**The Great Chef Bobby Flay Challenge**

In this episode of [Show Name], we put our skills to the test by recreating one of Chef Bobby Flay's signature dishes: his Cheddar Black Pepper Waffle with Sausage and Apples Maple Agrodolce. Our contestant, Chris, was determined to nail it, but things didn't quite go as planned.

**The Challenge**

Chris approached the challenge like a pro, strung together a list of ingredients and techniques that he thought would result in a masterpiece. He started by making his waffle batter from scratch, using fresh buttermilk and real butter for added richness. Next, he browned off some sausage in hot oil until crispy, then set it aside to await its moment to shine.

**The Process**

For the apples, Chris opted for a one-skillet approach, cooking down onions and apples together with a hint of sugar and cinnamon until they were soft and caramelized. This method turned out to be surprisingly home-cook friendly, and Chris should be commended for his resourcefulness. To finish the dish, he added sliced sausage back into the pan, crisping it up just enough to add texture without overpowering the other flavors.

**The Judging**

As we presented our finished dishes to the judges, they couldn't help but notice a few differences between Chris's plate and Chef Bobby Flay's. The most noticeable was the choice of apple – while both plates featured a mix of green and red-skinned apples, Bobby's dish seemed to have only one variety. Additionally, Chris's sauce had a slightly dry factor compared to the rich, syrupy agrodolce on Bobby's plate.

**The Scores**

When it came time to tally up the scores, our judges were impressed with Chris's ingredients (80%), but felt that his technique was a bit off (85%). He'd nailed the waffle texture and flavor profile, but had missed the mark on the black pepper front. In contrast, Chef Bobby Flay's use of two cooking vessels – one for browning the sausage, another for cooking the apples – earned him points for efficiency and creativity.

**The Verdict**

Despite some minor missteps, Chris's dish showed a lot of promise. His waffle was perfectly cooked, with a crispy exterior giving way to a fluffy interior. The flavors were sharp and sweet, with a tangy black pepper flavor that added depth without overpowering the other ingredients. Overall, our contestant received a total score of 85, while Chef Bobby Flay's dish earned an impressive 87.

**The Takeaway**

This challenge was all about nuance – parsing out flavor profiles and balancing different elements to create something greater than the sum of its parts. While it can be tricky to recreate classic dishes, our contestant showed that with a little creativity and experimentation, even the most intricate recipes can be adapted for home cooking. And as for Chef Bobby Flay? He's one of those rare chefs who seems to excel in every category – from recipe writing to TV presence to restaurateur status. We're honored to have had the chance to tackle his signature dish and learn from the master himself.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Hannah and I'm in the ba Test Kitchen to have a super secret conversation about Chris Morocco once again we're putting Chris's super taster abilities to the test this is Chef Bobby Flay's cheddar black pepper waffles with sausage and apples Maple agradolce I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish with all of the ingredients in just one day he'll be able to taste it touch it and smell it but at no point will he be able to see this dish at the end of the day we'll come back to see his final creation and I'll be the judge easy day easy day easy okay we're good huh and it's bringing me some place but where it was like a saucy brooding meaty chicken Caesar salad like that's what came into my head huh sort of like a crispy coin of breakfast sausage but then how does the sausage get crispy all around feels like incredibly earthy um similar to like a thyme like a little bit sweeter Maybe so I've got like a square object with like a thing on top of it that is like very slippery silky actually tastes like cooked out thinly sliced like apple Maybe how is it holding together that well though it's like very resilient brininess here black pepper very present maybe there's like a little bit of maple it's kind of like Agra Dolce thing is the dressing for the waffle right like the same flavor as the pickly situation and yet the texture is like completely different like this is reading a little bit more like onion a little bit of parsley meanwhile I've been holding this this whole time this appears to be a Belgian shaped waffle it's almost got some heat to it a little eggy I also feel like there could be some like cheese there's just kind of like an intensity of flavor it's not simply white flour that feels like it was olive oil with one of our faulty squeeze bottles that everybody insists on persisting with it's grassy it's peppery it's really bright um I'm just like not gonna move at all there's pools of oil just kind of laughing at my glasses what the is in there is there like literally like Chef's knives with the tips pointed up in glass kind of a show is this I'm gonna see if I have a spare pair of socks somewhere I'm just gonna tackle things one at a time and just rethink this whole squeeze bottle situation breakfast sausage AP flower explore buttermilk regular milk cheese sharp cheddar maple syrup onion so like an apple pink lady or honey crisp something that has a chance of holding together what kind of vinegar are you putting in that cider Vin you know fitting in that worlds that's all my ingredients for the minute somebody's gonna shop these ingredients for me and then I will have my first shot at making this dish I want to just like get some iterations of this waffle batter so we've got AP flower we've got baking powder in the presence of heat is going to create air bubbles baking soda because I'm putting an acidic element in the form of Buttermilk working with like a southern influence two eggs I'm gonna do a little bit of butter melted you need richness and butter does a great job of bringing that to a pancake or to a waffle then then shred some cheese got cheddar cheese salts whether you go sweet or savory salt is essential I'm really curious to see how this works out I want an adequate amount of wet to dry so that's tending towards a little bit of dryness I need a good bit more liquid just kind of undershot it a little bit so now the cheese a little bit of cayenne to sort of wake things up it could be something else but I think it's a reasonable place to start this is just a tester felt a little anticlimactic I wanted a little more Sizzle a little bit more plot plot Fizz you know but here we are all right there's something happening that's good okay well like not not a waffle I feel like it's never a good idea to try something when it's just like hot like any warm muffin tastes good right but like the true test is like leaving it alone until it's like absolutely room temp hours later and is it good then that'll be for sausage and then ah does it make the most sense to Brown off the sausages pull them to the side and then build up this kind of Saucy compote mixture in the same Skillet as the sausage let's just treat them as two separate things sausage over here and then fruit mixture over there this is the pink lady the slightly more oblong and this is the honey crisp I feel like anecdotally they hold together really well honey crisp may be a touch more tart texture is wonderful I feel like honey crisp is just like that's my desert island Apple you know Apple going in the onion is really just like feels wrong doing it anyway order yellow onion agradolce is sort of like Italian notion of like sweet and sour it reminded me of that something that's like very sweet also with like a quite a bit of brightness black pepper salt we'll see what happens when we cook this so now I think we've waited a sufficient amount of time to see what's going on inside this waffle so the waffle feels a little bit dense a little bit claggy as my man Paul H would say this doesn't quite have the Savory intensity that I'm looking for I don't know that the buttermilk is correct I just want to take a new approach I'm just going to keep the flour the same for the minute stick with eggs more butter going so we've moved away from the buttermilk and have gone towards just regular whole milk I don't know I just didn't really recall like tasting something like quite so Tangy in the original dish we're not doing the buttermilk so I'm not going to use Soda 2T powder salt sugar is going to round out some of those flavors Cayenne and we're gonna up the cheese I mean it's just a very dense mixture all right sausages let's just go ahead and call these done Corey open your mouth I just faded right it's okay no your laptop's fine maybe reduced too much maybe looking a little too candied there foreign so here we have my first attempt at the dish that's funny how at this stage in the game seeing yourself do something even if it's not right feels very validating crispy breakfast sausage all the ways the apples interesting it's like it's very sharp I feel like I just over reduced the mixture like it's almost like it's candied I mean the Waffle's like good it's got like good moisture to it ingredients let's say maybe a 70. technique wise we made a waffle in a waffle maker we cooked an agrodolce mixture we cooked the sausage made it crispy on all sides I don't know that sounds like a lot like at the very least like an 80 to me appearance maybe like back to a 70. well something feels like it's a little bit weird here I think tastes were a good ways away 65. all right I have the actual scores oh average of 83. that is wild to me wild the ingredients thing is tough because we have a multi-component dish here I could be doing a great when it comes to the waffle but super poorly when it comes to the agrodolce all right so I've got one more chance to taste the original dish and then I will have my last shot of putting it together foreign but at a certain point like is it just reminding me of this dish It's Tricky I can't tell like to what degree the syrup and the Apple get actually cooked together is there just syrup drizzled over afterwards it feels a little juicier a little like fresher I know suddenly I'm like missing the heat from it could there be hot sauce in the batter you know just enough to kind of stay subtle also just thinking about the buttermilk okay I'm calling it all right so I'm gonna get my ingredients back um and try this for the next and last time got the buttermilk back hot sauce hot sauce in the waffle like hot sauce on the waffle one thing that was kind of apparent to me I just felt like the original waffle was a little bit lighter than what I was able to achieve and tried backing off the flower slightly and going back to buttermilk I'm not even looking to it so much here for bringing like over Tang as I am for helping with our leavening and keeping this waffle feeling light despite the fact that it's got a lot of cheese in it gotta like boost the leavening a little bit just to get out in front of that Butter's melted sugar salt yeah I don't know about the hot sauce it's a lot of cheese it tastes pretty damn cheesy though I mean it's looking a little tight I don't know we'll see how it does same cut on the Apple using the mandolin here sausage is done I love the flavor of breakfast sausage something about that sweetness with the sage oh my God as soon as it's crispy I'm going to transfer it off to the side and then cook out the apple and onion right in the same skillet I like what's happening there softening the texture in a really intentional and deliberate way I feel like I'm ready to introduce Maple and vinegar hit it with some black pepper I like that we've preserved a little bit more of like the freshness of the Apple it doesn't feel like quite so kind of candy Jammy chewy oh I'm kind of feeling like that is our syrup and parsley not bad right come on I mean there's not like a whole lot that changed here ingredients I was at an 80. so like I think I might have to stay with an 80 for a technique I would say 85. I'd love to think that I made a good call in terms of how this Apple component is getting cooked appearance wise I was looking pretty good before so maybe I'll just stay with like an 88 when I think of flavor it's like it's a little bit of like the texture the structure so I'd love to think that like maybe we're like you know in the 85 range all right so this is what I gotta put up for judging and I will see how I did hello yeah I'm okay I wanted just like an easy straightforward day and of course I don't know that that's quite what I got or at least it didn't feel at the time like what I got but your words were ringing in my ear you know like maybe no don't overthink it oh don't overthink it like okay I can try that it's like the summer I decided to be like be cool it didn't work but I tried Chris may I present to you chef Bobby Flay's cheddar black pepper waffle with sausage and apples maple aggradolce okay okay wow okay I think I strung that together cool okay is there buttermilk in the waffle yes there is butter yes to butter what is the source of the um acidity in the agrodolce apple cider vinegar I can walk I'm good you can come and I see well no I mean now I don't know I ended up putting the black pepper only in the agrodolce because I was really missing it in a like especially the second tasting of the waffle it's not just the black pepper you're missing here it's also the hot sauce so he uses a couple of generous dashes sure you could put a couple dashes of hot sauce in there hard to hard to pick it out like there's less batter in his waffle iron Bobby Flay doesn't take his waffles to the edge he likes kind of the homemade look can you talk me through more of like the the process on the Apple component Bobby Flay uses two Skillets initially one to Brown off the sausage one to cook down the apples with the onions and then the sausage is sliced and then just crisp back up it's just added at the end to the apples and the onions what you did effectively using one pan I feel like is perhaps even more home cook friendly so I would award you points for that but you're interested coin too I don't know TVD do you notice a difference between the two plates oh there's like a green skinned Apple there like it's like a granny smith and a red skin Apple I feel like Bobby has to just choose one apple while both plates look very similar there is definitely a dry Factor on yours The Saucy syrupy Moment On Top is due to both the agar Dolce sauce and extra maple syrup drizzled all over so Chris yeah let's talk scores yes on ingredients you gave yourself an 80. and I actually gave you a 90. you pretty much nailed everything in the waffle except for the black pepper and the hot sauce technique you gave yourself an 85 and I gave you an 85. so even though Bobby Flay uses two cooking vessels one twice and you just use the one I gave you an 85 because that's how I would do it and I think that's actually how it should be done appearance you gave yourself a very high 88. I gave you an 87. it's just a little juicier here and the edges of the waffles are organically shaped taste it's sharp it's sweet I was begging for there to be like a jalapeno in here the black pepper really hits the black Pepper's in there yeah I put the black pepper in the compost you gave yourself an 85 and I also gave you an 85 despite the fact that there was no black pepper in the waffle I still tasted black pepper in the wonderful compote and I feel like that brought everything together you give yourself a total of 85 and I gave you a total of 87. so yeah someday we're gonna crack at a territory this is tricky and it had a baking element good job thanks Hannah appreciate it was a really interesting challenge because it really relied on parsing out flavor and not being forced to kind of decide is this like a classic recipe is this a classic dish it's just it's its own thing Bobby's one of those people who kind of like hits like every category I mean I think he can write a great recipe for a home cook he can inspire people you know through like TV and video and he's also you know like an incredibly successful restaurateur as well I feel very very happy walking away from this one Mike there's um there's like a seven to eight percent chance that if I um accidentally release this knife it'll go flying at you and kill you okay boom all day boom's been in the way who needs it ohhi I'm Hannah and I'm in the ba Test Kitchen to have a super secret conversation about Chris Morocco once again we're putting Chris's super taster abilities to the test this is Chef Bobby Flay's cheddar black pepper waffles with sausage and apples Maple agradolce I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish with all of the ingredients in just one day he'll be able to taste it touch it and smell it but at no point will he be able to see this dish at the end of the day we'll come back to see his final creation and I'll be the judge easy day easy day easy okay we're good huh and it's bringing me some place but where it was like a saucy brooding meaty chicken Caesar salad like that's what came into my head huh sort of like a crispy coin of breakfast sausage but then how does the sausage get crispy all around feels like incredibly earthy um similar to like a thyme like a little bit sweeter Maybe so I've got like a square object with like a thing on top of it that is like very slippery silky actually tastes like cooked out thinly sliced like apple Maybe how is it holding together that well though it's like very resilient brininess here black pepper very present maybe there's like a little bit of maple it's kind of like Agra Dolce thing is the dressing for the waffle right like the same flavor as the pickly situation and yet the texture is like completely different like this is reading a little bit more like onion a little bit of parsley meanwhile I've been holding this this whole time this appears to be a Belgian shaped waffle it's almost got some heat to it a little eggy I also feel like there could be some like cheese there's just kind of like an intensity of flavor it's not simply white flour that feels like it was olive oil with one of our faulty squeeze bottles that everybody insists on persisting with it's grassy it's peppery it's really bright um I'm just like not gonna move at all there's pools of oil just kind of laughing at my glasses what the is in there is there like literally like Chef's knives with the tips pointed up in glass kind of a show is this I'm gonna see if I have a spare pair of socks somewhere I'm just gonna tackle things one at a time and just rethink this whole squeeze bottle situation breakfast sausage AP flower explore buttermilk regular milk cheese sharp cheddar maple syrup onion so like an apple pink lady or honey crisp something that has a chance of holding together what kind of vinegar are you putting in that cider Vin you know fitting in that worlds that's all my ingredients for the minute somebody's gonna shop these ingredients for me and then I will have my first shot at making this dish I want to just like get some iterations of this waffle batter so we've got AP flower we've got baking powder in the presence of heat is going to create air bubbles baking soda because I'm putting an acidic element in the form of Buttermilk working with like a southern influence two eggs I'm gonna do a little bit of butter melted you need richness and butter does a great job of bringing that to a pancake or to a waffle then then shred some cheese got cheddar cheese salts whether you go sweet or savory salt is essential I'm really curious to see how this works out I want an adequate amount of wet to dry so that's tending towards a little bit of dryness I need a good bit more liquid just kind of undershot it a little bit so now the cheese a little bit of cayenne to sort of wake things up it could be something else but I think it's a reasonable place to start this is just a tester felt a little anticlimactic I wanted a little more Sizzle a little bit more plot plot Fizz you know but here we are all right there's something happening that's good okay well like not not a waffle I feel like it's never a good idea to try something when it's just like hot like any warm muffin tastes good right but like the true test is like leaving it alone until it's like absolutely room temp hours later and is it good then that'll be for sausage and then ah does it make the most sense to Brown off the sausages pull them to the side and then build up this kind of Saucy compote mixture in the same Skillet as the sausage let's just treat them as two separate things sausage over here and then fruit mixture over there this is the pink lady the slightly more oblong and this is the honey crisp I feel like anecdotally they hold together really well honey crisp may be a touch more tart texture is wonderful I feel like honey crisp is just like that's my desert island Apple you know Apple going in the onion is really just like feels wrong doing it anyway order yellow onion agradolce is sort of like Italian notion of like sweet and sour it reminded me of that something that's like very sweet also with like a quite a bit of brightness black pepper salt we'll see what happens when we cook this so now I think we've waited a sufficient amount of time to see what's going on inside this waffle so the waffle feels a little bit dense a little bit claggy as my man Paul H would say this doesn't quite have the Savory intensity that I'm looking for I don't know that the buttermilk is correct I just want to take a new approach I'm just going to keep the flour the same for the minute stick with eggs more butter going so we've moved away from the buttermilk and have gone towards just regular whole milk I don't know I just didn't really recall like tasting something like quite so Tangy in the original dish we're not doing the buttermilk so I'm not going to use Soda 2T powder salt sugar is going to round out some of those flavors Cayenne and we're gonna up the cheese I mean it's just a very dense mixture all right sausages let's just go ahead and call these done Corey open your mouth I just faded right it's okay no your laptop's fine maybe reduced too much maybe looking a little too candied there foreign so here we have my first attempt at the dish that's funny how at this stage in the game seeing yourself do something even if it's not right feels very validating crispy breakfast sausage all the ways the apples interesting it's like it's very sharp I feel like I just over reduced the mixture like it's almost like it's candied I mean the Waffle's like good it's got like good moisture to it ingredients let's say maybe a 70. technique wise we made a waffle in a waffle maker we cooked an agrodolce mixture we cooked the sausage made it crispy on all sides I don't know that sounds like a lot like at the very least like an 80 to me appearance maybe like back to a 70. well something feels like it's a little bit weird here I think tastes were a good ways away 65. all right I have the actual scores oh average of 83. that is wild to me wild the ingredients thing is tough because we have a multi-component dish here I could be doing a great when it comes to the waffle but super poorly when it comes to the agrodolce all right so I've got one more chance to taste the original dish and then I will have my last shot of putting it together foreign but at a certain point like is it just reminding me of this dish It's Tricky I can't tell like to what degree the syrup and the Apple get actually cooked together is there just syrup drizzled over afterwards it feels a little juicier a little like fresher I know suddenly I'm like missing the heat from it could there be hot sauce in the batter you know just enough to kind of stay subtle also just thinking about the buttermilk okay I'm calling it all right so I'm gonna get my ingredients back um and try this for the next and last time got the buttermilk back hot sauce hot sauce in the waffle like hot sauce on the waffle one thing that was kind of apparent to me I just felt like the original waffle was a little bit lighter than what I was able to achieve and tried backing off the flower slightly and going back to buttermilk I'm not even looking to it so much here for bringing like over Tang as I am for helping with our leavening and keeping this waffle feeling light despite the fact that it's got a lot of cheese in it gotta like boost the leavening a little bit just to get out in front of that Butter's melted sugar salt yeah I don't know about the hot sauce it's a lot of cheese it tastes pretty damn cheesy though I mean it's looking a little tight I don't know we'll see how it does same cut on the Apple using the mandolin here sausage is done I love the flavor of breakfast sausage something about that sweetness with the sage oh my God as soon as it's crispy I'm going to transfer it off to the side and then cook out the apple and onion right in the same skillet I like what's happening there softening the texture in a really intentional and deliberate way I feel like I'm ready to introduce Maple and vinegar hit it with some black pepper I like that we've preserved a little bit more of like the freshness of the Apple it doesn't feel like quite so kind of candy Jammy chewy oh I'm kind of feeling like that is our syrup and parsley not bad right come on I mean there's not like a whole lot that changed here ingredients I was at an 80. so like I think I might have to stay with an 80 for a technique I would say 85. I'd love to think that I made a good call in terms of how this Apple component is getting cooked appearance wise I was looking pretty good before so maybe I'll just stay with like an 88 when I think of flavor it's like it's a little bit of like the texture the structure so I'd love to think that like maybe we're like you know in the 85 range all right so this is what I gotta put up for judging and I will see how I did hello yeah I'm okay I wanted just like an easy straightforward day and of course I don't know that that's quite what I got or at least it didn't feel at the time like what I got but your words were ringing in my ear you know like maybe no don't overthink it oh don't overthink it like okay I can try that it's like the summer I decided to be like be cool it didn't work but I tried Chris may I present to you chef Bobby Flay's cheddar black pepper waffle with sausage and apples maple aggradolce okay okay wow okay I think I strung that together cool okay is there buttermilk in the waffle yes there is butter yes to butter what is the source of the um acidity in the agrodolce apple cider vinegar I can walk I'm good you can come and I see well no I mean now I don't know I ended up putting the black pepper only in the agrodolce because I was really missing it in a like especially the second tasting of the waffle it's not just the black pepper you're missing here it's also the hot sauce so he uses a couple of generous dashes sure you could put a couple dashes of hot sauce in there hard to hard to pick it out like there's less batter in his waffle iron Bobby Flay doesn't take his waffles to the edge he likes kind of the homemade look can you talk me through more of like the the process on the Apple component Bobby Flay uses two Skillets initially one to Brown off the sausage one to cook down the apples with the onions and then the sausage is sliced and then just crisp back up it's just added at the end to the apples and the onions what you did effectively using one pan I feel like is perhaps even more home cook friendly so I would award you points for that but you're interested coin too I don't know TVD do you notice a difference between the two plates oh there's like a green skinned Apple there like it's like a granny smith and a red skin Apple I feel like Bobby has to just choose one apple while both plates look very similar there is definitely a dry Factor on yours The Saucy syrupy Moment On Top is due to both the agar Dolce sauce and extra maple syrup drizzled all over so Chris yeah let's talk scores yes on ingredients you gave yourself an 80. and I actually gave you a 90. you pretty much nailed everything in the waffle except for the black pepper and the hot sauce technique you gave yourself an 85 and I gave you an 85. so even though Bobby Flay uses two cooking vessels one twice and you just use the one I gave you an 85 because that's how I would do it and I think that's actually how it should be done appearance you gave yourself a very high 88. I gave you an 87. it's just a little juicier here and the edges of the waffles are organically shaped taste it's sharp it's sweet I was begging for there to be like a jalapeno in here the black pepper really hits the black Pepper's in there yeah I put the black pepper in the compost you gave yourself an 85 and I also gave you an 85 despite the fact that there was no black pepper in the waffle I still tasted black pepper in the wonderful compote and I feel like that brought everything together you give yourself a total of 85 and I gave you a total of 87. so yeah someday we're gonna crack at a territory this is tricky and it had a baking element good job thanks Hannah appreciate it was a really interesting challenge because it really relied on parsing out flavor and not being forced to kind of decide is this like a classic recipe is this a classic dish it's just it's its own thing Bobby's one of those people who kind of like hits like every category I mean I think he can write a great recipe for a home cook he can inspire people you know through like TV and video and he's also you know like an incredibly successful restaurateur as well I feel very very happy walking away from this one Mike there's um there's like a seven to eight percent chance that if I um accidentally release this knife it'll go flying at you and kill you okay boom all day boom's been in the way who needs it oh\n"