[tense music playing]
Congratulations to the three of you for coming this far.
You have made it to the penultimate challenge.
As you know, the second-to-last episode of any show
is always the most intense.
And you are all now so close to that grand prize.
[Clara] Final three, baby. It feels good.
I've proven time and time again I can rise to the challenge.
So, I will continue rising.
Today, three of you will be competing in two rounds,
hoping to impress our judges to earn your spot in the grand finale showdown
where two of you will go head-to-head
to determine who is the best snack maker of all time.
[Lauryn] I'm very nervous.
I didn't think I'd be here. I feel like everyone is so talented.
I just want to make it. I mean, we are so close.
Are you ready to see what snack you'll be recreating today?
-Yeah. -[Sandy] Yeah.
Let's check in with our friend from the beginning,
the vending machine.
[grunts]
[suspenseful music builds]
Lay's flavored chips!
Aah!
[scattered clapping]
[Megan] There are actually over 200 flavors of these chips
that combine a complete dish into a potato chip.
We've got Chesapeake Bay crabs, scallop with garlic butter,
India's Magic Masala, the list goes on and on.
Today, you get to choose which chip flavor you'll be making.
Whoo!
Finally.
The twist is, our judges won't know what you picked.
So, that means they'll be tasting your chips blind.
This is gonna be super difficult.
You're gonna have to get those flavoring agents exactly right.
You'll have to combine them into the perfect taste of an entire dish
while also compressing the whole thing down into a single potato chip.
Also, you'll get dinged if we're not able to identify which flavor you're going for.
All right, judges.
Time to go to your super secure private judging deprivation station for the cook.
Aka, right here.
[Megan] No peeking.
Oh, wow.
You got 90 minutes to make your chips.
The recreation challenge starts... now.
[upbeat music playing]
[chuckling]
-[Clara] Let's open up all the bags. -[Lauryn] Wait.
There's bags of Lay's chips from around the world.
China, Thailand, India, America.
[Sandy] Summer BLT? Masala?
-Scallop. [chuckles] -[Sandy] Scallop and butter?
Like, who thought of this madness to put on a chip and why?
Jerky jerk?
They're the weirdest flavors I've ever seen.
Jerk has a lot of heat at the end. That's a lot of heat.
-I'll do the masala. -I'll do this one.
It is a new world.
Everything here is ours.
[Hari] To create the Lay's, first, our chefs need to build their seasoning
by combining flavor infusions and spices
so the flavor of the chip is easily identifiable in every bite.
I picked the Magic Masala.
A lot of warm Middle Eastern spices.
I picked Summer BLT. Super thin.
I'll probably make a powder out of bacon fat.
[Sandy] I got the Fried Crab flavor.
It's more like crabby essence rather than just being like, "This is crab."
[Hari] Second, they'll need to prepare the potatoes
by slicing them to mimic the shape of the chip they are recreating
and fry them to be as crispy and crunchy as the familiar Lay's potato chip.
Finally, they'll need to season their fried potatoes evenly
to encompass the flavor of the dish on each chip.
[Sandy] Yum-yum-yum-yum.
[Lauryn] A little curry powder. Turmeric.
[Clara] For this recreation challenge, the twist is the blind tasting.
You have to nail the notes, not of the original item,
but what the Lay's flavored chip tastes like.
[Lauryn] Turmeric.
-I think I'm using every spice. [laughs] -[Clara] Do it!
Hari, what do you think the biggest challenge today is?
I think it's gonna be flavor.
You got to get these flavors down into these little molecular things.
Then you have to get them onto the chip. How do you do it?
Do you use your hands? Do you use a spoon?
There's so many ways to do it and it changes everything.
The slightest adjustment and it tastes like crap.
I'm going to make crab and shrimp powder.
Basically, I'm going to cook this shrimp crab in the butter.
Then I'm gonna be crazy and blend it into the butter.
Then I'll strain it and push it through a fine mesh sheet.
Then I'm gonna fold in tapioca maltodextrin.
The tapioca maltodextrin will turn the butter that's left over
into a powder.
It dehydrates it on the spot. It's pretty crazy.
Seafood is my jam.
But my goal at the end of this is to extract and make my own flavors,
not to use the ones sitting in the pantry.
Come on, baby. Go.
I think the hardest thing about this is
it's reminiscent of BLT, but doesn't taste anything like real BLT.
Oh, look at this. Wow.
I absolutely adore BLTs. I think it's one of the world's greatest sandwiches.
It's meaty. It's sweet and tomatoey.
It's crisp with the lettuce. It's got the fat from the mayo.
It's got the toast, everything.
But getting all the flavors and putting it into a chip is not easy.
So I'm gonna cut this pretty thin
to render out as much bacon fat as quickly as possible.
Then I'll turn the bacon fat into a powder using maltodextrin.
Then I gotta figure out, when you look at these chips,
the little green and red
is supposed to invoke lettuce and tomato "powder" or bits.
So, I'm making my own.
I'm going to peel a little bit of tomato skin
and a bit of the greenest part of the iceberg lettuce.
I'll dehydrate that.
It's, do I have enough time to let it dry out?
I'm so close to the finale. Playtime is over.
I'm in the zone today. Big time.
[funky music playing]
I picked the Magic Masala.
The biggest challenge will be getting the right amount of heat,
because I don't have enough time
to dry out a bunch of ingredients to then grind up to make a powder.
I'm gonna infuse an oil and I'm gonna use maltodextrin
to pull that flavor into my own spice blend.
I'm nervous when I think about Sandy and Clara
recreating these huge flavors
because I know they can make these flavor bombs of magic.
So, I really need to focus and drive home that I can do flavor just as well.
Needs more spice.
-No judges. -No judges.
We can do what we want.
I love the judges and we're very close. We have sleepovers.
But they're sticklers.
"Oh, this doesn't taste exactly like this other thing and I know
that's the point of the show, but it's pretty close."
-I do kind of miss them. -I miss them, they're really nice.
I feel like Helen has a sweet presence
and Ali has me laughing all day and I don't know.
It's really... It's a joy.
[dynamic music playing]
Sandy, I hope you're in a good mood today and not crabby.
Kidding, you never are.
So you say.
[chuckling] What do we got going on here?
I'm making Fried Crab chip.
You're using actual crabs.
Oh my God.
[Sandy chuckles]
-[Hari] They're still alive? -Yeah.
-[Megan] Am I allowed to hold him? -[Sandy] If you want.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. [laughs]
He's literally moving on my hand.
He's actually really handsome. I am feeling so alive right now.
I haven't been touched like this since 1995.
The bacon rendered so nicely.
Smells really good.
When I add maltodextrin to bacon fat,
the maltodextrin absorbs a bazillion times its weight.
No, I don't think it's gonna work.
I'm not getting it right. It's not getting to the powdery form that I need.
So, I need to pivot and I grab some hickory smoke powder.
Because people connect smokiness with bacon flavor.
I'm kind of winging it.
One hour left.
[screams]
[Hari] I think we should get Icees.
Helen's all like, "Don't have Icees. They're not good for you."
Hey, guys, chefs, the white's lemon.
Thank you.
Chefs, the green's lime.
[chuckling] Thank you.
Are these paper straws?
This is a nice color.
[whirring]
Thirty-one.
When you're working with the tapioca maltodextrin,
if the ratios are off, it could become either a paste or it's just a sludge.
It'd be cool if this worked.
I got the sludge.
I'm just gonna skip this.
I know there's dried spices and herbs I can use instead, so I just grab those.
Put some pepper, some cilantro.
Some cumin.
Hopefully, I'll have some seasoned chips at one point.
[whirring stops]
[coughing]
I stuck my face too close to it. I think I just lost all sense of smell.
There it goes. Look at you, baby.
I'm blending up all the seafood in here, the crab and the bit of shrimp.
Then I'm gonna strain all this butter back out.
The tapioca maltodextrin will turn the butter that's left over into a powder.
It takes all the fat and dehydrates it immediately.
Come on, dude. Change.
Ugh!
I'm just gonna put it in here to get it a little more than I can give it.
Let's see if this works.
Yeah.
It's pretty cool.
Not even making it up. It's science.
[upbeat music playing]
Thirty minutes left.
The dehydrated lettuce and dehydrated tomato are looking all right.
It's not as small as I want.
I don't think there's extra spice grinder, so I'm winging it.
-Hello, hello, hello! -Hello. Hi, Lauryn B, hello.
-Hi. -I'll touch everything. Kidding.
-You come at a wonderful time. -What's going through your mind?
It's one away from the finale, so it's so close.
I'm trying to combine a lot of different warm spices
and get that right amount of heat for the chip.
Our suggestion as hosts is to grind up the original product
and use that as seasoning and don't tell anyone and act like you did it.
Nobody would know.
Cheat?
-It's not cheat... It's not. -I would never cheat, so...
So, who do you think can clearly communicate flavor in, like, one bite?
I'd say Sandy is really good with taste and aroma.
But I think he struggles with understanding
that it's not about his learning and it's about the person eating it.
I think that's a strength Lauryn B has.
-She looks at the item as a separate item... -Yeah.
...not as an extension of her.
[Ali] I think Lauryn B has something simmering under the surface.
She's monstrously talented at curating flavor
and she's just gotten caught in the weeds with all kinds of other stuff.
[Helen] I think that Clara clearly has a defined palate
and is great for, you know, problem-solving.
[Ali] Clara has gotten tripped up with process things.
This challenge is beautiful because it takes some of that out of the equation.
You still gotta make a crispy chip.
So we're gonna get a deep, dark look
-into the minds of these contestants... -Yup.
...of just how they process flavor.
[tense music playing]
Twenty minutes left!
[Clara] Now I'm blanching the chips.
They're, like, so translucent.
[Lauryn] Now, I am slicing my potatoes, trying to get the right thickness.
It's very hard to tell.
A little nervous. I don't know if this will work.
I think they might be too thin.
Those are see-through. Those are too thin.
[Lauryn] Gosh, darn it.
It's way too thick.
These things look like jellyfish.
That might be too thin, hon. Just a heads-up.
They're a little too thin. Man.
[Lauryn] Yeah. Okay, I think we're there.
[tense music rising]
I'm happier with this thickness.
I don't wanna say I feel confident in this competition because
it's a way of jinxing myself.
I'm surprised how thick they had to be.
Every chip is precious.
[chuckles]
I'm frying these until they are golden brown delicious, but not too brown.
Then get them in the spice and I'll sift off any excess spice
and pray this is the system that works.
When I sprinkle them with salt, it's gonna adhere a bit better.
The base layer, they're really salty. It's why potato chips are so good.
[Hari] Three minutes left, chefs.
I'm giving you a warning. There's three minutes left.
By the time I've finished what I'm saying, they'll be two minutes.
And they'll... And 40 seconds.
Thirty-nine now.
[Sandy] I put in my crab butter that I made.
Then I added in white pepper and a little bit of citric acid,
pushing it through the mesh to get a really nice fine powder.
Let it be known, this is not the right technique.
One minute left, chefs.
Oh, God.
[Hari] One minute left!
The sands of time stop for no one.
[tense music builds]
Get those chips on that plate!
That is time, chefs!
Throw your knives away or just stop cooking.
-Hey, guys. -Oh, hi.
-Hello. -Don't tell us anything.
I know. I'm actively telling myself no.
-Thank you for making it crispy. -Yup.
[chuckles]
It tastes like Eastern Mediterranean, South Asia part of the world.
It does have a dairy flavor and a sour flavor.
Turmeric and cumin.
I think there's something like tandoori chicken flavor?
Wait, it doesn't taste like chicken.
-Tandoori grill. -Ish.
[laughs]
What is it?
Magic Masala.
[Helen laughs]
I tried to make a herby oil infused with a masala family of spices as well.
This is my first time making a wavy chip cut.
[Helen] The cut of this one was great. Really similar.
-Except this one has more seasoning. -[Lauryn] Yeah.
Seasoning's pretty difficult.
I appreciate that you seasoned it while it's hot to get all the way around,
but your spices still taste raw and un-bloomed.
The predominant aromatics in the Lay's chip
are the spice blend and tomato.
I think I was missing a bit of the tomato.
Kind of the genius of the Lay's chip is that it tastes like a cooked dish
as opposed to a collection of dry things you found in your kitchen.
Yours still tastes a bit leaning on the dry things I found in my kitchen.
-Okay. -Less spices would've gone a longer way.
You could've used less overall.
We would've got a rounder picture of what those spices smell like.
Okay.
-Thank you so much, Lauryn B. -Thank you.
Sandy, do not tell us about your chip.
[chuckling]
It has, like, a finish of crab shell.
When I taste it, I can see it.
Looking at crab shell from the inside.
Crab shell you have to clean as you get screamed at.
Trauma.
[all laughing]
Kind of Old Bay. Tastes like savory ocean.
Tastes like going to the boil.
You can choose seafood and they put it in the bag with spices and butter
and they throw potatoes and corn inside.
Is it, like, crab boil?
Actually, it's, uh, fried crab.
Okay.
[Sandy] I took crab in butter.
Then I took that butter fat and maltodextrin-ed it.
[Helen] The smell is amazing.
If I knocked seasoning off yours, I couldn't tell the difference
between yours and the OG Lay's which is awesome.
Because it's really hard to get this much glassiness, even crispiness,
without getting it to start turning brown.
[Helen] Mm-hmm. It does taste like something cooked,
as opposed to collection of things from a drawer.
Which is important for this challenge.
I think it does taste more like crab shell.
-The Lay's are really sweet. -Yeah.
-On top of the umami. -Oh.
More sweetness in yours would've brought it closer to the Lay's.
-Sandy, thank you for sharing with us. -Thank you. Appreciate it.
-Clara. -Yes?
Please don't tell us about your chip.
I will not.
-Smoky. -Oh my God. It's so smoky.
It's like smoky mayonnaise.
It tastes like white bread ham sandwich.
Oh my God.
Ham sandwich with mayonnaise.
Ham sandwich.
-No cheese, no nothing else. -Yes.
[chuckles]
Is it a ham sandwich?
-[Clara] You're not far off. -[Helen] Okay.
-It is a Summer BLT. -Oh.
[Clara] The main notes are bacon, dehydrated tomato skin.
I also dried wild lettuce which is surprisingly sweet.
[Ali] Aesthetically, it's uncanny.
[Helen] Mine are kind of too perfect and flat.
They didn't have these puffy ones.
The aesthetic of the spice blend it's a pretty good match.
Awesome.
Just a little thicker, maybe a little harder fried.
Okay.
[Ali] And that sweet, slightly tart thing, that's a good tomato note.
Main difference between your chip and the Lay's is yours is wild smoky.
-Thank you so much, Clara. -You're welcome.
All three of you guys are crushing it right now.
That was a really hard challenge.
There were things about each of your recreations we absolutely loved
and were a close match for the Lay's original.
But there can only be one winner.
The chef that had the most accurate recreation
of the Lay's flavored potato chips...
is Sandy.
[Clara] Whoo!
-[laughs] -[chuckles]
Sandy, you really nailed that difficult ability
to bring the flavor of cooked food to a dried chip.
I'm just used to failing miserably at these things.
-Congratulations. -Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
I haven't won a recreation challenge yet.
So, it actually is really nice to win one.
But I also still have that thought in the back of my mind that,
this is very close, there's no comfort-ary on.
All right, enough of this recreation business.
Let's get to the Snack-Off Challenge.
In the Snack-Off Challenge, we want you to take a page from Lay's
and turn a whole multi-component dish into a snack.
You guys must distill the flavors of a multi-component dish
into a unique snack of your very own.
The dish that you're distilling
needs to have more than one flavor profile in it.
A multi-component dish such as chicken waffle with syrup
or risotto with mushroom and asparagus.
The snack itself can be multiple components
so long as they are cohesive.
The snack cannot be a chip.
Okay, my little snack-er doodles.
You have two hours to craft your own original snacks.
The penultimate Snack-Off Challenge begins now.
Freeze-dried peas.
Sushi rice.
[Lauryn] This challenge determines who's going to the finale.
It's kind of like the last hurrah before we can get closer to that $50,000.
There's a lot on the line here.
If you're trying to bring a whole dish together
in a snack-y, repeatable format,
you have to recalibrate all your seasoning.
This is definitely the kind of challenge where
there is potential for our reactions to be, "Oh my God."
-Like, how? -Yeah.
-How'd you do that? -Yeah.
-How'd you do that? -[Ali] How?
Little freak.
[Ali chuckles]
[dynamic music playing]
I'm trying to do something cool, but also has practicality in the real world.
I really love sushi. So, I'm making a sushi trail mix.
A snack you can bite on the go.
Trail mixes are like,
you get your protein from nuts and things like that.
What if someone has a nut allergy?
And it's gluten-free.
Most trail mixes you find have a lot of wheat in them.
In my sushi trail mix, I plan on having salmon skin, puffed,
rice, puffed, crispy nori, cured tuna, and wasabi peas.
So, I'm dehydrating the salmon skin.
That way, when I fry it, it'll get more crispy
and will puff up more.
The more I can dry it out.
I feel like it'd be good with time management
to make sure that everything gets done on time.
[clicks tongue]
This is it. I'm one step away from making it to the finale.
Everyone nailed a lot of the flavor in the recreation.
And I think Sandy won because he nailed it a little bit more.
That's where the competition has gone. Like, everyone is doing really well.
And so, I really need to step up my A-game.
I'm doing Brekkie Sandies.
It's all the magic of perfect maple bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich
in a shortbread cookie.
I'm gonna do a really flaky, buttery shortbread cookie.
And then topping them with homemade bacon bits,
maple syrup, sugar, cheddar cheese tuiles,
and dehydrated egg strips.
I'm really excited about this.
I'll render out the bacon. I'll cook it as long as I can
to render out the fat so when I dehydrate it,
it'll almost be like little perfect cubes of bacon jerky.
I love a breakfast sandwich because you can eat it on the go.
You wake up, bacon, egg, and cheese while driving, grab coffee.
It's a convenient breakfast, but I think it hits sweet, savory, salty, fatty.
I'm a big fan.
It smells very like bacon in here, guys.
-Who's makin' bacon? -[laughs]
[sizzling]
[Lauryn] I live in Lower East Chinatown, New York, and I love ramen.
It's one of the most comforting things. It's amazing.
So, I'm doing like a ramen snack pack.
I'm making a whole bowl of ramen in one snack.
I'm going to make these crunchy noodle bars
that look like instant ramen packs,
but I'm going to serve it with an umami bomb sauce
that you can dump into and eat it. It will be the entire bowl in your mouth.
So, right now, I am making my seasoning which is the bulk of the recipe.
I am using umami-rich items that you would find in ramen.
There's celery salt, umami powder, shrimp powder. I'll use all of this.
Shrimp powder is shrimp-ly the best.
Um... [laughs]
So, I pretty much dumped my entire shrimp seasoning in there and then some.
I hate sounding cocky, but... yeah, I think I can make it to the finale.
Just gotta get through this dish.
-[Hari] Hello, Clara. -[Megan] Hi, Clara.
[Clara] How are you?
I'm excited about what you're going to make.
-Yes. -It sounds incredible.
-I'm so sorry. One second. -Oh.
These are wasabi peas for my sushi trail mix.
The fun snack everybody loves. I'm making 'em from scratch.
I got some freeze-dried peas and I got some wasabi powder, mirin,
which is a sweet rice wine vinegar, mustard powder,
putting in some sugar and some salt.
Oh!
[exhales] That wasabi gets you right in the eyeball.
Ugh!
I'll put it at a low temperature in the oven.
It will do a quick dehydrate, so it'll dry out a lot of this liquid.
It should be a concentrated wasabi taste.
It's kind of like the wasabi ball portion of my sushi.
[dynamic music playing]
[Clara] I think the most difficult part of the snack is gonna be the egg.
This will be a fully cooked egg. I'll season it and dehydrate it.
So, you'll have bacon, egg, maple syrup, and cheese
in a shortbread cookie.
It feels surreal to be so, so close to the finale.
If I win the $50,000, I would use it
to explore more creative projects and creative outlets.
I love teaching and I would love to bring culinary experiences
to the city of Philadelphia
and also help Philly kids eat better, learn about nutrition and cooking.
From what we're seeing so far,
I can definitely see all three of these ideas as a catchphrase.
Fully marketable, totally unique from one another,
as well as not existing,
and I could not believe why we don't already have it.
-Right. -I get super excited.
Yeah.
Now, I'll make my pasta dough.
I'm using whole wheat flour.
I found that the wheat flour helped with the frying.
I am going for kind of like a medium thickness.
Somewhere in between.
I want to get a nice crunch when you bite through it in the end.
I used spaghetti cutter because that was the most similar
to the instant ramen pack.
I'll bake these to dry them out and then I'll fry them
and they'll be nice, crunchy noodle bars.
One hour left!
[Sandy] Now I'm curing some tuna.
I'm curing it in salt and sugar.
Trying to get little pieces so they cure as quickly as possible.
The salt draws out water.
I want it to be like little bite-sized jerky pieces.
I'm just gonna leave it in there until there's 30 minutes left.
Then I'll rinse it off and coat it in brown sugar.
Then I'll put it in the dehydrator.
[funky music playing]
[Clara] This is coming together. This will work.
So, we have the cheese, the bacon dehydrating,
the egg dehydrating.
My shortbread dough is pretty classic.
It's got shortening, powdered sugar, vanilla extract,
and then maple syrup.
I got to put it all together. Then I'll bake it.
This is the egg yolk. It's dry. I like that it's bright yellow.
I hope that the color stays in the oven.
Keeping an eye on the clock. It's out of my hands now.
I gotta wait until the baked product comes out.
[Sandy] Right now, I'm puffing rice.
This is the quick way where you soak rice in water.
Then you basically get salt really hot and dump the wet rice into it,
so it extracts the water that was in it.
By doing that, it pulls it out so it puffs it.
It's come down to these last rounds.
Honestly, the person that messes up is the person who ends up going home.
So, I have to focus and dig in and dig through.
-A little salty. -A little bit.
It'll be fine, though.
[suspenseful music playing]
Thirty minutes left, chefs.
[Lauryn] Now I'm gonna get my sauce going.
The sauce I'm making is like the broth that you would get in a ramen.
There's soy, there's sesame.
There's some porcini mushroom notes.
And then cook it to really thicken up everything.
The finale is so close. It's amazing to make it this far.
One more step and I'm there.
I'm just praying that it all works out.
It's the consistency of a barbecue sauce, but it doesn't taste like barbecue sauce.
We'll see.
You're gonna be delicious.
Salmon skin came out super dry which means it's gonna puff crazy.
Ready? Watch. This one's gonna do weird things.
[chuckles]
See how big they got?
It's kind of crazy, right?
I am going to get my noodles out of the oven.
They're nice and dry, which is perfect.
I'm just going to fry them to get extra crispy.
I'm just gonna dump them in.
And I'm just gonna keep rockin' and rollin'.
Ten minutes left!
Aah!
I peek in on my shortbread
and the dehydrated egg strips are totally brown.
So, I rip them off.
I had leftover egg strip I didn't put in the dehydrator the first time.
I'm trying to push it into the shortbread.
Yeah. It's, like, not adhering.
Everything else is great.
It's just the egg components that really sucks. I'm pissed off.
The egg is not sticking to the shortbread, so I 86 it.
Get rid of it.
It will have to be bacon, maple, cheese.
That's gotta be breakfast-y enough and it might not be.
I have a giant knot in my stomach.
If it works, it works. If it doesn't, I'm going home.
One minute left.
You can do it. Power through.
I have never seen anything like this.
I feel like I am really pushing the boundaries and innovating,
which is what we're supposed to be here doing.
We're doing this. Never give up till the end.
[dramatic music builds]
[Sandy] My candied tuna is really good.
It got enough dehydration. Super proud of you.
You grew up to be really cool tunas.
Cheese flavor isn't coming through as strong as I want.
I'm trusting cheese powder.
Thirty seconds.
Gah!
Always down to the wire.
[dramatic music climaxes]
The Snack-Off is off!
[laughs]
All right, everybody. Let's head to the bodega.
Sandy, tell us about your snack.
I decided to make a sushi trail mix.
I did a crispy salmon skin, wasabi pea,
Japanese seven-spice, some candied tuna, and puffed rice.
I really like sushi and uh, I'm really into sustainability,
kind of conserving waste.
I absolutely love the concept.
Is it a million-dollar concept? I think it's even an underestimation.
[chuckles]
Like, "Oh my God. How come we don't have sushi trail mix?"
And it has a lot of things.
It has these beautiful chips that came out really nice and look very well-crafted.
I got a couple of larger pieces of salmon skin.
I think, just roll of the dice, had sat on each other.
You're gonna have to be super careful because
one slightly soggy piece will corrupt the entire environment.
So, really watch that.
I tried to keep 'em open. It was difficult.
In terms of the central premise of this challenge,
"Can you recreate a dish and make it snackable?"
-Mm-hmm. -This is the first thing
I've ever had come out of a bag
that is transporting me to a sushi bar.
It really tastes like an actual dish of sushi.
It's really, really well-executed.
-Thank you so much, Sandy. -Thank you. Appreciate it.
Clara, what do you have for us?
Those are Brekkie Sandies.
It is a breakfast sandwich-inspired shortbread.
It's got maple bacon and two kinds of cheese, cheddar tuile,
and some cheddar powder on top.
-It's a tiny Egg McMuffin. -[chuckles] I will take that.
How did you end up bringing the egg into it?
There was no egg.
The dehydrated egg was too dehydrated.
When I tried to press it into the top, it wouldn't adhere.
I'm not gonna give you something that's gonna fall off.
What if you had mixed it into the dough?
Um, yeah, that could work.
[Ali] This feels very organically sweet and savory.
The cheddar aroma, bacon aroma, the toasted shortbread,
all lean super savory.
Everything my tongue is detecting
is balancing in a way that I really appreciate
and didn't expect and frankly haven't been able to do myself.
Thank you.
This tastes indelibly like breakfast to me.
You've kind of captured the meal,
but the presence of some kind of egg would have really crystallized it
as that specific sandwich in snackable form.
-Right. -Yeah.
I like the idea of being able to have breakfast to go all the time.
As soon as you told me, I built the marketing plan
and I haven't seen the product.
So, I really like the concept and the intention.
It's sweeter than I expected, so it doesn't read as breakfast to me.
It tastes like a maple bacon cookie.
-Okay. -Thank you so much.
Thanks, Clara.
Lauryn B, tell us about your snack.
I love ramen so much.
I eat it year-round.
So, the noodle bar situation is kind of like the meat of the bowl.
This one is spiced with a lot of shrimp powder.
The sauce is all about that umami broth.
So together, it's like a bowl on the go.
It's a new kind of crunch that feels like you discovered a new kind of butterfly.
-The noodle is so good. -[Ali] Very, very delicious.
But I wish the flavoring was clearer because right now it's all flavors.
-[Lauryn] Yeah. -It's "everything bagel" ramen.
Because it's so crabby, it tastes Southeast Asian...
-Mm-hmm. -...which then kind of isn't ramen.
Food scientists nerd out a lot about the concept of cling.
How much a sauce wants to hug stuff.
Cling.
The crazy thing is you have created a vehicle
for making soup snackable.
Specifically, instant ramen.
So excited about this concept.
For all the kids who have ever sat at home,
eating ramen straight out of the packet,
there will be a generation of children that will not know it
because they'll come straight to this.
I'm so glad this now exists.
Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
-Absolutely. Thank you. -Thank you.
-[Clara] Whoo! -[applause]
[chuckles]
So, the chef who won today
took a visionary idea and really stuck the landing.
And the winner is...
-Sandy. -Ooh.
-[Clara] Whoo! -Why are you surprised?
'Cause, I don't know.
Sandy, you had an idea that stopped us both in our tracks
when we first heard it and then you did it.
There were so many things that could've gone wrong,
and what you presented in that bag was spot-on.
Amazing. Excellent concept. Great execution.
Job well done.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. I'm getting emotional. Sorry.
[laughter]
Great job, Sandy.
Let's hope that confidence boost can help you in the finale.
I won, so I'm the first guaranteed in the finale and it means a lot.
I've come a long way to this point. It just cements in my mind
that I'm on the right path and that I'm doing the right thing.
The judges have also reached a decision about who's going home.
Vending machine, who have the judges picked?
[suspenseful music builds]
Clara.
I knew it.
Clara, today wasn't your day. I'm sorry.
It's okay.
Clara, it's been a pleasure eating your food.
Sadly, your snack has hit its expiration date.
-Bye, guys. -Wait. I'm gonna sandwich.
[Clara] This is one of the most difficult things I've had to do in my life
and I will be forever grateful for this experience, truly.
I'll see you guys soon. Good luck.
-Thank you. -[Lauryn] Bye.
Congratulations, Sandy, on winning today.
Congratulations, Lauryn B, on going to the finale.
I feel so good.
How cool is that to say I made the finale? I should not be counted out.
I know I can win this snack competition.
You both have a 50% chance of winning that 50 grand
and going down in history as the best snack expert of all time.
[closing theme music playing]