Top Moments of Chopped After Hours: Food Truck Fight

Amanda, Aarón and Scott enter the Chopped kitchen to take on the entree-round baskets from the Food Truck Fight episode.

Episode: Food Truck Fight

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Judging vs. Cooking

"Rather than watching from the sidelines, complaining about other people's cooking," Ted says, it's now time for Scott, Amanda and Aarón to cook with whole suckling pig, fiddlehead ferns, kebab sauces and corn tortillas. "Now it gives people the opportunity to complain about our cooking," Scott jokes.

Extracting the Essence

"I'm dying to cook this," says Scott, who is antsy about getting started on his entree that he's calling a piadina, or Italian flatbread. He decides to crisp up the skin in the oven, and he makes a sauce fortified with the bones, as he's "trying to develop some good flavors," he tells Ted.

Endless Possibilities

At first Amanda says "this is one of those baskets that the ingredients are so amazing that you almost can't think of what to do," but she soon finds herself grabbing tomatillos to make a salsa for chilaquiles. She plans to layer together the tortillas and pork with the salsa.

Snooze You Lose

Aarón's plan is to make something unique out of the fiddleheads, so he decides to fry them in a tempura batter, but Amanda gets to the deep fryer first to crisp up her tortillas. "She hides behind that veneer of sweetness, but we all know that she's an assassin," says Aarón.

Second Nature

Amanda took the opportunity as it presented itself to get to the fryer while Aarón was busy talking. Ted notes that people don't always realize that chefs have a "built-in urgency" to work fast. Amanda agrees: "It just kicks in," she says. "We can't turn it off."

Taking It to the Max

Aaron does something unique with the pig skin, rubbing it with salt and roasting it further in between two sheet pans to crisp it up until it turns into one large chicharron. "This is what you call fantabulisitc," he says as he holds up the skin.

Getting Saucy

Scott assembles his dish as the minutes count down, carefully spooning his enriched sauce over the flatbreads. He gives Ted a taste of the sauce: "I love the heat; I love the acidity," says Ted, calling it "super porky flavor."

The Biggest Compliment

Everyone goes in for a taste of Amanda's chilaquiles, but she's nervous for Aarón to try it. Luckily he thinks it's the best he's tasted ever. "To see it jazzed up and done with your touch," he says, "that's like a huge compliment you're giving such a humble dish."

Texture and Flavor

Before anyone tastes his dish, Aarón demonstrates the crackle of his chicharron, which tops his cochinita pibil taco. "The crunch just keeps crunching," says Ted. Scott's piadina gets rave reviews for its "so intense, so rich flavor," says Amanda. "I wish you three would open up a food truck," says Ted.