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.
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 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.
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.
Four new returning champs take on the second preliminary round of the Chopped: Impossible tournament, with Chef Robert Irvine watching their every move from the judges' table. In the appetizer round, the basket features a strange duck and a green dessert, while nerves throw some chefs off their game. Then, in the entree round, an infamous Chopped ingredient makes a return appearance, followed by a meaty sandwich in the dessert basket.