Ten home cooks from around the country are about to embark on the greatest culinary adventure of their lives. But first, they will need to cook for a spot on a mentor's team. Bobby Flay, Alex Guarnaschelli, Curtis Stone and Michael Symon will each have two home cooks to guide through the competition. Special guest judge Simon Majumdar will help decide which home cooks will have a chance to move on.
The eight remaining home cooks must reinvent famous food pairings to stay out of this week's elimination round. And these cooks won't want to disappoint, because they'll be judged by Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian. The home cooks that move on will be one step closer to the $50,000 grand prize.
For the first time ever, best friends Bobby Flay and Michael Symon try to take each other's teams down when all the mentors battle head-to-head for a crucial advantage. Special guest judge Elizabeth Falkner helps get in on the action, determining which home cook is sent home.
For the first time the mentors join forces to achieve victory: Bobby, Alex, Curtis and Michael become two super teams, to make the most spectacular three-course steak dinner with their home cooks. The losing team goes from friends to instant enemies as they cook off against each other in the elimination round, judged by Chopped judge Amanda Freitag and Chef John Li.
Five home cooks remain as the mentors battle head-to-head to bring back an eliminated contestant of their choice, facing tough ingredients to make a dish worthy of a second chance. When the eliminated contestant returns, it's time for the six home cooks to battle it out in front of special guest judge Donatella Arpaia, to see who goes home in the elimination round.
Food Network star Robert Irvine steps in to fill the mentors' shoes, coaching and guiding the home cooks as they are challenged to cook with canned meats. Then, the mentors become the judges, doing a blind taste test to determine which three home cooks will compete in the elimination round.
The four remaining home cooks face off in three of the toughest challenges yet. The winner of each round instantly moves into the finale, with the last cook standing going home. Chopped judge Marc Murphy lends a helping hand in the penultimate episode.
Three home cooks remain, with one last chance to win the $50,000 grand prize! The cooks must make it through three intense rounds of culinary challenges, all representing a meal in the life of your typical home cook; breakfast, lunch and dinner. Plus, the contestants will get to cook side-by-side with their world-class mentor!
The first day at All-Star Academy begins as nine home cooks enter the kitchen and meet their mentors: Alex Guarnaschelli, Robert Irvine, Curtis Stone and Andrew Zimmern. The cooks are put to the test preparing a dish using the contents of a lunch box, which the mentors taste and rank in order. While the lowest-ranked cook is eliminated, the remaining eight choose their mentors. Then, the mentors must cook to impress guest judge Carla Hall and win a Save Card, which they can use later to keep one of their cooks from elimination. (Special airtime - 10 PM ET)
The home cooks enter to meet their new guest professors, Debi Mazar and Aaron Sanchez. The subject is geography, and for their group test, they must compete in a tag team challenge cooking dishes that combine the styles of where they are from. The two teams with the least successful dishes then compete in an elimination test using ingredients from the most popular cuisines in the world: Thai, Italian or Mexican.
Duff Goldman serves as guest professor for a set of art-inspired challenges. First, the mentors face off in two battles featuring desserts in different colors. The teams with the least successful dishes then compete making a structural dessert that features chocolate and incorporates a circle, a square and a triangle on the plate.
The Kitchen's Katie Lee and Jeff Mauro join the Academy as guest professors, where the subject is math and the group test is a numbers game: they'll be split in two groups of three to create an appetizer trio featuring one main ingredient! The trio sent to the elimination test must create a dish using only seven ingredients from the pantry, plus a surprise ingredient from the opposing team's mentor.
Scott Conant and Geoffrey Zakarian serve as guest professors for snack time, and they mix things up by having the mentors cook a gourmet dish featuring a popular snack food. The winning mentor gets a big prize: to bring back any cook that has been eliminated and add them to their team. After the eliminated cook returns, all five cooks try to avoid elimination as they create a gourmet dish using pretzels.
Guest professor Adam Richman joins the Academy to test the cooks on science, so first they must dissect iconic dishes and use those ingredients in a new way. Then, Adam makes the mentors switch teams to test how well they can train students. Whoever mentors the cook with the winning dish also gets to save one of their own team members, and the remaining cooks face off creating dishes featuring the four elements — earth, air, fire and water.
Professor Richard Blais and Professor Haylie Duff test the cooks in the subject of literature by putting them through three rounds of competition, and the cook that wins each round automatically advances to the finale. First, dishes inspired by a genre of literature; then, dishes with assigned nouns, adjectives and verbs; and finally, a pass or fail round, where the remaining cooks must make dishes featuring ingredients starting with a "p" or an "f."
The eliminated mentor returns to serve as the final guest professor, testing the cooks on their history with food. In the first round, the mentors must make an updated version of meatloaf to win an advantage for their cooks in the next round. Then, the home cooks revisit their first challenge cooking with lunch box ingredients, and in the final round, the two remaining cooks must create the best dish of their lives to win the $50,000 prize!
