Worst Cooks in America review: High steaks before the finale

The final four Worst Cooks in America enter bootcamp for the penultimate time. The cooking today will determine the final two cooks who will represent Alton Brown and Anne Burrell in a head-to-head battle before a panel of culinary experts. Truly, the stakes are high.

Rather than starting off with a short game, we dive right into the first challenge on this Worst Cooks in America episode and it’s a classic. Each team will be presented with a dish. They have to sample it, dissect its ingredients and convey precise information on the composition of the dish to Alton and Anne.

Neither Alton nor Anne can see the dish themselves so they have to go by the information they get through headphones and hope their team can correctly identify the ingredients and cooking techniques based on what they have learned so far.

Anne and Alton have thirty minutes to cook their dish. They also have a limited pantry which helps to narrow things down as they can suggest ingredients to the team.

We begin with both teams revealing their identical dish- a soft-shelled crab sandwich with slaw, a summer salad and jicama chips. As soon as Alton’s blue team lifts the lid on their plate, they see the bun and tell him it is a burger. Alton mentally begins preparing for a burger and then Kelly lifts the bun and says “there’s some kind of animal.” Yum. “The burger has legs.” Alton suggests soft-shelled crab and they agree.

As Alton prepares the egg portion of his coating for the crab, Leo tells him they have just two minutes left. Somehow, he thinks the twenty-eight minutes on the clock is how long they have been doing this. Alton gets frustrated and tells Leo to look over the curtain that separates him from them. He then throws his dirty, egg covered whisk at Leo. Leo didn’t turn so it hits him in the back, but it could have nailed him in the face if he had looked.

Alton tells us a few things this episode. He admits that he has never cooked in a timed competition. He has only been a host. He also tells us that “I spent a lot of time hosting a show where my job was to be mean to people and I learned that I liked it…a lot.” Both admissions seem on display this whole episode, but especially as he cooks.

While cooking, he throws all his kitchen trash on the floor, over his shoulder or kicking it hacky sack-style. Anne privately comments that keeping your station clean is a big thing as she side-eyes him. Alton also drinks a lot of bourbon from a measuring cup.

Both teams struggle to name the ingredients, but it is more fun to watch Alton’s team describe things. Kelly refers to “heckama” instead of jicama and “feeta” instead of feta. She also calls fennel fronds “fancy grass” and calls yucca fries an exotic carb.

Over on Anne’s team, Leslie is talking, a lot. She talks over Shannon and she talks over Anne. She is also frequently wrong. She insists that the cornmeal coating is panko. Shannon says, “if panko is Japanese for corn, then sure, it’s panko.” Leslie is from Maryland but insists there is no Old Bay in the seasoning. There is. Leslie insists that the slaw has romaine lettuce because it is too soft for cabbage and she decides the fennel frond is dill. At one point, Anne gets annoyed with her for talking over her and refusing to answer direct questions but Leslie says she wants to be sure to get her voice heard and acknowledged by Anne.

With ten minutes left, Anne’s team finally mentions the yucca fries. As time winds down, Shannon is trying to tell Anne how to plate based on the face of a clock and Leslie continues to interrupt but does not seem to have a good feel for where the hours are on a clockface. However, they do tell Anne to put the crab down on the bun followed by the slaw, rather than the reverse which is what Alton’s team tells him.

When time is called, Alton brings Anne her own measuring cup of bourbon and admits it was his first timed cooking competition. “Welcome to the big leagues,” she tells him. “Time to pull up your big boy pants.” Remember, Anne cut her teeth on Iron Chef while Alton hosted. She has every right to tease him.

The dishes are revealed. Alton’s team got one extra ingredient correct but Anne’s plating and assembly is better so it is a tie. Alton is frustrated that he used plantain instead of yucca and Kelly tells him she knew it wasn’t plantain. “I knew what the plantation tastes like,” she says. This forces Alton to explain to her the difference between a plantation and a plantain.

For the main dish challenge, they will make steak dishes to go with the high stakes of this final battle. Anne demonstrates a dry-rubbed ribeye, creamed spinach and a “pomme Chef Anne.” Her pomme features thin potato slices cut on a mandolin layered with salt and parmesan cheese. Alton demos a reverse seared steak and eggplant parmesan. This involves cooking his steak in a low temperature oven and then finishing it in the pan. The eggplant parm uses salted eggplant slices to replace noodles in the dish.

Everyone will have seventy-five minutes to recreate their chef’s dish exactly. Kelly is at a disadvantage as she doesn’t eat meat. All the same, both of Alton’s cooks seem to do fairly well. The biggest point of interest on the blue team is Alton’s behavior. He spends the cooking time wandering around, bothering both of his cooks. To Leo, he whispers that Kelly is “kicking his ass” and he taunts him that he doesn’t really want to go to the finale. To Kelly, he mockingly tells her about juicy meat since it grosses her out. Anne eventually scolds him into stopping that nonsense.

With time almost up, Alton decides both of his cooks must create an unplanned steak sauce. Leo goes for shallot but Alton doesn’t like how he cuts it and makes him start over. Kelly is unsure of what to do so he whispers that he likes blue cheese and I think he is giving her an unfair advantage. That is, until he also starts mentioning other things he likes just to see if she will use them- chocolate, bourbon, sriracha.

Over on Anne’s team, the drama comes from cooking rather than taunting. Shannon is terrified of the mandolin so she cuts very slowly. All the same, she slips and loses a nail and her potato goes flying. Meanwhile, Leslie is cutting like a pro but then, as she layers her potatoes, she douses them in salt. Leslie gets to work on her steak before Shannon. She is supposed to brown the steak and then baste it in butter.

Leslie forgets this detail and puts her butter in too early. Her butter gets too dark and Anne tells her to dump it out and add fresh butter. Leslie thinks this means she needs a new pan so she starts a cold cast iron on the stove until Anne tells her this will take too long. Leslie also needs correction in doing her potatoes. She is supposed to flip her potato cake out of her pan and turn it over to brown on the other side. Instead, she browns one side and then goes to put it in the oven. Anne catches this too and saves her from a burnt bottom.

At one point, Alton asks Anne what her least favorite thing is about Shannon and Leslie. For Shannon, she says she doesn’t taste her food. For Leslie, the list stretches on. She doesn’t follow directions and does things her own way. She misses details. She overthinks things and has to do things more than once. After this imbalanced litany, I am pretty sure Shannon is her pick for the finale but the final tasting remains.

Alton tastes his team’s dishes first, but he offers little feedback. Leo has made a thick something for his sauce with butter, shallots, Worcestershire sauce and parmesan. It’s not really a sauce. For all the stress it caused, Alton tells him, “I never use steak sauce.” Kelly has thus made an error by putting her sauce on her meat. Her sauce is made of beef broth, brown sugar, mustard, thyme, basil, shallots and butter. Alton says little except that she has used too much salt in her dish.

Over on Anne’s team, Shannon’s potato cake could be browner and her spinach could be creamier. Her steak is unevenly seared with some parts being too charred. However, her seasoning is good. Leslie’s steak is poorly cut and her potatoes are way too salty. But, her spinach is really good and her steak is well-seasoned.

It is finally time for us to learn who will be the two finalists. Alton seems to surprise everyone when he picks Leo. He tells Leo he has an innate sense for food and lets us know that Kelly’s steak sear was uneven and her eggplant badly overcooked. Anne decides that Leslie still hasn’t improved her listening skills enough and selects Shannon for the finale.

Poor Leo doesn’t get too much time to celebrate as Alton immediately says, “what the hell just happened,” making it clear he never thought Leo would make it. Anne tells Shannon and Leo to come back focused, but Alton tells Leo to go ahead and party and get hungover. Clearly, he is not expecting Leo to actually win and it shows.

Were you surprised by the final two? I was sure Kelly would be Alton’s pick. What is your opinion of Alton and his mentoring style? I used to think that Anne was pretty scary, but I would take her any day over Alton. Next week, we will see if he has managed to coach his worst cook better than Anne. My money is on Shannon.