[upbeat music playing]
Okay, only three of you are going to get a chance
to impress us with your Pringle-making skills.
Christian!
[all cheering]
Oh-ho-ho, boy.
[Christian] Pringles seem really simple, but it's super complex.
But I'm confident that I can nail this for the judges.
Let's do this.
Clara!
[cheering]
Of course, the Clara box drops, and I'm mortified.
Because the Pringle is this unnatural shape
that fits perfectly in your mouth.
And you're expecting us to do it with our two hands
and some pretty nice kitchen equipment in an hour.
[tense music playing]
Hari!
[Lauryn] Hari, you got it.
[Hari] Pringles are a specific type of chip.
The shape makes it really difficult to make.
It's not something I've done before,
but it's something I'm excited to try.
Every bag of potato chips you've ever had has had at least one or two duds in it.
Until Pringles came along and literally changed the game
with a meticulously-crafted, perfectly-intentioned shape,
and it sits on your tongue like a little ergonomic starch saddle.
[chuckles]
Hey, Pringles. I'm ready to ride.
[laughing]
The complication is, unlike regular chips,
they're not just whole potatoes cut into slices.
They're fabricated from the ground up.
Trying to make a dough out of dried potato is a crumbly challenge.
Once you've created basically a ship in a bottle out of potatoes,
you've got to chuck it into a maelstrom of boiling hot fryer oil
and hope it survives.
You're gonna need to be a master fry navigator.
Because if you aren't, you won't get that perfect shape,
and it ain't gonna stack.
Are y'all ready to mingle with the Pringle?
-Oh, yeah! -Yes!
You'll have 90 minutes for this recreation.
Which starts...
right now.
[Hari] Unlike most potato chips,
Pringles are not made from sliced potatoes.
So the chefs will have to create the dough
using a combination of starches like corn and rice flour
with dried potato to nail that unique taste
and delicate texture of a Pringle.
There's salt. It's airy. It's grainy.
There's definitely a lot of potato.
There's umami. It's inside the Pringle as well.
It tastes, uh, really salty.
[Hari] The second part of the challenge,
the chefs will need to mold their dough into that iconic Pringles shape,
known as the hyperbolic paraboloid,
which gives Pringles their stacking superpower.
Finally, the bakers will need to fry their chips correctly
to achieve that delicate yet crumbly Pringles perfection.
[Christian] I know that Pringles are gonna take a long time to finesse
and get exactly the way they need to be.
I mean, hyperbolic paraboloid.
Say that five times fast, then make them five times fast.
That's what I gotta do.
[Francis] Come on!
[contestant] Come on! You're good! All right!
What are the biggest challenges to get the perfect Pringle?
[Ali] You'll need a lot of starch.
Crazy thing about starch is it's not all the same.
So, starch from corn behaves different than starch from potatoes,
which behaves different than starch from rice.
Pulling together the right mix, it's like making a boy band.
[chuckles]
[Ali] You get to make your own starch sugar mixtape
with all the perfect flow,
so you get something that will brown at the rate you choose.
You have to cook it at correct temperature.
You cook it too high regardless of how you formulate it,
it will burn before it can cook.
If you cook it too low,
it will become hard and greasy before it gets any color.
I'm gonna go for potato flour, rice flour, and cornstarch.
Because the Pringle is a very fine grain.
It's, like, translucent.
If you look at it in the light,
those ridges are kind of consistent.
Where I come from, I'm definitely the dough boy.
I mean not just the thick boy.
But the "dough boy."
Biscuits!
I am chef and owner of Boomtown Biscuits and Whiskey.
I made top six chefs "Best of Cincinnati."
I learned to cook in the kitchen. I didn't go to school.
I learned from every single place I've ever cooked.
Experience.
We'll just go ahead and stir this up.
I feel I'm ahead of the game because I work with dough so often.
But Pringle dough is no joke.
-[quacking] -[laughs]
That is the best thing to do with the Pringles.
[laughing]
Look at Clara.
Breaking it down, yeah.
So, I'm looking at the Pringle and I know there's corn flour in it.
Then I'm gonna add cornstarch for some crunchiness.
But I think I got it.
I think what sets me apart in this competition is
I was a line cook
in some of the nation's best restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia.
I was able to do recipes for Questlove,
Campbell's consumer test kitchen,
Tabasco.
I did Korean menu translation for Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert.
Probably the best career moment of my life.
The dough smells really potato-y. So, I am really happy
because it's sort of lumpy.
I think someone called me a "silent assassin"
because I'm really quiet and focused.
You don't know what will happen,
but you'll probably end up dead.
[playful music]
I'm smelling this dough and it's smelling like Pringles to me,
so that's a really good sign.
The majority of this dough is made from pre-cooked potatoes
that are already dried into flakes.
I'll break it up with other starches, it'll get really crispy.
Food has always played a big role in my life.
In high school, I started working in restaurants.
It was something that I instantly fell in love with
and became my life's work and passion.
When I was 20 years old,
I set a goal to own a restaurant by the time I was 30,
and I made it happen when I was 29.
I'm not pulling any punches and I'm giving it my all.
Usually that hard work has paid off for me.
This is, like, perfect. It's what I'm looking for.
Hari? How you doing over there, bub?
Man, you know, this is what I'm born to do.
They say that dough is in the dough, so, you know.
The only way we get any dough is if we get this dough right.
Make fat stacks to make fat stacks.
[clucks]
Clara!
♪ How are you? ♪
Christian, I'm living my best life.
[Hari] So, just from meeting Christian and Clara, I'm not scared.
I can handle any challenge,
but I know they are gonna be really tough competitors.
Now, I just need precise focus.
[laughing]
All right.
[Hari] Seventy-five minutes left, chefs.
-Seventy-five minutes. -Thank you.
I'm really curious about how a chip like this was even created.
Did they start with the tennis ball container
and say, "This is what will make us distinctive
if we could find a way to fit a chip or a product in here"?
-The fairy tale theory I tell myself... -Yeah.
...is that somebody wanted to come in and, like,
"The market needs another potato chip. What hasn't been done before?"
"Perfection? All right. Let's do it."
[Christian] Okay.
So, this dough is super mealy. It hasn't really come together yet.
It's kind of like a pie dough of sorts.
So, I'm gonna layer it with just a bit of water,
some cornstarch as a binder.
I'm using water because
it's more or less getting it to come together.
And me being able to get thin as I want.
Let's give this a whirl.
So, I'm using a pasta extruder to get my dough as thin as tissue paper.
This dough is extremely delicate, but I also think that's what I need
in order to get it to the precise level of, like,
melt-in-your-mouth crispiness.
Now I just need to do it... 64 more times.
Thinner is the winner.
One hour, chefs.
[Hari] Make your Pringles like you know how.
[grunts]
Get the tortilla press, y'all.
[Lauryn] I think the tortilla press is too thick still.
[contestant] It is, but it gets you to that level to where you can roll it out.
[Lauryn] Okay.
[Hari] That worked. That felt good.
I thought if I could use the tortilla press,
I'd get some nice formation from it.
So it'd be easier for me to use the pasta machine to get it through.
That's what I'm talking about right there.
You know, any time you're against a ticking clock,
it's always sort of nerve-wracking.
[Clara] Ugh.
It's too fat. It's not coming through. It's not sticking together.
It's breaking apart. It's not a cohesive dough.
I need something to bind the dough, which the easiest is flour and water.
I need the dough to stick together or else I'm dead in the water.
Oh, yeah. That feels much better.
[playful music]
Christian, you look like you're having too much fun over here.
[Christian] Too much fun? Oh, boy.
[Megan] You are getting that pretty thin. Are you worried about the thickness?
I got the sickness for the thickness, but I need thin to win.
Yeah.
[Hari] I noticed, on the other cutting boards, they seemed pretty clean.
It looks like you're really working.
It seems everyone else is slacking a bit.
It's like that chaotic neutral.
-Wow. -You've come to make a little mischief.
-Just a bit. -Are you nervous about time at all?
I'm not nervous about time until there's no time.
Oh, there we go.
[Ali] So, another thing that's gonna be tough
is obviously the shape.
We're looking at a hyperbolic paraboloid.
-[needle scratch sound] -What?
What does that mean? What are we really looking for?
A paraboloid means this.
Hyperbolic means it exaggerates a lot and it lies to you at parties.
[laughing]
That's a good one.
Because it has exact shape, you have to make the thing that makes the shape.
[Hari] Wow.
Right now, I'm getting them into the fryer.
I'm using mesh screens that I formed into the shape to create
that perfect paraboloid.
So, I'm gonna do a tester.
Uh-oh!
These chips are not staying in the molds.
Some of them are falling apart,
and they're not forming that perfect shape I was looking for.
Hmm.
So, all bets are off.
How's Christian doing?
Still mandoling his dough.
At least cook a piece, so you know where your dough's at.
Yeah.
Thirty minutes! You have 30 minutes left, chefs.
I think I got them thin enough,
but I also... I'm worried that I did not get them thin enough.
What are you doing?
Just make some Pringles.
Turn off the pasta extruder.
Stop struggling here and get to bubbling.
-Clara's dough looked a little wet, no? -It's definitely wet.
[Ali] That's gonna have to fry for, like, three days.
[Clara] This is not what I want.
Oh!
So, it's not cooking. It's, like, super dense.
The color's all wrong. It's not puffing up.
Uh, a lot of stuff is going wrong.
You have 20 minutes left.
Oh my God.
[frantic music plays]
The way to get the hyperbolic paraboloid, parabolic, parabola.
Tool, favorite song.
I think the way to do that is gonna be to use these mesh strainers,
gently mold them into the shape I really want.
Come on, shape.
-Clara! -[Clara] Yes?
-You good, boo-boo? -[Clara] I'm really bad.
Okay, what do you need?
[Clara] A dough that works.
I don't feel good, but I gotta keep moving.
I have to try to MacGyver a solution from this.
How can I make this lighter and crisper before I put it in the fryer?
And I go, "Ah!"
I could stick it in the convection oven.
But it's basically a Hail Mary.
Okay, new plan.
I'm frying one time to help dehydrate and crisp them
and the second to set the shape.
I have 15 minutes left, so I have to do them expeditiously.
This is interesting.
Hari is par-frying without any shape support.
I like that there's efficiency.
He's getting that initial release of moisture,
then taking time to carefully shape.
Look at that! That's a paraboloid right there.
-[contestants cheering] -[Francis] Hey!
Come on!
[Sandy] She's baking those for an awful long time, isn't she?
[Clara] When I go to pull them out of the oven,
thank the Lord, they are a lot drier.
They are crispier.
I gotta figure out how I'm gonna make hyperbolic paraboloid shape for the chips.
They have these taco shell presses.
Hallelujah! It's got the right shape.
Come hell or high water, I will get something on all these plates.
-Yeah! Let's go! -Yeah!
[contestants cheering]
Five minutes left.
[Christian] All right. I've got aeration. I've got bubbles.
I have... The bubbles are too big.
The added moisture I put in to get it through the extruder
is causing more bubbles to form on the Pringle.
That's too much aeration, so...
I almost need to roll it thinner, but I don't feel like I have the time.
I gotta get these fried.
Two minutes, everyone. Two more minutes.
-[Lauryn] They look a little brown. -[Sandy] They look mad brown.
[Hari] I got popcorn salt on, so a very fine salt.
Some of them are acting up.
Christian, you're money, baby!
You got this, Christian!
[screams]
-[Clara] You're gonna get this done. -[Christian] I'm gonna get this done!
They still might fall apart.
Yeah, it's gonna disintegrate.
Or he's gonna win and we're all completely wrong.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Clara] Anyone off the street will be like,
"Hey, those look like janky Pringles."
Thirty seconds, chefs.
Oh, it's broken down at the end.
[Francis] It's five seconds.
-[Megan] Time's up. -Best I can do it.
[horn honking]
Let's serve some Pringles.
[Sandy] Good job, guys.
Christian, please tell us about your Pringle.
I feel like that I got my overall formula close.
But my mold wasn't holding up the way I wanted it to.
So, my production time was greatly decreased by
how much I had to just mess with them.
So, obviously Pringles aren't hollow.
No.
-[Ali] You got some puffing. -I did.
This might be an imbalance of water.
These two are sort of like fried flour tortillas.
-[Christian] Yes. -For me,
they're soggy with bubbles which I do love a fried flour tortilla.
-That's not a Pringle. -That's not a Pringle. Right. [chuckles]
-The point of the challenge is shape. -Yes.
The accuracy.
[Ali] But I will say that
it is uncannily reminiscent of the aroma of a Pringle.
It gives you waves of potato.
Sometimes a potato itself can't even do that.
A potato itself can't even do what you did.
Thank you.
My dearest namesake, tell us about your Pringle.
[Hari] I really was trying to nail the hydration of the dough.
But working with a dough this dry was more difficult
than I thought it would be, but I gave it the old college try.
I like the potato flavor. I think it definitely tastes like potato.
I think they're crazy thick.
They got greasy before they could start cooking.
[Hari] Agreed.
But it didn't look like the moisture was so wrong.
If you had gotten it thinner, I wonder how it would've cooked.
But some of this looks kind of going in the right direction for a first fry.
Seasoning-wise, this is what I'm looking for.
-In terms of the level of salt. -Yeah.
But it feels like we got a bit of the bag of chips thing going on.
Where it's like, here's one that looks like it's in the sweet spot.
Here's one that's a little thick.
I wish the consistency was there to capture the magic of Pringles,
which you don't have to compromise. Every chip is equally as good as the last.
Duly noted and thank you.
-Hello. -[Hari] Hello.
Can you tell us about your Pringles?
So, this is my best attempt at a Pringle.
So, I apologize for the marks from the taco wire press maker.
It's got a better name, but this is literally
one of the most difficult things I've had to cook in my entire life.
I did my best. [chuckles]
Right out of the gate, I think you got some stacking.
[Clara] Whoo!
-[Ali] Which I approve. -[Megan] Oh, yeah.
[Ali] It's not a perfect stack, but a stack is had.
There is nothing perfect about this chip. I apologize.
[Ali] The potato flavor is really good.
There is a bit of yellow corn flavor that comes through.
Okay.
You may have just been okay with cornstarch by itself
-with a bit more neutral flavor. -[Clara] Okay.
But the flavor is overall very pleasing.
Thank you.
I also liked the seasoning that it's even and salty enough.
[Clara] Thank you.
[Helen] I'd say each of my Pringles did stack.
-But they're different from each other. -[Clara] Yes.
The first one I picked up broke, but it is really good.
Well, thank you. [laughs]
Fantastic effort, everyone.
But as you know, we have to pick a winner for this round.
[Hari] Judges.
[tense music builds]
Congratulations, Clara.
You made our favorite Pringle.
Yes!
-[applause] -Thank you.
[Christian] I didn't win this challenge.
So, for round two, I'm pushing myself to the limit.
I got my work cut out for me.
Thank you. No one is more surprised than I am right now.
[chuckles]
Great work in Pringland, everybody. But don't get too comfortable.
[Megan] You'll still need to impress our judges
in a second round in order to move on to the finals.
Because you'll be judged by your combined performance for your dishes.
[Hari] In this round, we want your snack
to embody the edible functionality of the Pringle.
[Hari] Just as the Pringles functionality is its ability to stack,
you'll need to create a snack with a function of its own.
Helen, Ali, what will be so challenging about this?
Shape of the snack must contribute to its purpose
or a functional element of its edibility.
We wanna see something cool that also tastes great.
You'll have 90 minutes for this challenge.
And your time starts now.
[contestants screaming]
[Hari] I'm sad because I didn't win.
But I know I have to keep on fighting because
I really wanna move on to the finals and I wanna cook as many dishes
in this competition as possible and come out victorious.
-[sizzling] -[Hari] I'm channeling my inner child
and making something I know my son would love to play with and enjoy.
When I think about snacks, I think about my childhood,
all the food that makes me really happy.
Then I think about what kind of things would I serve to my boys
and what would they be stoked on.
So, the name of my snack is Maxwell's Silver Hammer
after my son whose name is Maxwell.
A solid sugar hammer
that you're able to take a little army man and smash him into pieces.
The function is to smash sugar
so you can eat it and share it in smaller pieces and enjoy it.
So, the first thing I need to do is cook my sugar to a stage
where the moisture is cooked out of it.
Reason I chose sugar is because you can really make it
and form it any way that you want to form it.
The flavor that I chose is a green strawberry and raspberry.
I really wanted to go for that olive drab military type color.
That's a beautiful hue of army man green.
I'm making Cracklin' Roses.
Not to be confused with the Neil Diamond song "Cracklin' Rosie."
I love roses. Rose Garden in Philadelphia is one of my favorite places in the world.
When you get there and walk through at the right time,
it's this fragrant aroma of all these roses
as you walk for a couple of hundred yards.
So, I'm making rice cracker roses with sesame seeds.
The petals are adding extra surface area for more crunch,
but also more surface area for more dipping ability.
Edible functionality is how much dip and stuff you can get on it.
If you have all these intricate things, the surface area goes up 1,000%.
It's white rice flour, toasted sesame oil, a bit of sugar, a bit of salt.
This will be the base of the uh, the rice cracker.
I love that it's creamy and light.
The nice white batter is gonna lend itself nicely
to lots of bursts of color.
To make them, like, legit colorful roses.
Go big or go home.
Something different, something new.
Innovation and so, uh, I'm here for it.
[Christian] Quite frankly, I'm bummed that I botched the first challenge.
At least right now, I'm not running out of "thyme."
But there's still hope.
I'm ready to win here today.
So, I'm making an edible...
Ha!
I'm making an edible spoon for soup.
So, I'm gonna make Spoon Me.
The tasty soup spoon cracker for your soup.
You can use it as the spoon it is to eat your soup
or break it up in there like a cracker and enjoy.
So, the edible functionality is clearly spoon!
So, in my spoon dough, I have dried carrots, sage, thyme,
paprika, and then tomato powder,
so that it's vaguely tasting of tomato soup.
I really love soup, stews and chilis. I love all those things.
It's refreshing to be able to step back into something that I know.
Something comforting and hopefully will bring comfort to other people.
[upbeat music playing]
In the center of this challenge,
you're talking about the functionality of the product.
What are we looking for?
We're looking forward to
not just something that's a cool and delicious snack.
Like, what does it do?
Yeah, it has to do something. It can't just be an aesthetic choice.
With Pringles, it's pretty straightforward.
They stack. That is what they do, right?
They stack and they straddle your tongue.
-Huh. -Did they straddle or saddle?
-I said straddle. I meant straddle. -Straddle's naughty.
They straddle your tongue.
Huh.
[Hari] I'll start my mold-making process.
This is a food-safe silicone.
And it actually... You can heat it in the oven.
It's a really fun thing to do.
I brought along some of Maxwell's toys with me
to actually make molds of those toys.
To make it feel authentic.
Stop! Hammer mold!
They need to cool to a certain point of time
where I'm able to unmold them without them bending.
Working with sugar is really difficult,
but I know I'm gonna need to be able to get the sugar
to set to the right texture in my molds.
With the little men, I'm gonna need to make sure
that each one stands up nicely,
so you're able to crash that hammer down on the little man's head.
Ooh!
I got asbestos fingers. It's all good.
Chefs, you have one hour left!
[Christian] Hey, blue! It's my favorite color.
For my next step,
I'm gonna put the rice flour batter
onto hot Silpat-lined half-sheet trays.
That's gonna help me get a really thin layer,
which is gonna be crucial when I do the rose curls.
What I have here is black sesame seeds and white sesame seeds.
I just toasted them to release some of the oils
and make them more aromatic, a bit crunchier,
to make it a sesame rice cracker.
Fingers crossed it works that way.
-Clara! -[Clara] Yes, chef?
-I brought you a slushy. -A slushy that matches your hair?
That the idea? I think of you when I eat it?
I mean, you can.
-Thank you. -You're welcome.
[Clara] Hari and Christian are hardcore.
Christian has got bright blue hair.
You don't strut a hairdo like that unless you're confident.
-A blue slushy to match your blue hair. -It is.
Hari's got the thick glasses. He's got all the tats.
I have no tattoos. I have my natural hair color.
That gives me an edge because they have no idea who they're up against.
[Hari] Oh, that's so good.
I really wanna know what Christian's doing.
I'm basically using silicone chocolate slash candy molds to make a cracker.
And the reason is because
cracker molds don't really exist.
So, it's a bit of a punt, a bit of a stretch.
My concern is that
it's gonna rise out and create too much of a non-cracker blob of...
cracker-stick.
Hopefully, the right amount of dough gets me the right amount of dough.
I like competing and pushing myself to the limit.
[humming circus music]
$50,000, I'm thinking...
that's a pretty piece of change. It's a lot of snacks I could buy.
It should all come out nice and crackery in the end.
Maybe.
Ha-ha-ha, we got army men.
Uh-oh.
[Hari] A little bit of breakage.
Man, my candy's breaking.
Oh.
This guy's arms broke off.
If the pieces aren't a lot more durable,
there's no shot that I can win.
So, I need to think quick.
Oh, man. That's sketchy.
Thirty minutes left!
It looks okay to me now. It's coming out of the oven.
I like that the color got darker
once the water evaporated through the cook.
I'm rolling them to have all these, like, you know, petals.
It's a bit doughier than I want it to be.
As I'm rolling, everything starts to kinda fall apart.
[Clara chuckles]
A little bit concerned.
It's not working.
I'm putting the rice cracker roses into the dehydrator
so I can suck out moisture to get them as crunchy as possible.
I will reassess to see how dried out the crackers are.
[Christian] This ain't gonna work.
I'm trying to create Spoon Mes, not Log Mes.
Ah! No one wants a Log Me.
They wanna be spooned.
This is one of those ones they pick out. It's a bad batch one.
We don't wanna serve this to the judges, so I'll try to trim them up
to give them a more dedicated spoon shape.
[Hari] Let's try to fix this one.
I really want them to be as perfect as possible for the judges.
So, I will be taking the torch.
Use the torch like that and fuse it back together.
He just needed a little surgery, but he's back together.
I think my snack is so different from my competitors,
and I really hope that the playful vision of it
will lead me to a victory.
Great.
You have 15 minutes.
[upbeat music playing]
These hammers, I'm gonna put one nice layer of edible silver on them.
Then I'll go back and touch up the pieces that need more love and attention.
Oh, here we go.
-Bam, bam, bam! -See? It was a hammer.
-I knew there was something else. -Silver hammer! All right.
[Sandy] You use the hammer to smash the army dudes.
[Francis] Why would you do that to the guy? He served his country.
I just really want it to make sure that it resembles a spoon
and not a cracker that was in a mold that's not a spoon.
It needs to retain a spoon shape.
It's the functional part of edibleness of my snack.
[Francis] Come on, Christian.
It's like a mani-pedi for a cracker.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Hari] I really want the soldiers to stand up,
and that's a difficult thing to do with sugar.
Oh-oh.
When they stand, that's gonna be the part that matters in this.
So they can get smashed down.
You stay, you little man. This one's kinda leaning.
The plan of attack is to use the torch
to lightly melt the bottom of the feet and set them on the marble.
[imitates blowtorch sound]
I just tried one. It's a bit softer than I want it.
I would rather err on the side of caution.
I'll do plan B and fry to get that really light airy texture.
I am hopeful.
Frying is a quick route to get water out, whereas a dehydrator is a slow burn.
It takes hours. It takes overnight.
[Clara] I am concerned if it's dried all the way through.
Without just biting into all of them, I can't figure that out.
[Hari] Let's get it done.
Please stand up.
Hari. Pressure.
Mm-hmm. [blows]
Oh, look it, man.
[Hari] The men are standing.
Your time in this particular world ends in a minute.
One minute.
[suspenseful music playing]
Time is up!
[applauding]
Well done.
Meet us out by the checkout line because it's judgement time.
That sounded harsh.
-Hi, guys. -[Ali] Hello.
-Thank you. -Tell us about your snack.
I was really thinking about my son, Maxwell.
One of his favorite things to do
is set things up and then smash them back down.
So this snack's called Maxwell's Hammer.
What I've created is lightly-caramelized sugar candy.
The sugar itself is nice and moist and should be pretty stable.
But then, I've sprayed a scant amount of edible glaze on the top.
I really wanted to make him that iconic army man color as well.
[Megan] He's cute.
Are they single?
[laughing]
[Hari] The edible function of this snack
is using the hammer and breaking it into pieces to share.
You can get some of your aggression out.
You stand him up and smash a head or an arm.
[Helen] Oh, my.
[all] Ooh!
We got smash.
-[Megan] Ooh, wow. -That's deeply satisfying.
I really think this is fun. Though isn't this murder candy?
[laughing]
[Helen] I super love the concept.
I really love the way the hammer came out.
I like that the name makes sense.
[Hari K.] What was the intended flavor?
[Hari] I wanted it to be, like, fruit-flavored.
It tastes a little bitter.
Which is a shame.
It's cool to be able to shatter it, but it almost tastes a bit adult.
-[Helen] Yeah. -Almost like negroni...
-Negroni army men. -[Ali laughs]
Hari, I like smashing stuff, and you've allowed me to smash things.
Thank you very much.
So, Christian, what do you have for us?
In front of you today is Spoon Me.
A cracker that is very dense on the inside and crispy on the outside.
And it's meant to be used either in soup or by itself.
That way, it stands alone as a cracker,
but also can be utilized as the spoon to go in your soup.
[Helen] Mm.
Very tasty. Super savory, which I like.
I'm a savory boy.
I like that.
Things this thick can easily be like a cinder block.
And I was very pleasantly surprised that it was yielding enough
to be eaten without having to be soaked in the soup.
This is super fun, but mine's undercooked.
-Okay. -[Helen] Right.
And considering the amount of time it spent somewhere in a device with heat,
that's a lot of undercookness, right?
So, how could you have pivoted in all the time you were allotted
to still achieve the concept?
Yeah, true.
Thank you so much for your beautiful snack.
Thank you.
Clara, we are so excited to hear about your snack.
[Clara] Well, thank you.
I made you guys Cracklin' Roses.
It's a crisp rice cracker with sesame seeds.
The functionality is increased surface area
for more crunch and you can dip more with it.
Each fold is helping you get a little bit more sauce.
[loud crunch]
Sounds crunchy.
-It is crunchy. -[laughs]
-[Clara] That's what I was going for. -What?
So, I'm gonna try your hypothesis
that this grabs on to more sauce than an average chip.
-Look at that cling. -[Clara] Yes!
-[Ali] Look at all the ridges. -[Clara] There you go. [laughs]
I'm hearing it.
-Covered in sauce, still crunchy. -[Clara] Awesome.
Mine are kind of medium-rare, medium, and medium-well.
-None are well-done. -Okay.
I'm glad you fried them.
The pieces that are crunchy are super crunchy and delicious.
-[Clara] Good. -Like, so nutty.
-Really good. -Thank you.
-I also wish it was slightly saltier. -Okay.
Yeah, a bit of seasoning and more well-done pieces.
-[Clara] Okay. -Yeah.
Thank you.
[Hari] All right, chefs. The judges have made a decision
based on your performances in both rounds.
You are one step closer to the next round and winning that $50,000.
Are y'all ready to find out who won?
[all] Yeah.
As always, the decision will be revealed inside our magical vending machine.
Let's find out who the judges chose.
[Hari] My heart is just racing.
The judges really liked the function of my snack.
I feel pretty confident that I have a great shot at winning.
[Christian] I'm wishing that vending machine was a time machine,
so I could go back in time and do this all over again.
[Clara] I'm nervous.
I know what I've made is delicious and nails the challenge parameters,
but I don't know if it's exciting enough for what the judges are looking for.
[suspenseful music builds]
-Ooh! -Clara!
[all cheering]
You achieved successfully the edible functionality
and definitely gave us a crunchy, delicious sesame snack.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
[Clara] I'm completely flabbergasted.
Yeah, I can't believe it.
I'm going to the finals!
We now have two winners
that have landed guaranteed spots in the finals.
You're one step closer to becoming a snack food god.
All right, chefs. Incredible snacks today.
But if you thought stacking those Pringles was a snack Jenga nightmare,
you're in for it in our next challenge.
Let's see what our magical vending machine has in store for our chefs.
[suspenseful drumroll]
Ooh!
It's Kit Kat!
[cheering]
I see the Kit Kat drop and automatically my stomach drops.
Please, don't make me make the Kit Kat.
I can tell some of you are excited for this one.
-Yeah! -Whoo!
So who's gonna be competing?
[Danny] Oh, boy.
Vending machine, do your thing.
[closing theme music playing]