S20.E02: Temping the Meat

[jewel21]

Quote

Both teams are put to the test as they take on their first dinner service, preparing dinner for boxing legend Mike Tyson and NASCAR driver Kurt Busch.

Airdate: 06/07/2021

[Ms Blue Jay]

Really enjoying the show so far.  Pleasantly surprised.

[mojoween]

Ava’s dish must have been really really REALLY bad if she was kept over Matthew, who has been terrible since minute one.

“Scallop’s cooked beautifully,” says GRR, which is hilarious since he fucking made them.

Steve seems pretty competent; Antonio, on the other hand, can get bent.

It’s super weird to me to watch an entire gaggle of kids who are almost all my son’s age (23). He would ABSOLUTELY be an uncontrolled smirker.

Canonizing Mike Tyson is really gross, Gordon.  Please don’t.

[xcrayon2215x]

Matthew should have been eliminated over Ava but I am glad he is gone. Working in a kitchen is very different than posting food on Instagram so I had a feeling he would not last. Steve is showing talent, Antonio is one that I feel will be irritating through the season. I think that with younger chefs we are getting more chefs talking about how hot Gordon is it seems.

[mertensia]

Oh the horror! Sneaking in a thermometer! 

[preeya]

Why is it a No-No to use a meat thermometer?

Is it against one of the commandments of culinary school?

[jewel21]

Pretty much, yes. Or at least according to Gordon Ramsey. Apparently a chef should be able to tell the temperature/cook of meat simply by touch. 

[leocadia]

I fully realize that hyperbole is the life's blood of Hell's Kitchen (really, any Gordon Ramsey show) but I had to laugh when Gordon's announcement about using the "finest alcohol" was played over a close up of Captain Morgan's.  There's nothing wrong with it, but I've never really considered it in the "finest" category when it comes to liquor.

Antonio is like Mark 2.0 (Is that the name of the short, top-ponytailed chef from last season?  Lol, I'm not positive and I'm too lazy to check).  I wonder how many times he actually said "bounce back" and how many were just inserted by the audio department.  

[Chyromaniac]

40 minutes ago, preeya said:

Why is it a No-No to use a meat thermometer?

Is it against one of the commandments of culinary school?

Please someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it comes down to 2 things: 1) aesthetically, it’s not great to serve meat with a puncture wound in it, and 2) it’s a puncture wound, and therefore a way for “juices” to leak out of the meat.

Ultimately, I think the right two went home- Matthew seemed to have basically no business being in a professional kitchen at this point.  And surely the plating of his boozy chicken that they all tried couldn’t have been raw- but then how did he wind up with two so wildly different levels of doneness from one cook?

As for Ava- to have salmon that raw in the middle after 45 minutes of available cook time is ridiculous.  I feel bad that she didn’t even make it to the first service - but c’mon...  Otherwise, it’s hard to see a leader on the blue team, not that certain guys aren’t trying.  Red seems to at least be functioning better as a group- we’ll have to see how it holds up.

[mertensia]

4 hours ago, preeya said:

Why is it a No-No to use a meat thermometer?

Is it against one of the commandments of culinary school?

My guess is the show forbids it for drama. 

[cameron]

7 hours ago, leocadia said:

I fully realize that hyperbole is the life's blood of Hell's Kitchen (really, any Gordon Ramsey show) but I had to laugh when Gordon's announcement about using the "finest alcohol" was played over a close up of Captain Morgan's.  There's nothing wrong with it, but I've never really considered it in the "finest" category when it comes to liquor.

Antonio is like Mark 2.0 (Is that the name of the short, top-ponytailed chef from last season?  Lol, I'm not positive and I'm too lazy to check).  I wonder how many times he actually said "bounce back" and how many were just inserted by the audio department.  

Antonio reminds me of Jay Leno.  Same kind of pushed in face.

[Eolivet]

Steve's dish looked delicious, but how did he not get dinged for basically playing strategy when he sent someone up there who he clearly knew didn't have one of the worst dishes? It was a New York strip? Unless it was cooked to shoe leather or rawwwwww, Ramsay is never going to classify steak as a "worst" dish. Steve basically said he was playing politics with the choice. Hope it doesn't come back to bite him, he seems talented.

Bri seemed to know exactly who the worst three dishes were. The joys of chronic anxiety: the overwhelming desire to please people means you can identify shoddy work from a mile away.

[Ms Blue Jay]

So Steve sent up the guy he liked the least?  Is that what he meant?

[iwantcookies]

The right 2 went home. 
 

 

[EllaWycliffe]

15 hours ago, xcrayon2215x said:

Antonio is one that I feel will be irritating through the season.

Yeah, but I'm really not impressed with the male team as a whole for sending the ceviche up as one of the best dishes if it was really that awful. 

Antonio doesn't seem that good of a cook but its early, he might bounce back (hee hee). 

I think Matthew was in over his head and knew it, and kind of gave up.

Honestly, if a meat thermometer is against the rules - shouldn't Gordon be angry that none of the boys had the integrity to bring it up?

[Ms Blue Jay]

Well that could have been how Gordon found out about it.  

[AZChristian]

2 minutes ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

Well that could have been how Gordon found out about it.  

Somebody had to have told Gordon whose it was.  He didn't offer the blue team the option of having the transgressor confess.  He just went right to him.

[SyracuseMug]

1 hour ago, iwantcookies said:

The right 2 went home. 

No question about that in regards to Matthew, but I liked Ava at the outset, and was rooting for her to do well. Even when her first two dishes failed, I still wanted to see how she performed in a dinner service. Matthew fell apart there completely, and thus should have been the first boot. We’ll never know whether Ava would have crashed and burned as well, and that’s what frustrates me. It’s hard to lose a favorite right out of the gate.

Fortunately there are one or two others on the red team whom I’ve gotten behind as well. I just can’t remember their names at this point.

[Yeah No]

15 hours ago, jewel21 said:

Pretty much, yes. Or at least according to Gordon Ramsey. Apparently a chef should be able to tell the temperature/cook of meat simply by touch. 

Speaking as someone who cooks a lot and who has watched a lot of cooking competitions, it's usually taken as a sign of one's expertise not to need to rely on a thermometer to temp. meat.  Conversely, it is usually seen as an amateur move to need one.  So chefs are not really against using thermometers once in a while, just against what needing one implies about a person's ability level.  Usually if one is a skilled chef they don't need to rely on thermometers because they know by other means such as touch.  I am old enough to have learned how to cook before those instant read thermometers were all that accurate or available so I rarely need to use a thermometer.   

When I saw Matthew pull out the thermometer I realized that he probably never learned to cook without one so that explains why all his meat was dreadfully wrong.  It would be like relying on the anti-crash braking feature of your car to avoid hitting another car instead of your eyes.  Not the sign of someone that can use their brain and senses to do the job, which contrary to the way some people act is still necessary to do the job right.  Sadly, this is a bigger issue with a lot of things these days even with things like paying with cash in a store.  When I was young you had to count the change in your head to give the customer back the right amount.  It's actually quite easy if you're taught how to do it.  But a lot of people today would be lost without the register to tell them what to give back.  Even worse now is that some can't figure out how many dollars, quarters, nickels or pennies would add up to that amount either, but even today's registers don't tell you that.  When I see them struggling I often tell them what to give me back (as in 2 dollars 2 quarters, a dime and three pennies) and they look at me like I'm frickin' Einstein or something, LOL.  Meanwhile even uneducated, not so-bright people were doing this 40 years ago with no problem.  It's not rocket science!

[Msample]

When Gordon found the meat thermometer it felt like Gunny finding the jelly donut in FULL METAL JACKET, LOL. 

[iwantcookies]

I never owned a meat thermometer. Still alive. 
 

Matthew should stick to cooking online and not for real people.

[lynxfx]

Ok while last week I said this bunch are the oldest looking 21-23 year olds, this week they act like high schoolers doing a group project. So I guess that balances it out.

Funny to think that most of these people weren't even alive when Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear. 

[NJRadioGuy]

22 hours ago, preeya said:

Why is it a No-No to use a meat thermometer?

Is it against one of the commandments of culinary school?

Granted I'm not a line cook in a professional kitchen, but I won't cook any meat, especially poultry, without my Thermapen. I cook competition-style barbecue (brisket, pork, ribs, and chicken) and that's the single best tool at my disposal. But that said, I find it's far better to cook steaks by feel than by internal temp, especially if I've put a nice Mailliard crust on it on a flat-top.

[iwantcookies]

I’m terrified of Mike Tyson. Shudders!

[Ms Blue Jay]

I'm sure some of us had Project Runway flashbacks.

Quote

In the following episode of Project Runway season 16, it was revealed Claire had a measuring tape that she’d been using to measure her own clothes back at the contestants’ apartment to get proportions to use in her designs. As using a measuring tape outside of the contestant workroom is expressly against the rules of Project Runway, Claire had her previous win revoked and was disqualified from the competition.

The Project Runway season 16 cheating scandal wasn’t the show’s first either. Back in season 3 contestant Keith Michael was similarly disqualified after it was discovered he’d broken the rules by keeping pattern-making and fashion history books at the contestant apartment.

 

[Yeah No]

2 hours ago, NJRadioGuy said:

Granted I'm not a line cook in a professional kitchen, but I won't cook any meat, especially poultry, without my Thermapen. I cook competition-style barbecue (brisket, pork, ribs, and chicken) and that's the single best tool at my disposal. But that said, I find it's far better to cook steaks by feel than by internal temp, especially if I've put a nice Mailliard crust on it on a flat-top.

Oh I hear you about the poultry.  In spite of what I said above I do use thermometers on occasion, especially one of those leave-in probe thermometers when roasting a whole chicken or turkey, or any kind of roast like beef or pork.  There's no way you can accurately feel the doneness on those types of meat. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

Good Lord. This is a competition, right? All I could do was 🙄🙄 when Emily whined about Brynn putting her dish up as one of the worst after they "bonded" the previous night. One has nothing to do with the other. Unless she thinks bonding or becoming friends means that she can't be judged critically and honestly for the dishes she makes?

I, for one, am petty enough, that I enjoyed the guys/blue team fucking up so that Tyson didn't get his food. Whiny asshole. Plus, I haven't forgotten what he did. Either to Holyfield or raping that girl. But I did feel story for Steve, the guy who won the punishment pass, with his amazing pork chop. I like him.

I had read comments here before watching because I fell down in nostalgia heaven watching my animated G.I. Joe and tweenishly loving Flint's jealousy over Lady Jaye (DON'T JUDGE ME! Such soapy goodness! and Romance!), and so couldn't remember who Ava was. 

After watching, I'm sooo glad she got the boot. As did Matthew. Antonio should be next.

Look, I used to find Gordon hot before he messed up his face (and when did that happen?), and I find him charming in the youtube videos at home and the F Word, but that was some ridonkulous piece of bullshit with the editing and hearts the production/editing team did. Why not just show heart eyes booming out of what'sherface's face? The vegan, I believe.

[fishcakes]

I don't usually use a thermometer unless I'm cooking a cut of meat in a way I haven't done before, but I'm used to my stove and oven, so I know how long it takes to get to the right temperature. If I were in a different kitchen I'd be lost. After I saw someone explaining that Gordon knows how to tell not just doneness, but different temperatures by touch alone, I tried that (I found some webpage that explains what a rare, med-rare, medium, and well-done steak feel like by comparing them to different places on the palm of your hand), but I couldn't do it. It all felt the same to me.

Did Mike Tyson and his table get any food? Usually when they kick out a team that has a chef's table, the other team or even Gordon and his sous chefs take over so they can get shots of the celebrities exclaiming over how good the food is when they finally get it. I'm sure they must have served them and just not shown it. Redemption tour or not, it's probably not a good idea to promise Tyson food and then send him away without it.

[NJRadioGuy]

5 hours ago, fishcakes said:

I don't usually use a thermometer unless I'm cooking a cut of meat in a way I haven't done before, but I'm used to my stove and oven, so I know how long it takes to get to the right temperature. If I were in a different kitchen I'd be lost. After I saw someone explaining that Gordon knows how to tell not just doneness, but different temperatures by touch alone, I tried that (I found some webpage that explains what a rare, med-rare, medium, and well-done steak feel like by comparing them to different places on the palm of your hand), but I couldn't do it. It all felt the same to me.

Sometimes various pieces of the same cuts of meat cook differently. This is definitely the case with brisket. I've had a 14 pounder get to probe-tender on me in as little as 12 hours and as long as 17 hours. 

I could also never get the whole finger-test thing for steaks. I just "know" from feel what rare and mid-rare is, and I can tell if I accidentally let it get past medium. Pork chops are easy to mess up since there are no real visual clues so I always temp it, and ditto poultry, but at the other end of the scale, I don't think I've ever once temped ribs, and I've smoked hundreds of 'em, and hamburgers ditto.

[MajorWoody]

While Ava might have been a bottom tier contestant, Matthew was horrendous and should have went first. Between poop sack shrimp (which seemed a revelation to him), to raw chicken, he was obviously out of his element. 

[NJRadioGuy]

17 hours ago, MajorWoody said:

While Ava might have been a bottom tier contestant, Matthew was horrendous and should have went first. Between poop sack shrimp (which seemed a revelation to him), to raw chicken, he was obviously out of his element. 

Yup. Raw chicken is almost always a one-way ticket back to Palookaville.

[bluepiano]

On 6/7/2021 at 6:01 PM, mojoween said:

Ava’s dish must have been really really REALLY bad if she was kept over Matthew, who has been terrible since minute one.

Canonizing Mike Tyson is really gross, Gordon.  Please don’t.

Matthew should've gone first, but he went second, at least. A "food vlogger?" Cripes, well I guess that's consistent with the youth team. But as he said himself, someone posting videos to YouTube has endless time to perfect his dish and do "retakes." He should never have been on this kind of show, but I'm sure the producers knew he would eff up and be one of the first to go.

Totally agree about Tyson. Surprising to see that in this "me too" era. There are other boxing greats they could've brought on this show that don't have his kind of checkered (to say the least) past. GR practically treated him like he was Gandhi.