When I think tahini,
I don't think of a sweet sauce.
Nicely done. Great presentations.
Now is the time for the judges to give your final score.
The chefs with the highest combined score from both rounds
will win this frozen food fiasco forever.
So please leave the feed one more time.
Nice job, chefs. Thank you.
So, judges, would like you to go ahead and total up
the score. Send them over to Hunter.
He'll average them up and we will find out,
well, we're gonna find out who is gonna win it
and who's gonna spin the wheel for up to 20K.
Good luck.
All right, chefs.
Thank you, judges. Nice job.
Let's take a look at the numbers.
We'll start with Aarti.
Thirteen in Gameplay. 13 in Creativity.
Eight in Plating, eight in Taste
for a score of 42.
All right, 79 for Aarti.
Aarti, nice numbers. Congratulations.
Let's see. Let's go with Jet.
Twelve, 12, eight, nine.
Forty one for a total of 80.
[whistles] But you took her by one point.
So that leaves us to our guy Voltaggio here.
Does he have enough to take the 80
has to be 39 or better?
We've got 12, 13 and eight
and eight for a total of 41.
- Did I win? - So there you go, ladies and gentlemen,
with a win of 82 points.
Chef Voltaggio, congratulations!
Great job, brother.
Aarti took him in the second round by one point.
But Voltaggio's four point lead
in round one was the game changer.
Hunter, get the wheel.
Well, there you see it, chef.
We've got a cornucopia of offerings.
Five thousand bucks, 10,000,
a quiz, zero thousand,
twenty thousand, 1,000,
another quiz and 15,000.
So, a pretty good chance of making some big money.
- Yeah. - And then two spots of not making much.
Chef, you know I appreciate you
and I recognize you and honor you.
Let's just go with 10,000 and call it a day.
- Oh! - Michael. [laughs]
I'll take it. I'll take the 10,000.
[all cheering]
It's 10,000 and he's done,
- Oh! - Ten thousand in the pocket.
Woo!
I got 1,000 round one plus ten.
That's $11,000.
I'm off the clock today.
Congratulations, Chef Michael Voltaggio!
$10,000, the frozen food new champ.
Thank you to all of our judges.
Thank you to Jet Tila and Aarti Sequeira.
You guys were fantastic competitors.
Will catch you all next time
when we make the delivery at your house.
Triple G delivery next week. Adios!